The Brutal Mechanics: A Critical Analysis of Aphra Behn's 'The Rover' and Patriarchal Economics

The Brutal Mechanics: 'The Rover' as a Critique of Patriarchal Economics

This blog is written as a task assigned by Megha Trivedi Department of English (MKBU) Critical analysis of Aphra Behn's revolutionary Restoration comedy.

Introduction

Aphra Behn's 'The Rover' presents itself as a Restoration comedy. It adheres to the conventions of the genre: witty lovers, complex mistaken-identity plots, a Carnival setting for licensed misrule, and a final pairing-off of couples. Yet, to read the play merely as a "bawdy romp" is to misread it completely. Behn hijacks the form. She uses the very conventions of comedy as a diagnostic tool, staging a profound and blistering critique of the 17th-century social structure. The play is not about love and adventure. It is about economics.

Aphra Behn

It is a systematic dissection of the limited, brutal, and transactional marketplace available to women, where their bodies are the only commodity and their choices are illusory. Behn does not just present female characters; she presents competing economic models for female survival, the courtesan and the wife, and exposes both as failures, traps set by a system that equates male desire with power and female identity with property.

This analysis will examine the play through this critical lens. First, it will explore the play's setting and central metaphors, the Carnival and the mask, as structural devices Behn employs to suspend social protections and reveal the underlying violence of the patriarchal system. Second, it will address the central thesis of the courtesan Angellica Bianca: that the "respectable" marriage market is indistinguishable from her own trade. Finally, it will investigate Virginia Woolf's claim that Behn "earned women the right to speak their minds," using 'The Rover' as the primary text to argue that Behn used this right not to celebrate, but to diagnose the very mechanisms that silence women's voices.

The Crucible of Carnival: The Mask as an Engine of Exposure

Behn's choice of Naples during Carnival is a precise and deliberate structural decision. The Carnival is a liminal space, a period of sanctioned chaos where social hierarchies are theoretically inverted and identities are hidden behind masks. In a typical comedy, this setting would be a simple plot engine, a way to generate humorous misunderstandings and allow high-born characters to mix with commoners. Behn uses it as a crucible. By suspending the normal rules of social conduct, she strips her female characters of their primary, and only, defense: their social status. The mask, the supposed tool of liberation, becomes the instrument of their vulnerability.

For the men in the play, the "rovers" Willmore, Belvile, and Frederick, the mask grants anonymity and freedom of action. It allows them to pursue their desires (drink, women, adventure) without consequence or identity. For the women, Florinda, Hellena, and Valeria, the mask does the opposite. It does not grant them freedom; it merely strips them of their names. It erases their identity as "women of quality" and reduces them to their base definition in this world: "woman," an anonymous object of male pursuit.

Here's a breakdown of that double-edged sword:

The Mask: Liberation vs. Vulnerability
For the Men (e.g., Willmore)	For the Women (e.g., Florinda)
Grants: Anonymity, Freedom of Action	Grants: Anonymity, Freedom of Movement (Illusion)
Effect: Pursue desire without consequence.	Effect: Stripped of social status and protection.
Outcome: Empowers them to act.	Outcome: Reduces them to a generic object ("woman").
Result: Liberation	Result: Extreme Vulnerability

The play's central horror lies in its repeated demonstration of this fact. The plot does not just contain the threat of rape; it is driven by it. This violence is not perpetrated by clear villains but by the play's "heroes." The first instance is with Willmore, the charming, witty protagonist. Drunk and emboldened by the Carnival's anonymity, he encounters Florinda. When she, a "woman of quality," resists him, his response is a terrifying piece of rhetorical reduction:

"A woman of quality! Why, art thou not a woman? ...a woman's a woman."

This line is the core of Behn's critique. In this "liberated" space, all social distinctions collapse. "Quality" is a social fiction. "Woman" is a biological fact, and in Willmore's eyes, that fact implies availability. Her "no" is meaningless. Her speech has no power. Her identity is gone. She is saved not by her own agency or voice, but only by the timely arrival of Belvile, another man with a competing claim.

Behn reinforces this point, making it systemic rather than incidental, with the subplot of Blunt. Blunt is the play's "gull," a stock comic character. He is tricked by a prostitute, Lucetta, who steals his belongings and his pride. In a standard comedy, this would be the extent of the joke. But Behn charts the psychological consequence. Blunt's humiliation does not resolve into self-awareness; it metastasizes into a vengeful, generalized misogyny. He vows to:

"be revenged on one whore for the sins of another."

When Florinda, fleeing other men, seeks refuge in his room, Blunt's "comic" plot collides with her "serious" one. He, like Willmore, does not see her. He sees only the category of "woman," an object on which to enact his violent revenge. The scene is brutal, chilling, and structurally deliberate. Behn forces the audience, who had been laughing at Blunt's foolishness, to confront the direct, violent consequence of the very male ego they found amusing. Florinda is again saved not by her own power, but by the arrival of other men.

The "freedom" of the Carnival is a lie. It is a space that reveals a fundamental truth: for women, there is only the "protection" of the patriarchal cage (the home, the convent) or the "freedom" of the wilderness, where they are prey. The mask does not liberate them; it simply makes them anonymous targets. Behn uses this comedic setting to stage a scenario of profound vulnerability, showing that when the thin veneer of social custom is removed, the default relationship between the sexes is not wit and romance, but power and violence.

Question 1: Angellica Bianca and the Hypocrisy of the Marriage Market

Angellica considers the financial negotiations that one makes before marrying a prospective bride the same as prostitution. Do you agree?

Yes, and the play argues compellingly that Angellica is not only correct, but that her position is, in fact, the only honest one in the play's economic system. 'The Rover' is built on a direct comparison between two markets for women. Angellica's assessment is not a moment of cynical wit; it is the play's central economic thesis.

Behn presents two clear, competing models for the exchange of women.

1. The Patriarchal Marriage Market:

This market is defined by the trade of Florinda and Hellena.

• Florinda is a passive commodity. Her dead father's will and her brother Don Pedro's authority are the forces that control her fate. She is an asset, valued at a dowry of 300,000 crowns. Her purpose is to be "sold" to either the old, rich Don Vincentio (her father's choice) or Don Antonio (her brother's choice) in a transaction that secures family wealth and alliances. Her own desires, her love for the poor Belvile, are irrelevant. She is property, and her objections are met with imprisonment.
• Hellena is a similar commodity, though her path is different. She is destined for the convent. This is not a spiritual calling but an economic decision: the family cannot or will not pay for two dowries, so she is "given" to the church, a transaction that removes her from the market entirely.

In this "respectable" market, the woman is an object. The transaction is negotiated by men (fathers, brothers) for men (husbands). The woman's "virtue" is simply a guarantee of the product's quality, its virginity, which ensures the legitimacy of the bloodline. Her consent is not a factor.

2. The Courtesan's Market:

This market is controlled by Angellica Bianca.

• Angellica is an active economic agent. She is not sold; she sells. She sets her own terms, advertises with her portrait, and names her price: 1,000 crowns a month. She controls her own property (her house) and her own body. She is a businesswoman who has seized the means of production.
• Her trade is public, honest, and transactional. She has inverted the power dynamic. Instead of men negotiating over her, they must come to her and meet her terms. She has achieved what Florinda and Hellena cannot: economic independence and personal agency.

This table clarifies the direct comparison Behn is making:

The Marketplace for Women: A Comparison
The "Respectable" Marriage Market	The "Courtesan" Market
Commodity: Florinda & Hellena	Agent: Angellica Bianca
Control: Father / Brother (Patriarchy)	Control: Self-Controlled
Transaction: Permanent, one-time "sale" (marriage) or disposal (convent).	Transaction: Temporary, renewable (1,000 crowns/month).
Woman's Role: Passive Object.	Woman's Role: Active Agent / Businesswoman.
Value: Dowry (e.g., 300,000 crowns) + "Virtue".	Value: Set by Angellica herself.
Key Factor: Her consent is irrelevant.	Key Factor: Her terms are the entire basis.
Labelled as: "Just" / "Virtuous"	Labelled as: "Mercenary" / "Sinful"

Angellica's famous speech to Willmore, who rails against her "mercenary" trade, is the play's moment of deconstruction. She directly confronts the hypocrisy of the system that condemns her while celebrating the marriage market:

"Pray, tell me, sir, are not you guilty of the same mercenary crime? ...What hinders you, who are men of quality, from marrying our women of quality... but want of fortunes?... Thou, knowing this, still rail'st against my trade... But call it marriage, and thou'lt find it just."

She exposes the "crime" as universal. The only difference is the name and the honesty. "Respectable" men will not marry a "woman of quality" without a fortune. Florinda is "just" because she is sold once and permanently in a contract called marriage. Angellica is "sinful" because she sells herself temporarily and transparently in a contract of her own making. From an economic standpoint, Angellica's position is the more powerful one. She is the agent; Florinda is the object.

Where Behn's critique becomes truly devastating is in the failure of Angellica's model. Angellica is not defeated by a bad business deal. She is defeated by ideology. Willmore, who cannot afford her price, offers her something else: the idea of romantic love. He convinces her that he loves her for her, not her trade. Angellica, starved for the one thing her money cannot buy, genuine, non-transactional affection, breaks her own rules. She "gives" herself to him for free, investing emotionally in a man who is the definition of a bad-faith actor.

The moment she does this, her power evaporates. Willmore, having "conquered" her and taken her money, abandons her for the "fresh" wit of Hellena. Angellica's economic independence is revealed as a fragile defense against an emotional and ideological system designed to disarm women. She is reduced from a powerful businesswoman to the most pathetic stock character of Restoration drama: the "wronged woman" seeking revenge with a pistol.

Thus, Angellica is absolutely right. Marriage is prostitution. But Behn's final, cynical argument is that in this patriarchal system, even honest prostitution is not a path to liberation. It is just another, more transparent, trap. The system ultimately finds a way, through romance, through violence, through social ideology, to break any woman who dares to operate outside of its designated channels.

Question 2: Woolf's Claim and Behn's Complicated "Right to Speak"

"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'.

Yes, one must agree with Woolf's statement, but it must be understood in the precise, material terms Woolf intended, and 'The Rover' is the perfect text to demonstrate both the truth of her claim and its profound limitations. Woolf's argument in 'A Room of One's Own' is fundamentally economic: to write, a woman needs "money and a room of her own." The "right to speak" is not an abstract ideal but a financial and professional one.

Behn is the figure Woolf identifies because she was the first Englishwoman to professionalize writing. She did not write as a private hobby. She competed in the public, commercial, and overwhelmingly male world of the London stage. She wrote to pay her rent. She proved that a woman's mind could be a source of income. This act of professionalization, of turning wit into money, is the "earning" Woolf speaks of. Behn created the "room of one's own" not with an inheritance, but with ticket sales. She established the possibility of female intellectual independence.

'The Rover' is the direct product of this earned right. Its existence, its wit, and its success are the justification for Woolf's claim.

How 'The Rover' Justifies Woolf's Statement:

The play is an exercise in "speaking one's mind." The female characters, particularly Hellena, are the embodiment of Behn's own project.

• Hellena as Authorial Avatar: Hellena is a character of pure intellect. Destined for the convent (a space of enforced silence), she declares:

  "I am resolved to provide for myself... a man."

  Her only weapon, her only "dowry," is her wit. She hunts Willmore, engages him in verbal combat, and "wins" him not with virtue or beauty, but with her mind. She negotiates her own destiny through language. Hellena is Behn's fictional proof of concept: a female mind, when unleashed, is a powerful, active, and world-shaping force.
• Angellica's Intellectual Honesty: As discussed, Angellica's voice is the play's source of its most trenchant social and economic critique. She is given the play's most intelligent deconstructive lines. Behn uses her to "speak her mind" about the hypocrisy of the entire social structure.
• The Play Itself: The sheer act of writing 'The Rover' is the proof. Behn takes a male-dominated genre, centers it on the subjective experience and suffering of women, and critiques the very "rover" archetype her male contemporaries celebrated. This is an audacious act of "speaking one's mind."

How 'The Rover' Complicates Woolf's Statement:

While 'The Rover' is the product of Behn's "right to speak," the play's content is a brutal demonstration that speaking and being heard are two different things. Behn uses her voice to show how all other female voices are silenced. The play is not a celebration of a right won; it is a diagnostic of a world that refuses to listen.

This table shows the limited power of the female voice within the play's world:

The Power of the Female Voice in 'The Rover'
Character	How She "Speaks Her Mind"	The Result (Is She Heard?)
Florinda	Speaks clearly. Says "no" to attackers. States her love for Belvile.	No. Her voice is totally impotent. It stops no violence. She is saved only by other men.
Angellica	Speaks with intellectual brilliance. Exposes the system's hypocrisy.	Partially. Her intellectual voice is "heard," but her emotional voice (of love/betrayal) is dismissed as female "raving."
Hellena	Speaks with active wit. Uses language as a weapon and a tool to get what she wants.	Yes. She is the only woman whose voice succeeds. She talks her way into a marriage of her own choosing.

• The Failure of Florinda's Voice: Florinda speaks clearly, rationally, and desperately. She says "no" to Willmore. She says "no" to Blunt. She pleads for her life and her honor. Her voice is impotent. It has no physical power. It does not stop Willmore's advance. It does not halt Blunt's attack. Her "no" is treated as mere noise, a part of the "game." She is saved only by the physical intervention of other men. Her "right to speak" is a complete failure.
• The Dismissal of Angellica's Voice: Angellica speaks with the power of economic truth. She wins the intellectual argument with Willmore. But her voice is only powerful as long as she remains within her defined role as the "powerful courtesan." The moment she speaks with genuine passion, of love, and then of betrayal, her voice is re-categorized. She is no longer an intellectual equal; she is a "jilting jade," a "fury," a "scorned woman." Her intelligent speech is dismissed as the "ravings" of a hysterical, spurned lover.
• Hellena's Ambiguous "Victory": Hellena is the only one whose voice "succeeds." She talks her way out of the convent and into a marriage. But what has she won? She has "tamed" Willmore, the very man who, hours earlier, attempted to rape her sister and who emotionally destroyed Angellica. Her "victory" is binding her life to the play's central engine of misogyny and chaos. The play's "comic" ending is profoundly cynical. Hellena's "right to speak" has won her the "right" to spend her life attempting to manage an unmanageable and dangerous man. It is a "win," but it feels more like a life sentence.

In conclusion, Woolf's statement is correct. Behn did earn the right, in the professional and economic sense that mattered to Woolf. She created the path. But 'The Rover' is Behn's masterpiece of that right, and she uses it to argue that the fight was far from over. She uses her professional voice to articulate the thousand ways, physical, economic, and ideological, that the world conspires to silence, ignore, and destroy the voices of women. The flowers on her tomb are for the act of speaking, but the play itself is a warning that speaking is only the first, not the final, step.

Conclusion: The Subversion of Comedy as Humanitarian Act

'The Rover' endures not because it is a "fun" play, but because it is a deeply serious one. Behn's "humanitarian" impulse is not to be found in sentimentality, the play has none, but in her unflinching insistence on consequence. In a typical Restoration comedy, Willmore is the unambiguous hero, and his "roving" is a celebrated expression of charming, aristocratic freedom. Blunt is the "comic gull," and his humiliation is a source of uncomplicated laughter.

Behn subverts both. She re-frames Willmore as the primary antagonist to female safety and autonomy. His charm is the predator's lure. She re-frames Blunt's "comic" subplot as a terrifying case study in how male humiliation curdles into generalized, violent misogyny.

This table summarizes Behn's subversion of the stock comedic characters:

Restoration Comedy: Expectation vs. Behn's Reality
Stock Character	Comedic Expectation	Behn's Subversive Reality
The Witty Hero (Willmore)	Charming, lovable, and free-spirited. His "roving" is the engine of fun.	Primary antagonist to female safety. His charm is a predator's weapon. He attempts rape.
The Comic Gull (Blunt)	A foolish, harmless character. His humiliation is the main joke.	A terrifying study in misogyny. His humiliation transforms into violent revenge against all women.
The Scorned Woman (Angellica)	A stock character to be dismissed; a hysterical, one-note figure of rage.	The play's most intelligent voice. Her "rage" is the justified response to systemic exploitation.
The Witty Heroine (Hellena)	The hero's "match." Her wit wins her a "happily ever after."	A deeply ambiguous "victory." She wins a marriage to a dangerous, untrustworthy man.

The play's "comedy" is a trap for the audience. Behn invites the audience to laugh at Willmore's wit, then forces them to watch him attempt a rape. She makes them complicit. She exposes the rot at the center of the very "heroic" archetype they paid to see.

This is Behn's genius. She uses the conventions of comedy to critique the culture that produced it. She does not offer easy solutions. Angellica's independence fails. Florinda's virtue is useless. Hellena's wit wins her a deeply compromised prize. Behn is not writing a fantasy of liberation. She is writing a diagnosis of a system. By placing the real, tangible, and violent consequences of male "roving" at the center of her "comedy," she insists on the humanity of the women who are its collateral damage. She forces the audience to see them, not as plot devices, but as human beings navigating a world designed for their exploitation.

Ultimately, 'The Rover' is a testament to the power of seeing the world clearly, even if that view is bleak. Behn's honesty is what makes the play so modern. She refuses to provide a simple "happily ever after," instead leaving her audience with the deeply unsettling, and deeply intelligent, "victory" of Hellena. It is a victory that feels, in the end, very much like a challenge.

Works Cited

This analysis is based on a critical reading of the following texts. For further study, any scholarly edition is recommended.

• Behn, Aphra. The Rover (1677). Project Gutenberg.
• Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own (1929). Project Gutenberg.

Word Count: 3,413 words