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Drama
Third year

A Man’s World
Change in mood of writing “background”
Comedy reflects the needs and problems of the age which creates it
...
The
conflict and the uncertainty were not over yet, and the nation took a long time to attain

harmony and a sense of stability through compromises and adjustments in various
aspects of its life
...
This resulted in the withering up in

them of the springs of elemental human affections, and produced in them a general,
cynicism and hard disbelief in virtue of any kind
...
All enthusiasm and search for impossible ideals became suspect
...
In utter disregard of the teachings of morality and religion, they attempted to
build a little pagan: paradise for themselves
...
This split in the national personality
had a serious effect upon the theatre of the day
...


The new comedy reflects and interprets the gay life around the court of King

Charles II
...
All their endeavour is to be physically attractive to the fair young
ladies leading a gay life of idleness
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He is a professed whoremaster and his ambition is to be coveted by the opposite sex and

to be envied by his own
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Loveit "A

Modish Man is always very busie when he is in pursuit of a new Mistress: (38)
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Dorimant, the hero of The Man of Mode (1676) is universally acknowledged to

be a great rake
...
Medley tells Lady Townly that Dorimant is "a man of great
employment has more Mistresses now depending than the most eminent Lawyer in
England has causes"(61)
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He is naturally no believer in constancy and

deserts Loveit for Belinda, and Belinda for Harriet "Constancy at my years!" he says
disdainfully to the disappointed Mrs
...
Similarly, he Cynically tells
Belinda that "in love there is no security to be given for the future"( 49)
...
Their primary thematic functions are ultimately to demonstrate the

disruptive potentials of their own personalities rather than to ridicule or qualify the
behaviour of those around them Behn is concerned with the social consequences of
rakish behaviour, and she works to expose their disruptive aspects and to provide her

English `sisters' with a possible solution to the problem
...


Aphra Behn's conception of the way affairs ought to be carried on between the

sexes differed profoundly from that of her male friends and literary peers
...


Aphra Behn believes that physical passion is an inseparable part of love and

ought, be acknowledged such Women as well as men, she holds experience desire and
are equally as capable of, its intense expression
...
"And I returned the same", must have
been disconcerting even to the rake, fops, and seducers who feign a disregard for female

honour
...


The Restoration age is the age of libertinism and the new breed of wild gallant
who seduces wherever he likes
...
He subscribes to the philosophy that bases its rejection of the
spiritual on the materialistic, body over mind and sense over soul
...


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Double Standard
Although Restoration wits frequently rejected idealistic views of women and
marriage, they continued to require chastity in respectable women, while they adopted

a perennial altitude of many males and exerted all their wit and ' wiles to' seduce

women
...
The would-be seducer reproached women who were unveiling, but, at the same
time, considered the fallen or frail woman to be ruined or damaged goods and objects
...


In his advice to his daughter, George Saville, 'Marquis of Halifax perpetuates the

idea of a double standard- He describes how a woman should live honorably without
promise of happiness in her marriage
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the Laws of Marriage run in harsher stile towards [his daughter's] Sex"
...


As a father,' Halifax recognizes the painful inequities of traditional values; as a

man, he upholds law and custom by cautioning' his daughter to remain chaste and

faithful to her, husband, and to ignore her husband's infidelities
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In fact, Behn blames social conventions which force men to use women
...


Behn expresses her disdain for the sexual politics of the marketplace
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His condition was that
she had to remain faithful to him, while he reserved the liberty to make love to other
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women
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Behn does not desire the same promiscuity that he claims for his privilege, but
she will not be denied equal possibility in principle: free love demands equality:

Just as Behn refuses limited freedom in her personal life, so too, does she avoid

making her female characters conform to stereotype of patient forbearance
...
Unlike her male counterpart whose admirable heroines are

appropriately chast6larriet in The Man of Mode, Behn portrays heroines whose virtue
and wit are not necessarily linked with chastity
...


Often it is the gallant, the sly master, who manipulates women
...
Behn creates women, on all levels of society, who refuse to be
denied, knowing that the only-way to earn equality is to play the game the way men do
Behn's heroines must understand the opposition and conduct themselves accordingly
...
He has a
player's pride in performance
...
Spanish ladies, trying to win their persons and fortunes, at
'carnival time in Naples
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Behn’s

rover,

Willmore, is her distinctive version of the Restoration rake – hero and of other sexual
philanderers, philanderers before and since, Given the inescapable nature of masculine
sexuality, he is clearly recognizable today
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Willmore has come ashore in Naples to enjoy himself
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Willmore openly declares that his

"Business in
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Willmore regards himself as a kind of “Chapman,” that is
merchant of love, Willmore is clearly defined; he is a man of lust, “Oh, for my Arms full
of soft, white, kind-Woman” (1,27) with a taste for beauty
...
In the
character of Willmore, Aphra Behn portrays the pursuit of Woman for Sexual
gratification as virtually a pathological condition:

However, Willmore is clearly meant to be attractive and not in spite of his

promiscuity, but because of it
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Rose out of His hand, and even kiss the Bed, the

Fred:

No Friend to love like a long Voyage at Sea
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Except a Nunnery, Fred (1,19)

This appropriate comparison prepares us for the match of the two frustrated

lovers: Helena and Willmore
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, re not chid fort, nor _the Women despised, as amongst our dull
English"- (1,20)
...
The rover has just met Hellena in her gypsy disguise
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Willmore attempts to seduce Hellena by applying a religious imagery
to his sexual desires
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Hellena's
impending vow to die a maid (1, 21)
...
and

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perverting the texts, Willmore "proves" that 'tis more meritorious to leave the world
when thou hast tasted and proved the pleasure on ”t" (I, 22) than to withdraw a maid
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Her reference toconsoling herself before she takes orders leads Willmore to expect that his seduction
will succeed
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Willmore is quite insincere he swears fidelity and constancy to trap Hellena:
Hell
...
:

By all the little Gods of love I swear, I'll leave it with you; and if you

not bestow it between this time and that
...
(1,24)

In almost a few lines after he swears constancy, Willmore informs
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This is only because he knows that

Hellena is "some dammed honest Person of Quality" (I, 26)1
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Hellena discerns the threat posed by Willmore, while she falls in love with him
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At the end of the first act, the most serious
impediment to Hellena's success in taming Willmore is introduced: Angellica Bianca
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to present no threat, given Willmore's response to her

advertising herself for sale: "The very Thought of it quenches all manner of Fire in
me”(1,27)
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But he, nonetheless, decides to see her because he needs to find some
woman to satisfy the desires aroused by long abstinence and the teasing Hellena:
Will :

She has play'd with my Heart so, that twill never lie still till I have met
with some kind Wench, that will play the Game out with me (1,27)
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Hellena is present as a counter - subject
to Angellica's jealous reaction to Willmore's roving, and she and Willmore have their

proviso scene almost immediately upon Angellica's frenzied departure
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She is cool enough to be able to assure a disguise and bait both Angellica,

suffering the storms of passion, and Willmore, anxious to be rid of Angellica so as to
meet another kind woman whether his little gypsy or not
...
Hellena's wit, apparent in her management of Willmore and Angellica
leads Willmore closer to marriage than he had ever been before
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Although Hellena

rejects the idealized notion of love's power (posited by Angellica) she desires satisfaction

beyond the physical: to love is not defined as to lie with
...
The tribute Willmore thus pays to Hellena justifies her own
commitment and comes as close as humanly possible to protecting her from the

weakness caused by her natural constancy
...


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Biographers of Aphra Behn seek the model for Willmore among her

acquaintance
...
The
first audiences of The Rover would certainly have recognized many characteristics of
Dorimant, the inconstant hero of Etherege's The Man of Mode
...
Both Hellena and Angellica define Willmore's

witty language as his major attraction
...
said, he Charms in every word,

That fail'd not to surprize, to wound, and Conquer
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The central plot-line concerns their
progress in the face of varied obstacles and frustrations to a happy union
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When arrested and threatened with death Belvile claims, "I can soon decide the Fate of a
Stranger in a Nation without Mercy
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Florinda is the "virtuous maid",

the "lovely virgin", the "divine Florinda", and "I would have given the world for one
minute's discourse with her"
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Both lovers

seem unable either to carry out or comprehend the type of intrigue which Willmore

and Hellena carry out
...


In Act I Scene II, Florinda, disguised, plays the role of a fortune teller and gives Belvile a
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date "this, Night at the Garden-gate" (1, 23)
...


The perspective shared by Belvile and Florinda is not available to the inconstant
Willmore and the rest of the characters in The Rover
...


The difficulties encountered by Belvile and Florinda in their attempts to use the

carnival setting to their advantage suggest that their attitudes represent an honorable,
but also somehow inappropriate response to the world of The Rover
...


The greed of the courtesans and the hypocrisy of the Spanish nobles who court

Florinda and fight over Angellica at the same time seem to justify Willmore's evident
desire to resist social conventions by acquiring everything and paying for nothing
...
They are the only Englishmen interested in courtesans as
Lucetta and Angellica
...
In the third act, he is led to Lucetta's bed chamber and in a state of undress is

dispatched into a sewer by Sancho leaving his money and clothes behind
...
Willmore's attempt to rape Florinda occurs immediately after Blunt's
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misadventure with Lucetta
...


Moreover, Lucetta's cozening of Blunt reflects Willmore's cozening of Angellica:
the assault and robbery on the one hand, and the rape of emotions on the other
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The Rover is clearly designed to remind Behn's audience of Willmore's disruptive

potential
...
When
Florinda forgives him for his attempt to rape her, he responds with a vaguely obscene
aside:

Florinda:

The Friend to Belvile may command me anything
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:

Death, would I might,
...
[Aside] (1, 91)
When Angellica appears in the final act, Willmore attempts to placate her by

returning the money she had given him which only adds to her fury
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By the time she is through,
Willmore seems more stupid than funny
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Sexual

freedom with love is not a freedom at all
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Incapable of
any real passion or feeling outside of self-adoration, the fop values only the constant
change of fashion R
...
Sharma perceives that the fops and" the fools are the most

important characters among the other Restoration characters; fine ladies and
gentlemen, prostitutes and bawds, servants and maids
...


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Instead of being able to interpret the fashionable mode, they succeed only in

caricaturing it" (16)
...
In fact, the

fops provide the character - contrast necessary to the scheme of the-comedies
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……………………………………………………………………………………………
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Oh, how fatal are forc'd Marriages!

How many Ruins one such Match pulls on!
Julia, The Lucky Chance
In concentrating on Aphra Behn's place in literary history, on politics, or on

disputes about biographical details, studies have lost sight of what her characters can

tell us
...
Defending herself throughout her career it her prefaces,

prologues, and epilogues, Behn, not only courageously lashed out at her male critics,

but a so inevitably became an apologist for all women who sought to make a career in
the male dominated world of the theatre
...


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Given that Aphra Behn, like her contemporaries, had to serve an apprenticeship

in the theatre, it follows that it would be a while before she began to create assertive

female characters
...


Nothing else would have been expected from a woman entering a male-

dominated profession
...
Observing her

first and final confrontations with her critics and the evolution of her female characters,
one is impressed by the change from self-deprecation to strong assertion
...
Often, self deprecation

becomes a man of self-assertion and a way of commenting on the roles women are
erected to clay
...


Focusing her attention on the evils of forced and mercenary marriages, Behn was

able to insert serious social messages suggesting that women were oppressed by maledominated society
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Humour can conceal and reveal
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Erminia loves Philander, the son of the king of France
...
P
...
Vernon in his essay, "Marriage of Convenience and
the Moral Code of Restoration Comedy", argues convincingly that (Restoration comedy

as a whole rejects forced marriages or marriages of economic convenience in favour of
free choice an romantic love (370-87)

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Robert Hume, in his essay "Marital Discord in English Comedy from Dryden to

Fielding" (1976 - 1977), asserts Vernon's views saying that (Restoration comedy
increasingly exhibits an awareness of the drawbacks and possible pitfalls of matrimony
regarding Aphra Behn as a "vehement champion of the right to free Choice”
...
Her true significance consists in her approach to typical Restoration

characters, and the way she employs them to reflect her concerns about how woman
are viewed and treated
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She delineates both the romantic or distressed heroine, and the
daring or assertive characters
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They insist upon their right to choose their

own partners, and although they challenge tradition, they do not overstep the limits of
convention
...
Actually, this does not apply to Behn's plays
where one conceives a clear by Behn for romantic love over social convenience
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C Sharma calls them (39)
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The new heroines are the mistresses of their own selves and thus they are free to
Choose or reject their lovers
...


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Being aware of the cynical and libertine values of the world in which they live,

the assertive heroines know that the gallants may pretend, love without really feeling it
...


That is why Aphra Behn creates assertive heroines who play the game as the

rake-heroes do without subverting the game as the rake-heroes do without subverting

the status quo
...
Berkeley refers to them
in his article “The Precious, or Distressed Heroine, of Restoration Comedy”, are stock

characters portrayed in the comedies of time
...


The distressed, coy heroine of Restoration comedy is w single or married lady

who is a centre of attention in the main action of the comedy
...
The distressed

heroines may appear foolish and misguided to the more assertive heroines, but they are
endowed with sincerity that is rewarded rather than refuted at the end of the play
...
Behn does note most of the men,
condemn the unchaste woman; it is society that stands condemned, for it is society that

is responsible for the devastating economic circumstances which produce such women
as the prostitute
...

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The play well received by the Restoration audience that Behn "found herself

carried by this single triumph into the first rank of Restoration writers" (Woodcock
127)
...


The critic Julie Nash, in her article "Visual Pleasure in Aphra Behn’s asserts that

one can find in the play clear points of resistance to the frustration which echoes
through the voices of theorists "who can see no way out of the constrain in duality of

active male and passive female" (86)
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love of play and a sense of humour
...


In The Rover, Aphra Behn makes, in a stronger form, the point she makes in her

earlier plays about forced marriage
...
Florinda is intended by her father for an old dotard Vincentio, and by her
brother, Don Pedro, for Antonio, the Vicentio’s son
...
She describes her

physical and natural attributes as the sufficient explanation for her interest:


...

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Hellena's claim to have sense is a claim to a kind of 'common sense' about female

beauty as a natural attraction to men and because natural therefore appropriately used

to In Helena, Behn creates a character whose appetite combines with her and selfassurance to produce the most attractive and the most assertive character in the play
...
Hellena explicitly draws a

parallel line between a religious life and a forced marriage “Is’t not enough you make a
Nun of me, but you must cast my Sister away too, exposing her to a worse confinement

than a religious Life? (1, 13) manipulated by Behn, the audience hopes that both girls
escape from these pressures to allow the free development and satisfaction of their love
...
Her love is romantic and

sentimental, not divorced from the physical, but threatened by its untransformed
demands
...
The

religious terms in which Belvile conceives of Florinda appear in his first speech about

her
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The lady is susceptible to threats posed by male sexual animalist when Willmore

comes close to raping her
...
She also must be rescued by her lover from
the threatening figures of a father, brother and intended husband
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They are able to leave the house, to speak their

minds, and to approach men of their choice
...
Hellena, the youngest, is tom to a nunnery and
Florinda is promised against her will to on Antonio; but the Carnival's disguises allow
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them to pursue their own motives without the controlling presences of their father or
brother, Don Pedro
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J
...
The cost of their disguises as gypsies, and in Hellena's case as a page is that their status
as chaste young women of quality is no longer
...
Disguise is device that is used continuously in Restoration Corned
...

Dorimant in Etherege's The Man of Mode approaches Lady Woodvil Harriet’s mother as

Mr
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Horner in Wycherley’s The Country Wife gets a rumor spread about his being a

eunuch in order to throw the husbands off their guard and to enjoy their wives in

security
...
However, in many of the
plays of Behn's contemporaries, women is guised as met is no more than an incidental
device to serve the plot
...
In many plays, such as The Rover, and The Feigned
Courtesans, the heroine assumes a male identity to gain time and freedom
...
The gypsy and the rover are linked very early in the play,
...
Both are equally adept at verbal fencing, perhaps because, as Hellena
says that they are both of one humour
...
This spirit notably differentiates
Behn's heroine from the passive Florinda and the tragic Angellica, who is active as an
avenger rather than a lover
...
Despite Florinda's

passive sexual nature and her choice of Belvile because of his genuinely good character

as opposed to Hellena's and Angellica's passionate desire for and self destructive choice
of the inconstant Willmore she must, like all women in The Rover, traverse the whore's
marketplace
...
Pedro, her brother, and Willmore chase after her, she enters the

doors of a house to find shelter from them, and she encounters another man, Ned Blunt,
who wants to rape her
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Lucetta has stripped him of his clothes, reversing the traditional seduction in which the
woman, as the object of desire, is seduced and abandoned
...

Blunt who is tellingly another good friend of Belvile's, blames all women for his being
duped
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He wants to "pull off their false Faces", just as his mask has been removed (I, 87)
...
" (I, 83)
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In order for the duped Blunt to regain his manly authority, he attacks a woman -

any woman
...


For Blunt, whore

and virgin are

interchangeable in the market of the masquerade
...


Florida
Despite Florinda's traditionally feminine passive nature, she is ultimately subject

to the same verbal and physical abuse' and condemnation by the masculinity ideology of
her culture as Hellena and Angellica the desiring women who love a rake
...
chuse her Man" (I, 90)
...
Yet, significantly, what Pedro offers his

sister is no free choice at all, Pedro does not know who Florinda is when he makes this
offer
...
Thus, Florinda's less aggressive and more morally correct character,

affords her no freedom or protection from men’s violation and abuse
...


Hellena's chosen means of survival is not the only solution for a woman of her

time
...
In his introduction to The Rover,

Fredrick Link suggests that Angellica is a weakness of the play
...
On the' other hand, Musser agues in his
article that,


...
Behn's
point: her choices have made comic resolution impossible for her
...
(59)

Angellica
We are made by various means to understand and sympathies with the e attempts

of Behn's courtesans to survive the social world
...
In addition, because we are
totally cognizant of Willmore's wanton character, we share Angellica's maid's fear that

she will succumb to genuine love for this gallant
...

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Angellica Bianca's ironic name and the initials she shares with her creator almost seem
to alert the reader to the fact that she is not the usual prostitute of Restoration comedy
...
As Angellica

Bianca falls in love and comes to desire a single relationship, she discovers her absolute
exclusion from the traditional female plot of love and marriage
...
Angellica is an extreme example of passive
exhibition in that she has not even appeared yet on the stage
...


Angellica is literally more than a work of art, existing only for visual pleasure
...
Angellica appears after several men have been marveling at
her picture and her price
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Having managed to
avoid the general disease of loving (I, 32), Angellica does not care about happiness
...
Angellica's

argument for her own prostitution follows: "inconstancy's the Sin of all Mankind,
therefore I'm resolved that nothing but Gold shall charm my Heart" (I, 31)
...
She also reveals that she has spirit when she begins

to suspect that he doubts her sincerity: "I never loved before, tho oft a Mistress Shall my
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first Vows he slighted" (I, 41)
...


Acknowledging that she has an abundance of pride, "that yet surmounts my love"

(41), Angellica insists that Wilimore `pay' her in exchange: "The ray i mean is but thy

love for mine" (41), to which Wilimour answers, "come, let's withdraw where I'll renew
my Vows, and breathe' em with such Ardour, thou shalt not doubt my Zeal" (42)
...


Angellica chooses love and loses everything As spirited as any of Behn's other

women, Angellica makes a strong statement about her personal integrity
...
He is astonished that she should have

expected him to be converted and the scene ends with Angellica’s realization that "I am
not fit to be beloved"
...
She cannot expect love as a tribute to her charms and her only

consolation is to resolve revenge
...
Now she has become `submissive', and 'a slave
...
Prostitution of course, is the epitome of that reduction, where

love, the essentially spiritual, is exchanged for money, the essentially material
...


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The fate of the courtesan Angelica Bianca suggests what happens to the female

libertine once she has given herself sexually
...
For this

reason, a woman could never achieve a sexual conquest, because her only power lay in
withholding sex
...
Any woman attempting sexual

conquest not tied to this fragmented monetary exchange would find herself in the
position of cast-off mistress, or abandoned wife

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