This thinking activity is assigned by our profesor dr. Dilip barad sir about "The Rover". Here I'm going to discuss about the summary of the play "The Rover", based on two article. Here is this two articles:
Aphra Behn's The Rover engages with the social, political and sexual conditions of the 17th century, as well as with theatrical traditions of carnival and misrule. Elaine Hobby introduces Behn's play and explores how it was first performed and received
Rape and the Female Subject in Aphra Behn's "The Rover" Published By: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Aphra Behn was the first professional female playwright. When The Rover appeared her career as a professional playwright was already well established. "The Forc’d Marriage" is her first play, and it had been followed by The Amorous Prince, The Dutch Lover, Abdelazer (her only tragedy) and The Town-Fopp, all with her name on their title pages.
◆The Rover : plot, character, theme analysis video
After the great success of "The Rover", Behn continued to write regularly for the Duke’s Company, and she was one of the few playwrights still having new plays performed in the 1680s after London audiences fell off as political tensions rose. At the same time she also established herself as a respected poet, translator and author of prose fiction (her most famous work, Oroonoko, which tells of a slave uprising, was published in 1688).
That success was not without its gender-specific challenges. Behn’s postscript to The Rover suggests that it was partly because she was a woman that critics were quick to accuse her.
Behn as the first professional female playwright :-
(Portrait of Aphra Behn by Sir Peter Lely)
Aphra Behn demarcates a set of faulty interpretive practices and directs the audience to the proper reading of her play by negative example. Aphra Behn's The Rover engages with the social, political and sexual conditions of the 17th century, as well as with theatrical traditions of carnival and misrule. Elaine Hobby introduces Behn's play and explores how it was first performed and received. It is in keeping with these sorts of cuts that by 1760, The Rover had fallen out of fashion; we know of no further performances until the 20th century.
Marriage and Libertinism :-
In late seventeenth-century London, Aphra Behn was the first woman to earn her living as a writer. As a playwright, she wrote plays that reflected historical and cultural aspects of the Restoration from a female perspective. In 1677, she penned one of her most notable plays, The Rover; or The Banished Cavaliers. Behn’s play debuted during the height of the Restoration period, which for theater meant more female agency on the stage because women were allowed to take on female roles for the first time. Behn places the action of her play in Spanish Naples, just before Lent in the midst of carnival, which is a setting fit for emphasizing the urge to break free from societal constraints. Through the stories of Florinda, Hellena, and Angellica, Behn integrates strong elements of feminism and libertinism by focusing on issues of marriage, self-identity and representation. Each of these character types represents a different aspect of a woman’s struggle to define herself during the Restoration. Within this Naples framework, Behn explores the roles available to Restoration women and men, and the implications of the libertine idea that marriage was an outmoded institution. Here, the play’s most powerful voice is that of Angellica, who sees prostitution as a better choice than marriage. When the rakish Willmore remonstrates with her for charging for sex, she points out to him that men routinely have sex for money: when a man marries he gets his wife’s dowry.
The Spanish sisters Florinda and Hellena (and their cousin Valeria) are dominated by their brother Pedro. Pedro is confident that he can force Florinda to marry his powerful friend Antonio, and save the cost of a dowry for Hellena by sending her back to her nunnery.
Restoration masculinity :-
The hypocrisy of the libertine men in The Rover leaves space for Behn's criticism of their behavior. Restoration comedies often begin with a scene between male characters in which they show their friendly devotion for each other and proceed to discuss their amorous pursuits.
The lack of scholarly attention that Behn’s male characters receive can be explained by the fact that her protagonists like the male characters of other Restoration comedies written by men rape, scheme, lie, seduce, threaten, and connive. Indeed, the gratuitous sexual violence that takes place in The Rover can be deeply disturbing for a contemporary audience. Behn’s depiction of male characters as unapologetic libertines men who pursue sexual pleasure and have few moral restraints seems to function as an obstacle to the argument that Behn is an early advocate for women’s rights. Susan Staves, a feminist critic, responds to this difficulty and suggests that Behn was forced to appeal to a mass audience and, therefore, was unable to “imagine alternative, less misogynist constructions”. Certainly, Behn had limited space to critique libertinism when her audience would have contained male spectators who aspired to libertine values, not the least of whom was the monarchy, Charles II. However, I believe that the ironizing and mocking of male sexual aggression throughout The Rover suggests that Behn is in fact critical of sexual violence towards women. Consequently, this essay will deal heavily with the issue of sexual assault as depicted on the Restoration stage and it will investigate Behn’s motives and limitations in depicting sexual violence.
Carnival, disguise and misrule :-
The idea of the carnivalesque was developed by the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin in his study of the seventeenth - century prose satirist, Francois Rabelais. The carnival for Bakhtin was an event in which all rules, inhibitions, restrictions and regulations which determine the course of everyday life are suspended, and especially all form of hierarchy in society. The concept is derived from the practice of medieval carnival when the people would enjoy a holiday from their labours and in the process ridicule the authorities of church and state. Carnival was also considered a period of indulgence focusing on the pleasures of the body vis-à-vis eating, drinking and promiscuous sexual activity. Aphra Behn constructs The Rover in the Carnival preceding Lent where masquerades, costumes, disguises, overindulgence and theatricality are commonplace, allowing an exploration and subversion of social ideals and realities. A reversal, or rather an outright rejection of social roles is most apparent in the character of Hellena. As per her family’s expectations, Hellena is to join a nunnery, thus saving her father of a second dowry.
A darker, grimmer side of the Carnival is exposed when the women in the play enter a different system of domination, outside the captivity of their homes. Willmore, a self-proclaimed “rampant lion of the forest”, assumes that any woman out on the streets during the Carnival is available for sex. He attempts to rape Florinda whilst he is drunk. Later on in the play, Florinda is also nearly raped by Blunt and Frederick. Here, Aphra Behn seems to critique how women who don’t adhere to their predefined social roles are automatically assumed to be prostitutes available for sexual domination. Behn speaks through Hellena who boldly questions,
“Why must we be either guilty of fornication or murder if we converse with you men?”
Behn also shows how chastity and prostitution are the only two alternatives available to women. The odds of having a happy ending are tipped in favour of Hellena who is chaste and untouched. Angellica Bianca, who is also in pursuit of Willmore as a lover, is forced to come to terms with the fact her profession would never allow her lead a normal married life. Her social identity would forever be that of a commodity, a means to an end. The Carnival thus also becomes a means to assess the sexual double standards by which women are judged by men.
(This painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicts the opposing, balanced forces of carnival and Lent)
Dressed as a gypsy a member of a society living at the edges of Restoration culture or as a man, a young woman can attempt to forge her own destiny. Willmore, meanwhile, tells his fellow Cavaliers that he has left the Prince (James, Duke of York) on his ship in the Bay of Naples and come ashore to ‘enjoy my self a little this Carnival’, setting the scene for his drunken assault on Florinda.
We see the general themes in the play are :
Gender and sexuality,
Theatre and entertainment,
Politics and religion,
Satire and humour
I find one interesting video of this play , like seeing the eyes (with use of cartoon),
To conclude we can say that as feminist critics have established, Behn often portrays libertinism in a negative way. However, it is not only through her female characters that Behn portrays certain libertine behaviors in an unfavorable manner, but through her construction of masculinity. Yet, such an argument is complicated by the complexity of Behn’s loyalties. Certainly, Behn has a concern for female agency that is not only explicit in many of her plays, but also in her prefaces to them. In the preface to The Lucky Chance (1686), Behn begs for the same freedom of expression that is given to her male counterparts, calling her “masculine part the poet in [her]” (Behn 2001, 1428). On the other hand, Behn is limited in her ability to express her opinions publicly for a number of reasons. Willmore, is not only a romantic and comic hero, but he is also a reflection of Charles the II. Behn, a staunch royalist, is faced with the political imperative to not insult her monarch by casting such a protagonist in an unfavorable way. From an economic perspective, the plays must attract a paying audience and Behn, therefore, must portray her libertine hero in a desirable fashion according to the expectations of the time. Thus, Behn offers what appears to be a very conventional treatment of Restoration masculinity. However, if it is true that Behn faces obvious limitations in her criticism of libertinism, but that this criticism can be found in her plays, one must ask what portrayal of the libertine rake emerges from her comedies. Behn subscribes to the customary standards of royalism and libertinism; yet, within the necessary conventional forms that she adopts, one can perceive a subtle strain of critique of libertine masculinity. Without explicitly attacking libertinism, Behn reveals its limitations and contradictions. Libertinism is a crumbling edifice that, though still standing, is exposed by the plays of Behn to be ridden with
cracks, flaws, and imperfections.
1743 words
