Less Sexually Liberating for Women

Yesterday I wrote about Aphra Behn giving us images of women’s sexual liberation in her 1677 play The Rover.  But there is a dark undertone that differentiates the play from male-authored Restoration comedies.  Behn’s play may not be as polished as the plays of William Wycherley and George Etherege.  Her wit isn’t as rapier sharp and her plot is not as finely tuned.  But by weaving female vulnerability into the story, she gives The Rover an autumnal tone that makes interesting in its own way.

I talked in yesterday’s post about Hellena setting her sights on Willmore (based on John Wilmot) and then throwing him so off balance that, in the end, he can’t do anything else but marry her.  There is another woman who loves him, however, and her tale in more tragic.

Her name is Angellica and she is a high priced courtesan.  Her picture is placed outside her lodging, and men contend for the opportunity to make love to her.  Willmore doesn’t have any money, but by treating her as a woman rather than an angel to be worshipped, he wins her love.  Much to the distress of her handler, Angellica doesn’t charge him and even gives him money.

Unlike Hellena, however, she can’t handle his inconstancy.  Hellena knows that, to keep Willmore’s attention, she must play his game and be just as elusive.  At times, Hellena sounds like an early precursor of Helen Gurley Brown, author of Sex and the Single Girl and longtime editor of Cosmopolitan: “A man can leave a woman at fifty (though it may cost him some dough) as surely as you can leave dishes in the sink. He can leave any time before then too, and so may you leave him . . .”  Hellena realizes that as long as he can never be sure of her, he will never lose interest.

In “The Fall” John Wilmot describes the situation, albeit from a negative point of view:

But we, poor slaves to hope and fear,
    Are never of our joys secure; 
They lessen still as they draw near
    And none but dull delights endure. 

Unlike Hellena, Angellica thinks that love should be enough and then feels betrayed when her sacrifice fails to secure Willmore. Her passionate appeal to him at the end of The Rover threatens to shift the play from comedy to tragic melodrama.  In the Restoration comedies written by men, old mistresses are always being cast off without much fanfare, but in Behn’s play we see the hurt.

At the end Behn slips Angellica a consolation prize: after threatening to kill Willmore, the courtesan leaves the scene with one Antonio, vowing never to listen to her heart again, and the play returns to the principle characters.  But Angellica appears a bit like Malvolio at the end of Twelfth Night, a sour note that one can’t quite get out of one’s head, a blemish on the general pairing up and merry-making.

Nor is her disappointment the only sour note.  Like all the Restoration comedies, The Rover has a fop that everyone makes fun of.  This one is named Blunt who thinks himself a lady’s man (he’s not, as his name indicates), and we enjoy seeing him taken to the cleaners by a prostitute.  But his wounded male pride turns dangerous and, before we know it, he is on the verge of taking revenge on all women by raping Florinda, Hellena’s sister.  He may be harmless in the eyes of his male companions, and male Restoration writers often write casually about men’s brutality toward women.  (Rakes are always breaking brothel windows.) Behn, however, gives a far more disturbing woman’s perspective.

Behn wanted to show her rakish society that women could be just as hip as men.  To do so, she had to downplay their vulnerability.  But this vulnerability found its way into her play nonetheless, yielding a plot that my women students find far more authentic than those of the male playwrights.

One other note:  In addition to being indebted to John Wilmot for her vision of female sexual freedom, Behn finds support in Shakespeare.  Hellena owes a lot to Viola in Twelfth Night, who also goes after what she wants.  Hellena, like Viola, dresses like a man at one point, and both plays are set in carnival time, when people could break free of traditional gender roles (think Mardi Gras).  Twelfth Night has, as a subtitle, “What You Will,” and of course “Willmore” is all about doing whatever he wills.  The instances of Shakespeare’s emancipatory power seem endless.