Unit 3: Aphra Behn: The Rover

I. Orientation — Restoration theatre and Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn’s The Rover (Part I, 1677; Part II, 1681) is a Restoration comedy shaped by the political, social, and theatrical culture of late-seventeenth-century England. The play is set mainly in Naples during Carnival, a period associated with disguise, sexual freedom, role reversal, and temporary release from social discipline. Its central conflict concerns the desire of individuals—especially women—to choose love, marriage, and identity in a society governed by patriarchal authority, money, and reputation.

A. About the author

Aphra Behn (c. 1640–1689) was one of the first English women to earn a substantial living through professional writing. Her career included drama, poetry, fiction, translation, and political writing.

• Historical position: Behn wrote during the Restoration, after the reopening of English theatres in 1660 under Charles II.
• Professional identity: Unlike many women writers of her period, she wrote for the commercial stage and depended on publication and performance for income.
• Political experience: Her alleged work as a royal spy in Antwerp and her financial difficulties contributed to her interest in secrecy, power, negotiation, and economic dependence.
• Dramatic context: Restoration comedy commonly features wit, sexual intrigue, libertine heroes, arranged marriages, and conflicts between personal desire and social convention.
• Importance of gender: Behn uses comic forms traditionally controlled by male playwrights while giving women strong verbal intelligence, strategic agency, and sexual self-awareness.
• Relevant convention: Carnival permits masks and mistaken identities, but the play also shows that freedom is temporary and unevenly distributed.

II. The Rover — Plot, characters, and dramatic design

The Rover follows a group of English exiles and women in Naples during Carnival. Willmore, a charismatic but unreliable former naval officer, becomes involved with Hellena and Angellica Bianca, while Florinda attempts to escape an arranged marriage and marry Belvile. Blunt, Frederick, and Pedro add comic and satirical dimensions to the plot.

A. Plot construction

The play’s plot is constructed through parallel love stories, disguise, mistaken identity, and the movement between private desire and public performance.

• Initial situation: Florinda and Hellena are under male control. Florinda is promised to the wealthy but unattractive Don Vincentio, while Hellena is intended for a convent.
• Carnival framework: The masked festival allows the sisters to move beyond their assigned identities. Hellena can investigate Willmore, and Florinda can meet Belvile.
• Parallel plots:
  1. Florinda and Belvile: Their plot centres on resistance to forced marriage and the pursuit of a socially acceptable love match.
  2. Hellena and Willmore: Their relationship tests whether witty female desire can contain or reform a libertine male figure.
• Central complication: Willmore’s attraction to Angellica conflicts with his developing attachment to Hellena. Angellica’s public identity as a courtesan makes her desirable yet socially vulnerable.
• Reversals: Disguises, darkened rooms, masks, and mistaken recognition repeatedly produce danger. Florinda is almost assaulted because men interpret anonymity as permission.
• Resolution: Belvile marries Florinda, Frederick pairs with Valeria, and Hellena agrees to marry Willmore. The ending restores social order, but it does not erase the threats exposed by the plot.
• Structural tension: Comic marriage resolutions coexist with sexual coercion, economic exploitation, and the uncertain moral reform of Willmore.
• Dramatic pacing: Scenes shift rapidly between flirtation, pursuit, negotiation, and physical danger, reflecting Carnival’s unstable atmosphere.

B. Characters

The characters represent conflicting attitudes toward desire, marriage, gender, money, and personal freedom.

• Willmore:
  • Libertine hero: He values sexual freedom and treats seduction as a game, calling himself a “rover,” a figure who travels without fixed domestic allegiance.
  • Charisma and danger: His wit and energy make him attractive, but his treatment of Angellica and Florinda exposes the violence beneath libertinism.
  • Instability: He wants freedom for himself while being drawn toward Hellena’s intelligence and resistance.
• Hellena:
  • Active heroine: She refuses passive obedience to a convent and pursues knowledge of love before accepting marriage.
  • Verbal power: Her repartee matches Willmore’s wit; she repeatedly challenges his assumptions about female silence.
  • Pragmatic agency: She does not simply reform Willmore morally; she negotiates with him and chooses the terms under which she will marry.
• Florinda:
  • Romantic heroine: She loves Belvile and resists Pedro’s plan to marry her to Don Vincentio.
  • Vulnerability: Her disguises expose her to attempted sexual violence, showing that female mobility does not guarantee safety.
  • Moral contrast: Florinda seeks a socially legitimate marriage, whereas Hellena experiments more freely before choosing.
• Angellica Bianca:
  • Courtesan: Her public image is commercial, but her feelings for Willmore become emotionally sincere.
  • Economic contradiction: Her beauty is displayed as a commodity, yet she desires exclusive love that cannot easily be purchased or guaranteed.
  • Emotional exposure: Her jealousy reveals how libertine culture turns women’s affection into a source of pain.
• Belvile:
  • Honourable lover: He offers Florinda a model of reciprocal love and eventually marries her.
  • Limited power: As an exile with financial and social disadvantages, he cannot simply command the situation.
• Pedro:
  • Patriarchal authority: He treats Florinda’s marriage as a family and financial arrangement.
  • Comic obstruction: His control is undermined by Carnival, disguise, and female planning.
• Blunt and Frederick:
  • Male comic types: Blunt’s jealousy and humiliation expose the insecurity of men who expect sexual and social authority.
  • Counterpoint: Frederick is generally more controlled, helping distinguish ordinary masculine friendship from Willmore’s aggressive libertinism.

C. Themes

The play examines how private desire operates within systems of gender, property, reputation, and commercial exchange.

• Gender and female agency: Hellena and Florinda speak, disguise themselves, and organize encounters rather than waiting for male decisions. Their agency remains constrained because marriage and male violence still determine the limits of safety.
• Marriage versus sexual freedom: Florinda seeks marriage as protection for mutual love, while Willmore represents mobility and sexual variety. Hellena’s final choice tests whether freedom can survive within marriage.
• Libertinism and responsibility: Willmore’s slogan of pleasure has consequences. Angellica suffers because he treats intimacy as temporary, and Florinda nearly suffers because he misreads disguise as availability.
• Love and commerce: Angellica’s profession makes the economic basis of sexual relationships visible. Her clients pay for access, but Willmore’s emotional promises also function as a form of exploitation.
• Appearance and identity: Masks allow women to escape prescribed roles, but they also enable men to ignore identity and consent. The same disguise can create liberation or danger.
• Class and economic power: Courtship is connected to inheritance, dowry, profession, and social position. Belvile’s exile and Angellica’s commercial status complicate simple ideas of romantic equality.
• Honour and reputation: Male honour is often treated as public reputation, while female honour is linked to sexual purity. Behn exposes the unfairness of a system in which men pursue sexual freedom but women risk permanent social damage.
• Comic order and unresolved danger: The marriages produce closure, yet Willmore’s behaviour and Angellica’s pain prevent the ending from being entirely reassuring.

D. Symbols

The play’s objects, locations, and theatrical devices symbolize larger conflicts between freedom and control.

• The mask: It symbolizes both liberation from social identity and the danger of concealment. Hellena uses it to explore desire, while Florinda’s concealed identity leaves her vulnerable to assault.
• Carnival: The festival represents temporary inversion. Servants, women, exiles, and libertines can challenge normal hierarchy, but ordinary order returns after the celebration.
• The convent: For Hellena, it symbolizes enforced female seclusion and the denial of sexual and social experience. Her resistance makes it a symbol of patriarchal control.
• The garden and private spaces: Gardens, rooms, and entrances create zones where lovers can meet outside direct family surveillance. Their openness is fragile because men can enter them without permission.
• Angellica’s picture: Her portrait functions as an advertisement of beauty and availability. It turns desire into a visual and commercial transaction before Willmore has even met her.
• The title “rover”: The term suggests wandering, piracy, and refusal of fixed obligation. It describes Willmore’s sexual and social mobility but also implies predation and instability.

E. Textual analysis

Textual analysis of The Rover should connect Behn’s dialogue, stagecraft, comic form, and imagery to the play’s treatment of power and desire.

• Language of wit: Hellena and Willmore’s exchanges operate as verbal contests. Their rapid repartee gives Hellena intellectual equality even when Willmore possesses greater physical and social freedom.
• Dramatic irony: The audience often understands the importance of masks and identities before the characters do. This produces laughter while also making the audience witness to danger.
• Spatial staging: Doors, rooms, gardens, and darkened spaces organize access to bodies. A character’s ability to enter or exclude others becomes a visible form of power.
• Contrasting female figures:
  1. Hellena uses wit, mobility, and negotiation to manage desire.
  2. Angellica is economically independent in one sense but emotionally exposed because her public identity is treated as purchasable.
• Comic and serious registers: The play moves from jokes about marriage and sexual appetite to scenes involving attempted rape and emotional betrayal. This tonal instability is deliberate: Restoration comedy can reveal violence without abandoning entertainment.
• Consent and misrecognition: Florinda’s disguise does not mean consent. The attempted assault demonstrates how male characters convert uncertainty into entitlement.
• Performance and spectatorship: Angellica’s image, the public Carnival, and the stage’s use of masks all make looking a political act. Women are watched, desired, and judged, but they also watch, interpret, and manipulate male behaviour.
• Ending: The final marriages supply conventional comic closure, yet Angellica’s experience and Willmore’s incomplete reform complicate the expectation that marriage automatically solves social conflict.
• Critical significance: Behn adapts the Restoration comedy of intrigue to question its assumptions. She preserves wit, disguise, and sexual comedy while exposing the unequal costs of male pleasure and female reputation.