This blog task is assigned by Megha Trivedi Ma'am(Department of English, MKBU).
Aphra Behn’s The Rover (1677) is a groundbreaking Restoration comedy that exposes the intersection of love, money, and power in 17th-century society. Through the character of Angellica Bianca a celebrated courtesan Behn raises uncomfortable questions about women’s autonomy and the commodification of affection. When Angellica equates the financial negotiations of marriage with prostitution, her statement challenges both moral hypocrisy and gender inequality. This essay examines the validity of Angellica’s claim by exploring her experience, Behn’s social commentary, and the contrasting perspectives offered by other characters in the play.
Angellica’s Perspective: Marriage as Prostitution
Angellica Bianca’s life as a courtesan shapes her cynical understanding of love and commerce. In her first appearance, her portrait is displayed publicly with the price of “a thousand crowns a month”, turning her beauty into a commodity. Through this, Behn symbolizes the way society places monetary value upon women. When Angellica falls in love with the libertine Wilmore and is later betrayed, she bitterly laments:
“Yet still had been content to’ve worn my chains,Worn ’em with vanity and joy forever,Hadst thou not broke those vows that put them on.”
Here, the “chains” represent both her emotional bondage and society’s material constraints on women. Her disillusionment leads her to question the moral distinction between her own profession and marriage, suggesting that in both cases, women are valued for wealth, beauty, and sexual fidelity rather than individuality or emotion.
Social Commentary and Gender Dynamics
Angellica’s statement mirrors Aphra Behn’s critique of patriarchal structures in Restoration England. During this period, women had little agency over marriage, which often served as a financial or political contract rather than a romantic union. Florinda’s forced engagement to the elderly Don Vincentio exemplifies how women were traded for social gain. Angellica condemns this system when she declares:
“For such it is, whilst that which is Love’s due is meanly barter’d for.”
Through this line, Behn exposes that both prostitution and marriage can operate under the same logic of exchange love and desire subordinated to economics. The difference, Angellica suggests, is that courtesans are at least transparent about the transaction, while marriages disguise it under social respectability.
Contrasting Perspectives in the Play
While Angellica’s argument is persuasive, Behn also presents alternative viewpoints through other women. Helena, witty and independent, rejects arranged marriage and actively pursues love on her own terms with Wilmore. Her spirited agency contrasts Angellica’s disillusionment, suggesting that emotional freedom within a patriarchal world is still possible. Florinda, on the other hand, represents the traditional woman trapped by family expectations her struggles further validate Angellica’s critique of women’s commodification.
Wilmore, the libertine rake, embodies male hypocrisy: he exploits both women’s emotions and bodies while enjoying complete social freedom. His treatment of Angellica demonstrates how patriarchal society normalizes the objectification of women, whether in the brothel or in marriage negotiations.
Satirical Critique and the Restoration Context
Behn uses satire to expose how deeply financial interests govern relationships. The parallels between Angellica’s “price” and the dowries negotiated for brides underscore the play’s biting irony. In 17th-century England, marriages often functioned as economic transactions designed to secure alliances, wealth, or property. Behn’s comedy, filled with witty exchanges and libertine humor, disguises a serious feminist critique: that both marriage and prostitution treat women as commodities, merely shifting the terms of the transaction.
Moreover, Behn humanizes Angellica rather than moralizing her, transforming her from a “fallen woman” into a symbol of social consciousness. Her vulnerability and rage expose the emotional toll of a system that measures women’s worth in monetary or sexual terms.
Conclusion: Is Angellica Right?
Angellica’s comparison between marriage and prostitution is a bold and unsettling reflection on the economic and moral foundations of her society. While her view is shaped by her experiences as a courtesan, Behn’s depiction of forced marriages, dowry negotiations, and libertine hypocrisy supports much of her argument. Yet through Helena’s independence and romantic defiance, Behn also suggests the possibility of genuine love founded on equality and choice.
In conclusion, Angellica’s assertion cannot be dismissed as mere bitterness; it is a profound commentary on the transactional nature of gender relations in the Restoration world. Behn uses her voice to challenge the hypocrisy of a society that condemns women like Angellica while legitimizing marriages built on financial convenience. Her words remain a timeless critique of how love, power, and money intertwine in human relationships.
Q |2. “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.” Virginia Woolf said so in ‘A Room of One’s Own’. Do you agree with this statement? Justify your answer with reference to your reading of the play ‘The Rover’.
Introduction
When Virginia Woolf wrote in A Room of One’s Own that “All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn,” she was not merely offering a compliment she was making a historical declaration.
Aphra Behn (1640–1689) stands as a luminous figure in literary history, a woman who dared to live by her pen at a time when female intellect was treated with suspicion, even scorn. Her play The Rover (1677) is not just a Restoration comedy it is a subtle act of rebellion against the structures that denied women their freedom, voice, and identity.
Through The Rover, Behn dismantles the conventions of her age with wit and audacity. She gives her female characters Angellica Bianca, Florinda, and Hellena not only space on stage but the freedom to speak their desires, challenge male hypocrisy, and claim emotional and sexual autonomy.
Thus, I fully agree with Woolf: Behn earned women the right to “speak their minds,” not through rhetoric, but through the living voices she created in her art.
Woolf’s Tribute: Understanding Its Spirit
Woolf’s tribute to Behn arises from deep historical awareness. In the 17th century, women were confined to silence excluded from education, authorship, and public life. Aphra Behn shattered this silence. She became the first Englishwoman to earn a living through writing, defying every social expectation of female modesty and obedience.
Woolf saw in Behn a pioneer who made women’s thought visible. She admired not only Behn’s courage but also her defiant normalcy the way she wrote about love, lust, betrayal, and pleasure without apology. For Woolf, Behn’s very act of writing transformed literature from a male privilege into a human right.
In The Rover, that spirit of defiance comes alive. The play does not simply entertain; it argues, through its characters, that women have minds and desires worth hearing.
Women’s Voices in The Rover
Behn’s The Rover gives her women both voice and agency, a rarity on the 17th-century stage. Each heroine embodies a different kind of resistance against patriarchal control.
1. Angellica Bianca – The Voice of Experience and Betrayal
Angellica Bianca, the famed courtesan, embodies a haunting blend of power and pain. Displayed to the public with a price tag “a thousand crowns a month” she becomes the ultimate symbol of how society commodifies women. Yet Behn does not allow her to remain an object. When Angellica falls in love with Wilmore and is betrayed, her lament—
“Hadst thou not broke those vows that put them on…”—reveals the tragedy of a woman capable of feeling deeply but trapped within the economy of male desire.
Angellica’s eloquence transforms her from a courtesan into a philosopher of love and exploitation. She dares to ask what polite society refuses to admit: that marriage itself often masks the same financial exchanges as prostitution. Her words expose the hypocrisy of a world that condemns women like her while sanctifying similar bargains in the name of respectability.
2. Florinda – The Voice of Resistance and Dignity
Florinda’s story highlights the plight of women forced into loveless, strategic marriages. She rebels against her brother’s attempt to marry her off to the wealthy but repulsive Don Vincentio. Her courage risking her reputation and safety for true affection demonstrates Behn’s sympathy for women’s emotional integrity.
In Florinda, Behn presents a woman who refuses to be traded like property. Her voice speaks for countless women of her era, and her struggle asserts that love and choice not dowry or status should define marriage. Through Florinda, Behn attacks the patriarchal notion that female virtue lies in submission.
3. Hellena – The Voice of Wit and Desire
Hellena, Florinda’s sister, is Behn’s boldest creation a spirited, witty young woman destined for the convent but determined to live freely. Her sparkling repartee with Wilmore shows her as the intellectual equal of any man.
She proclaims:
“I’ll have no such foolish thing as a husband, that cannot love me equally.”
In this declaration lies Behn’s own defiant spirit. Hellena’s freedom to flirt, argue, and pursue love on her own terms turns the Restoration stage into a feminist battlefield. She speaks her mind without fear, embodying exactly what Woolf admired womanhood expressed in its full intelligence, emotion, and will.
Behn’s Feminist Vision and Artistic Brilliance
Behn’s genius lies in her ability to weave feminist critique into laughter. Beneath the surface of carnival masks, mistaken identities, and libertine humor, The Rover questions the foundations of gendered power.
Her language is rich with irony. While male characters like Wilmore boast of freedom, Behn exposes their hypocrisy: their “freedom” depends on exploiting women’s vulnerability. Meanwhile, women must fight, disguise, and outwit to secure even the smallest measure of autonomy.
Behn’s heroines do not moralize they live. They desire, reason, and revolt. In giving them voice, Behn asserts that women’s speech, wit, and passion are as complex and valuable as men’s. Her comedy becomes a form of liberation: a world where, if only for a night of carnival, women can wear masks and speak truths.
Aphra Behn’s Legacy: The First Voice of Literary Womanhood
Aphra Behn’s legacy extends far beyond the Restoration stage. She redefined authorship itself. By turning writing into a profession for women, she claimed economic and creative independence at a time when both were denied to her sex.
She wrote openly about female sexuality, not as sin, but as nature; not as shame, but as truth. That courage set a precedent. Without Behn, there could be no Austen, no Brontë, no Woolf. She opened the path that allowed women to write not as muses or moral exemplars, but as human beings thinking and feeling for themselves.
Thus, Woolf’s metaphor of “flowers on her tomb” is not just poetic it is just. Behn’s pen carved the right for every woman after her to speak, to write, to imagine.
Conclusion
Yes, Virginia Woolf was absolutely right. Aphra Behn earned women the right to speak their minds not through political power, but through artistic courage. The Rover stands as a manifesto disguised as comedy: a play where women speak, desire, and choose, in defiance of a world that wanted them silent.
Through Angellica’s anguish, Florinda’s defiance, and Hellena’s wit, Behn dramatized the emotional and intellectual complexity of women’s lives. Her writing transformed the stage into a space of truth and laughter a space where women could exist as more than reflections of men.
If today women writers speak with freedom and confidence, they do so in the echo of Aphra Behn’s voice. The flowers on her tomb are not only symbols of remembrance they are the blossoms of every word ever spoken by a woman unafraid to speak her mind.
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