Thoughts on Aphra Behn's "The Rover"

1. What does ‘libertine’ mean to Aphra Behn?
2. She has three female roles strong enough to be played by Barry, Betterton and Gwyn, and each given full scope to develop her part. Have we seen all three in one play before? What does this say about her writing?
3. Masks abound, in self-consciously ridiculous numbers. Is there a deliberate blend of stage and life?

1.

◦ Hellena is the obvious candidate for female libertine, though Angellica initially looks to fit the role better. Possibly they provide competing models? Hellena proposes to manage it enough to keep it on an acceptable  social level through discreet handling, while Angellica perhaps comes to regret her public sign, despite the wealth that results. Hellena more successfully reclaims her own role in society and the household, liberating herself not only from the conventional jealous Spanish brother and potential convent but from conventional thought and philosophy.

◦ How shall we compare Hellena to her classical namesake? Hellena takes action rather than being acted upon, as Helen is. In addition, Hellena is full of personality and repeatedly insists on defining it herself, where Helen is and always has been the empty object of men's projections.

◦ Angellica shows an admirable and comparable ability to parry wits with Willmore and articulate the opposite side of a conventional point of raillery, but seems to find herself, apparently incongruously, defending the normative married life (eg, II.ii.108-15).

◦ Florinda is more conventional in both her social aims and her inability to defend herself when put into a traditional position of female helplessness (hence her honour is more often in danger of compromise than that of the two women who care less for theirs), but does take more proactive roles than usual in pursuing her aims. For example, assuming a disguise to investigate the fidelity of one’s potential spouse is more usually a male gambit on the stage (eg, Così fan tutte).

◦ If we take Hellena to be Behn’s preferred model of the female libertine (as she seems to be), we must assume that libertinism is not just about sex, or her role could have ended in Act I Scene ii. It must, then, pertain in a particular attitude, or a freedom from any particular attitude, and/or the ability to successfully shade it into a socially acceptable lifestyle in which availability is under the woman’s control and a matter of suggestion rather than publication.

2.

◦ In Act I, Hellena deliberately and consciously toys with the conventional female roles of nun, gypsy, witch (ii.189), scold (potentially, in the first stages of her conversation with Willmore), courtly beloved (ii.213-16) and libertine – the latter primarily by denial, including the double effect of the mask. Although all of these are conventional and to some extent restrictive, Hellena’s rapid evocation of so many possibilities and her insistence on her own agency to choose or change her choice (eg, ii.204-05) simultaneously scupper the notion of a single interchangeable creature called “woman” (as Blunt would believe) and emphasise Hellena’s agency in determining her own career.

◦ Willmore draws a distinction between the mind and the beauty (body?) of a woman, admiring Angellica for one while he can “contemn” her for the other (II.ii.73-4). This immediately invites comparison with the  asked woman whose conversation he was so enamoured of in the previous act, whose beauty was the subject of verbal sallies that appeared to attract him as much as Angellica’s beauty. Does the distinction between two different models of female presentation suggest two different kinds of self-modelling? Which seems to work better?

◦ Modern romantic sensibility would suggest that Willmore would quickly tire of Angellica and return to Hellena because he loves her for her mind, but Angellica’s mind is as interesting as Hellena’s and Hellena’s face, it appears, as good as Angellica’s. Nor does Hellena offer a safely normative haven from the relationship
with a whore, given her later offer. However, the repeated concealment of the face and insistence on recognition of the mind throughout the play rather suggest it would be a disservice to Behn to attempt to read the mind/body distinction solely in one aspect of one relationship in the work, or indeed to read it only in the
context of relationships and not individuals.

3.

◦ Hellena is not above playing with the double meaning of the mask (prostitute/modest woman, allure/repel, subject/object), teasing with the allure of chastity to create the potential of seduction, consciously evoking the literal and euphemistic nunnery in calling Willmore “Father Captain” (II.243-47).

◦ Can we draw any useful contrasts between Hellena’s mask (tempting by concealing, implying chastity and riches) and Angellica’s picture (tempting by publicising, stating availability at the cost of riches)? Both increase desirability through constructing exclusivity, but from opposite sides. Angellica is a public woman, easy if you can just get the money, and Hellena costs nothing – but a few words in front of a priest. Both the mask and the picture are erected between the woman and the world at her will and in full consciousness of the  implications, and removed when the woman changes her mind.

◦ Florinda does not use her mask so consciously as Hellena and Angelica, or so effectively. She and Belvile, in fact, repeatedly fail to recognise each other’s substitution for Antonio in an honour-laden duel, and the scene that ensues, not to mention Pedro’s near rape of his own sister, question sharply the ethics of disguise. Florinda belongs to another world, the world of other Restoration Spanish plays in which the woman is a thing to be guarded and argued over. The world of masks and wits to which Hellena is aptly suited repeatedly lands her sister in danger.

◦ What does Moretta mean to call Willmore “the only Enemy to our Trade” (II.ii.181)? On the surface, courtesans, certainly; but her position alone on stage in direct conversation with the audience, the presence of so many well-known actresses in this play (all well-known and well-discussed outside the theatre as well, and
carrying the weight of audience recognition onstage with them), the play with faces and seemings and masks in Willmore and Angellica’s preceding conversation and, not least, the popular equation of theatre women with mask-wearing public women of another kind all help to break down the walls between Moretta speaking for whores and Behn/Leigh speaking for actresses. If we allow this, how do we read it? Is Willmore opposed to publication (in whatever sense of the word)? Or pretence? While possibly attracted by it (though that may be a little too Jungian)? His preference of Hellena (able to discreetly manage infidelities) over Angellica (publically unfaithful) suggests something of the former. Is this sort of attitude in men commonly encountered by women in Behn’s circles, either in the context of sexual encounters or the publication of her words in an overwhelmingly male sphere?

◦ Cf. Belvile calling Willmore “a Prince aboard his little wooden World” - well, yes, it could be an allusion to the wanderings of Charles II as Womersley would have it, but there’s a much more immediate little wooden world in which an extravagant character like Willmore shows himself a Prince. And the echo of the obvious quote from As You Like It inverts the image to suggest that perhaps this extravagance, untrustworthy and impractical and shallow as it may be, is perhaps all that is necessary to make someone appear a charismatic leader in the real world too. On the other hand, perhaps this reflects backwards on Charles, the Royal Rover. Willmore's flexibility with regards to his sex life and to the situation in which he finds himself both have strong echoes in Charles, suggesting an uncontrlled, opportunity-driven monarch, at his strongest when responding to the gusts of fortune rather than attempting to orchestrate his own fate.