This blog is assigned by Ms. Meghs Trivedi on Aphra Behn's 'The Rover'.
Introduction
As the first Englishwoman to earn her living by the pen, Aphra Behn wrote with a subversive and critical eye, and nowhere is this more apparent than in her 1677 masterpiece, 'The Rover'. Set against the chaotic, liminal backdrop of the Naples Carnival, the play systematically dismantles the patriarchal structures that governed 17th-century female experience. Behn constructs a vivid sexual-economic marketplace where women of all classes, the high-born Hellena and Florinda, and the high-priced courtesan Angellica Bianca, must navigate a world that demands their submission to either the convent, an arranged marriage, or the public trade of their bodies. It is a world of profound hypocrisy, and this blog will explore Behn’s radical critique, focusing on her daring equation of the marriage market with the brothel. By placing the "honest" commercial transaction of the courtesan against the dowry-driven negotiations of the aristocracy, Behn unmasks the universal commodification of women, forcing a re-evaluation of the very definitions of "honour," "love," and "value" in a society where all women are, in some form, for sale.
Introduction to the Author and the Text
Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was not merely a writer; she was a cultural phenomenon and a professional trailblazer. Living in the libertine, intellectually turbulent world of the English Restoration, Behn shattered the glass ceiling of literary society to become the first Englishwoman to earn a living by her pen. This economic independence, earned through her wit and prolific talent as a playwright, poet, and translator, was itself a radical act. Her life was as varied as her work; she served as a spy for King Charles II in Antwerp before turning to the theatre, and she moved with confidence among the "Wits" of the age, such as John Dryden and the Earl of Rochester. Behn's writing is characterised by its frank exploration of female desire, its unsparing critique of the marriage market, and its celebration of female agency. She was consistently attacked for her "bawdiness", a charge she rightly identified as hypocritical, arguing that the same content was celebrated when it came from a male author. This unique position as both a commercial writer and a woman allowed her to unmask the sexual and financial hypocrisies of her time with an honesty no male contemporary could, or would, dare to match.
'The Rover; or, The Banish'd Cavaliers', first staged in 1677, is arguably Behn's most enduring and representative work. It is a "Comedy of Intrigue," a popular Restoration genre characterized by complex plots, misunderstandings, and fast-paced action. Behn's genius lies in her use of this conventional framework to launch a deeply unconventional social critique. The play is set in Naples during Carnival, a crucial choice of setting. The Carnival is a time of "misrule," a liminal space where social hierarchies are temporarily dissolved, identities are hidden by masks, and normative behaviors are suspended. This chaotic, liberated atmosphere provides the perfect cover for Behn’s women the high-born sisters Hellena and Florinda, and the famous courtesan Angellica Bianca to escape their prescribed roles. As they pursue their own desires for love (Florinda), liberty (Hellena), and a fair price (Angellica), they collide with a group of exiled English Cavaliers, and the resulting "intrigues" expose the brutal economic realities, double standards, and inherent dangers that defined female existence in the 17th century.
"Getting a Woman for Life": Is Marriage Just Prostitution in 'The Rover'?
Our reading fully concurs with Angellica's assessment. Her defiant equation of the marriage market with prostitution is the central thesis of Aphra Behn's social critique in 'The Rover'. By placing the two transactions side-by-side, Behn unmasks the hypocrisy of the 17th-century patriarchal system, arguing that both are simply different forms of a sexual-economic marketplace where women are the primary commodity. The only substantive difference lies in the terms of the contract.
Here is the justification for this agreement, broken down by its key components.
The Universal Marketplace: Courtesans, Wives, and Nuns
Behn establishes a world where every woman's future is an economic transaction. The play presents three "fates" for women, all of which are financial.
- The Courtesan: Angellica Bianca is the most "honest" participant in this market. She is a self-made entrepreneur who has commodified her own body, but she has done so on her own terms. She sets her price at a thousand crowns a month and openly advertises her "wares." Her trade is a transparent, short-term contract.
- The Wife: The high-born Florinda is passive capital. Her value (beauty, chastity, dowry) is to be liquidated by her brother, Pedro, to purchase social and financial gain for the family. She is to be sold to the decrepit but wealthy Don Vincentio. Her consent is irrelevant.
- The Nun: Hellena, lacking a dowry large enough to attract a "buyer" of equal status, is to be "disposed of" to the convent. This, too, is an economic decision a way to "store" a surplus woman without having to pay a dowry.
In this context, Angellica's critique is simple realism. She sees that Florinda is being sold just as she is. The only difference is that Florinda's contract is for life ("all the Honey of a new-bought Wife"), and she has no control over the terms.
Deconstructing "Honour": The Social Fiction of Female Value
Angellica’s fury stems from the world’s hypocrisy in deeming her "infamous" while lauding the marriage market as "honourable." 'The Rover' argues that this distinction is a social fiction designed to maintain a rigid patriarchal order.
The play reveals that aristocratic "honour" is not about morality but about the legitimate transfer of property. A wife's chastity is not a virtue so much as a guarantee of a "product's" quality, ensuring that a man's wealth passes only to his legitimate heirs. Behn exposes this code as a self-serving veneer. The "gallant" Cavaliers, Willmore and Frederick, are perfectly willing to rape Florinda, a "woman of quality," when they find her vulnerable. This proves that, in the absence of a male protector, her "honour" is meaningless. Angellica's "crime" is not that she sells herself, but that she dares to do so outside this sanctioned system of male control and for her own profit.
The Courtesan's Tragedy: When Commerce and Love Collide
Angellica's powerful argument is, in the end, tragically proven by her own downfall. She is a master of the commercial system but is ruined by attempting to believe in the romantic one. When she falls for the libertine Willmore, she breaks her own rules. She tries to "buy" his love and fidelity by giving him her services and her heart for free.
Willmore, however, cannot be "bought." He takes what she offers and promptly deserts her for Hellena, who offers a more profitable long-term contract (marriage and a dowry). Angellica is left emotionally and financially "undone." Her fate demonstrates the brutal truth of her own critique: in a world that has reduced all female worth to a transaction, any woman who misjudges the market is destroyed. The aristocratic wife, by securing a lifelong contract, has simply made the more socially astute bargain. AngellExample:ica is left with nothing, a tragic victim of the very hypocrisy she so brilliantly identified.
"The Right to Speak Their Minds": Virginia Woolf on Aphra Behn
In her foundational feminist text, 'A Room of One's Own'(1929), Virginia Woolf makes a powerful pilgrimage to the tomb of Aphra Behn, declaring, “All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” To understand this profound statement, one must first understand its context. Woolf was arguing that for women to write fiction, they needed material security (money) and personal liberty (a "room of one's own"). Aphra Behn is Woolf's crucial historical exhibit because she was the first Englishwoman to prove that a woman could achieve this, not through marriage or inheritance, but through her own professional labor. She "earned" this right not by asking for permission, but by succeeding commercially in the male-dominated world of Restoration theatre.
This assessment is not only correct, but 'The Rover' serves as its most potent justification. The play demonstrates Behn "speaking her mind" on the very subjects women were meant to be silent about: desire, money, and the hypocrisy of male "honour."
Hellena: The Voice of Female Desire and Wit
Behn most clearly "speaks" through the character of Hellena. Destined for the silence of the convent a fate she actively protests, Hellena seizes the liberty of the Carnival to find a "rover" of her own. She is not a passive object of courtship; she is an active, witty, and articulate agent of her own desires.
- She matches Willmore, the titular Rover, in wit and libertine rhetoric. She openly discusses love and "mischief," refusing to be bound by the demure script of a "maid of quality."
- She vocally rejects her brother's authority. When Pedro attempts to lock her away, she defies him. She is the embodiment of a female mind that has assessed its options (a forced convent life vs. a self-chosen adventure) and speaks her preference aloud, a radical act in itself.
In Hellena, Behn creates a woman who not only has a mind but speaks it, using her intelligence as both a weapon and a tool for liberation.
Angellica and Florinda: The Voices of Critique and Resistance
Behn does not limit this "speaking" to her witty heroine. She uses her other female characters to voice different, darker truths about a woman's reality.
- Angellica Bianca, as we have already discussed, "speasks her mind" by articulating the play's most devastating social critique: that the marriage market is just a form of prostitution. This is not a quiet observation; it is a public, professional woman exposing the fundamental, mercenary hypocrisy of the "honourable" world.
- Florinda, while less witty than her sister, "speaks" through her steadfast and dangerous resistance. She refuses two different arranged marriages, one to a rich old man and one to her brother's friend. Her entire plot is a desperate, active flight from patriarchal commodification toward a love of her own choosing. Her near-rape experiences are Behn's way of "speaking" a brutal truth about the extreme vulnerability of women, even those of "quality," in a world where male desire is law.
In conclusion, Woolf's statement is entirely justified. Aphra Behn earned the right for women to speak by being the first to prove it could be a profession. But more importantly, she used that right to its fullest extent. 'The Rover' is not a polite, deferential play. It is a bold, "bawdy," and brilliant work that gives its female characters the power to articulate their desires, resist their oppression, and, most radically of all, critique the very system that seeks to silence them.
Conclusion
Aphra Behn's 'The Rover' endures not merely as a witty Restoration comedy, but as a revolutionary document of profound social critique. By setting her play in the liberating "misrule" of the Carnival, Behn seizes the freedom to "speak her mind" a right Virginia Woolf would later argue she earned for all women on the most forbidden subjects of her time. Through the articulate rage of the courtesan Angellica, the defiant wit of the aristocratic Hellena, and the steadfast resistance of Florinda, Behn audaciously unmasks the universal commodification of women in 17th-century society. She masterfully exposes the rank hypocrisy of a patriarchal system that pretends to value "honour" while actively trading women as capital, ultimately proving that the "honourable" marriage market and the "infamous" brothel are not moral opposites, but rather two sides of the same debased, transactional coin.
References
Behn, Aphra. 'The Rover'. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 10th ed., vol. C, W. W. Norton, 2018, pp. 2209-66.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. 1929. Harcourt, 1989.
Word count: 1959
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