Aphra Behn, The Rover

Suggested web-based resources:
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1662/09/29/index.php (Pepys' reference to a production of Midsummer Nights Dream)
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1660/11/20/index.php (description of the new theatre at a tennis court)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Settle-Morocco.png (engraving of a Restoration theatre set 1673)
Jeremy Collier's A Representation of the impiety & immorality of the English stage, with reasons for putting a stop thereto: and some questions addrest to those who frequent the play-houses. London, 1704. Eighteenth Century Collections Online
http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/the_disappointment.html (The poem "The Disappointment" first printed in a collection by the Earl of Rochester, thought to be the real "Rover" of the play but later attributed to Behn and published in a collection of her poems)

The suggested questions:
1) How mght the different audiences (impoverished noblemen, merchant classes, women, etc.) have responded to this play?
2) Behn's female characters get to express their sexuality onstage. Is this individual initiative or a form of oppression?
3) How many different ways does Behn explore the concept of marriage or the marriage bed with all of the sets of couples?
4) Why might Restoration theatre rely so much on a complex and multi-layered obsession with disguise? 

Secondary Source Report:

Interpreting Ladies: Women, Wit, and Morality in the Restoration Comedy of Manners

by Pat Gill, University of Georgia Press, 1994

            Interpreting Ladies analyzes aspects of William Wycherly's The Country Wife, William Congreve's The Double Dealer, George Etherege's The Comical Revenge, and Aphra Behn's The Rover. I focus on the fourth chapter, "Aphra Behn: Desiring Women II."  Gill, in her introduction to the book, points out the differences between the male writers' views of the heroine vs. Behn's views. Although manners comedies were "concerned with the reestablishment of a stable social and moral self" (5), Gill puts forward the proposition that the male playwrights' ideal woman is a contradiction and cannot be attained. Gill notes the apparent necessity of the male dramatists to defend their works from accusations of bawdiness by women audience by saying that virtuous women wouldn't understand the jokes and, therefore, any female offended by the actions simply show that they are like the women in their plays.  The three men discussed in Interpreting Ladies require their heroines to be virgins but also to behave something like courtesans: they should be witty, knowing, and yet innocent - an impossible ideal. Gill notes that female characters in the three male writers' comedies are victims of "vicious" satire at the hands of the writers because they (the female characters) behave like rakes and so threaten the notions of masculine power (13).

            Aphra Behn's Rover, however, provides a contrast to the plays of the other three playwrights. Gill describes her as a proto-feminist, unafraid to have her heroines match the wits of the heroes. "Her plots, themes, and language point to matters just as pressing as those of her male contemporaries" (21). But Behn, Gill argues, is the only playwright who consistently links a sympathetic portrayal of sexually active women and uses it to condemn the prevalent custom of forced marriage.

            The focus of this review is primarily on Chapter Four - a discussion Aphra Behn's depictions of women in contrast to those of her male colleagues, using the play The Rover as her main example. Gill uses a feminist perspective to analyze Behn's choices, noting that Behn followed the dramatic norms of the period, but did not only look at women's behavior in terms of its effects on men as her male counterparts did. Behn can satirize pretentious behaviors well as anyone, but does not need to use her female characters either to threaten or to validate men. Behn's women are not embarrassed by their sexuality nor do they feel they must put down other female characters in order to save the day. "Chastity is not a criterion for female heroic status. Women may be forthright, kind, and sincere adulterers or hypocritical, cruel, and devious virgins" in Behn's works (141). Women who are depicted by male authors as aware of their sexuality come across as "hard-edge[d]"--they are willing to charm men for money or gifts, and never give up their bad behavior for love. Behn's heroines, according to Gill, whether they are "virginal or sexually experienced" are not embarrassed by their sexuality and want equal treatment for and from their men. (141) Behn clearly dislikes the "property marriage system" (143) and her heroines don't worry about what the public might think of them. Hellena, for example, in The Rover, doesn't labor under the illusion that she might be able to change Willmore's behavior, and her acceptance of Wilmore's rakish qualities is not seen as a failing, as it might be by male writers who expect the heroine not only to attract a rake but to reform him as well! 

            According to Gill, the plays of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve "define as unfeminine and abnormal the behavior that they demonstrate to be intrinsic to female nature...The heroine of the comedies of manners embodies the social and moral ideal that reflects the [impossible] masculine standard of female behavior." These male visions "...reveal ... a utopic fantasy based on a nostalgic perception of the past" (142-43).

            Gill applies feminist theory along with Freud on jokes (or wit) in her analysis of these works. One might think that the two theoretical perspectives would clash. After all, feminism is not often in bed with Freud. But Freud's theory about tendentious jokes focuses on the misogynist foundations of jokes. For Freud, jokes are a mostly male form, and they are mostly attacks on women. Also, these attacks are made for the benefit of a male audience (the listeners to the joke). So, in this case Freud works well in thinking about these manners comedies, and works well in tandem with a feminist perspective.

            I would recommend Gill's writing on Behn because it gives an important viewpoint that differentiates her from her male counterparts that may not be immediately obvious when looking at heroines in Restoration comedies. Although I have read only part of Gill's book, the book's introduction and its conclusion enumerate her arguments, concentrated in the fourth and final chapter, about Behn's female heroines' depictions vs. those of her male counterparts. Gill says that these comedies attempt to reinvent (restore) an old but unreal values system, even though the King whose restoration was supposed to bring back the old ways was himself a rake. And although she uses both feminism and Freudianism in her analysis, Gill is clearly aware of historical context too. Gill's critique spends quite a bit of time on close readings of the rhetoric used by the characters. I am aware that there are other critical perspectives that can be taken (for ex. queer theory, postcolonial approaches), but this book provides a valid way to read the restoration comedy of manners.