Aphra Behn – Revision
The Rover (1677)
Women and the stage
 Behn was the first woman to be a professional playwright in London.
 Upon his return to the throne in 1660, Charles II not only reopened the theatres but permitted
actresses on the professional stage for the first time.
 Is Behn exploiting the new dramatic possibilities afforded by the actress? Think of how many
major parts she gives to women (Florina, Hellena, Angellica).
Masquerade
 Licenses transgression. Disguise (the “vizard”) conceals identity and so suspends hierarchies of
class and gender – as well as the dictates of morality. Rules go out the window, for good and
bad.
 See Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English
Culture and Fiction (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986).
Truth?
 Behn explores both the comic possibilities and the disturbing consequences of a world in which
there is no stable or independently verifiable truth.
 Identity gets tangled: Belville ends up fighting Pedro on Antonio’s behalf.
 But such confusion cultivates a dangerous cynicism: Blunt comes to believe that all women are
out to dupe him.
Exile
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
Belvile, Wilmore, and Frederick are exiled cavaliers – members of the gentry and aristocracy
who fought with Charles I and now find themselves penniless and in exile.
Is exile its own kind of license here? The men can do what that like. No responsibility.
The language of desire
- The language of love, or desire, is repeatedly conflated with the language of war, esp. by the
English men. (Look out for words such as “conquest”, “win/won”, “battle”).
- It is also conflated with the language of cash and commodity. Angellica to Willmore: “The pay, I
mean, is but thy love for mine. Can you give that?” (2.2)
Images, Copies, Originals
 Angellica hangs portraits outside her house to advertise her beauty and encourage custom.
Willmore, in a fit of lust, seizes one of these pictures.
 Florinda gives Belvile her miniature (3.1).
 What’s the difference between the original (i.e. the woman) and the picture? Willmore treats
Angellica’s image as something to gaze on, to be possessed and then discarded. Does he treat
the original any better?
Sexual violence
 Rape a spectre early on: Florinda falls in love with Belville after he secures her against the
“licensed lust of common soldiers” during the Siege of Pamplona (c. 1653).
 3.3: The drunken Willmore assaults Florinda, believing her to be a prostitute.
 Act 4, Scene 4: a shocking scene in which Blunt and Frederick nearly rape Florinda.
Oroonoko (1688)
Genre?
 What kind of fiction is Behn writing? Romance? A novel? Amatory fiction?
Fashioning a hero
 Behn westernizes Oroonoko in order to make him her hero – and sympathetic.
 This is achieved both through physiognomic description and also through his learning. He was
tutored by a Frenchman and further “civilized” through contact with English traders.
 Does Oroonoko represent a kind of male heroism (tied to powerful monarchy) that is in
jeopardy in Britain in the 1680s?
Space: Coramantien vs. Surinam
 Both places of love vs. honour and the deceit of the powerful.
 Coramantien: monarchical society; heroic valour.
 Surinam: idealized, primitive society (the natives) but also slavery, trade, commodity.
 Stylistic differences between the two. Surinam described in much greater detail.
Slavery: where does Behn stand?
 Behn shows brutal of slave owners; sympathizes with Oroonoko, who resists enslavement.
 BUT: the narrator (Behn?) is complicit. She helps to distract and mollify Oroonoko – as is
conveniently absent at crucial moments.
Fact and fiction
 Is Oroonooko a “true history”, as it states on its title-page? How can we distinguish between
Behn the narrator and Behn the author?
 And how does the narrator position herself in relation to Oroonoko? Think about the final lines:
“Thus died this great man, worthy of a better fate, and a more sublime wit than mine to write
his praise: yet, I hope, the reputation of my pen is considerable enough to make his glorious
name to survive all the ages, with that of the brave, the beautiful, and the constant Imoinda.”
Behn’s royalism?
Behn was a royalist, a strong supporter of the crown (what came to be called a “Tory” from the late
1670s). Both The Rover and Oroonoko show her political sympathies quite clearly – she valorizes strong,
confident men who behave nobly and show loyalty (Oroonoko, Belvile). But both texts also show the
complexity of her politics.
 In The Rover the cavaliers behave atrociously. Willmore drinks and womanizes without thought
of consequence. Frederick would be a rapist.
Behn’s feminism?
How does Behn represent women? Imoinda is shown to be loyal and submissive to the end – consents to
her death at O’s hands. Florinda and Hellena seem little troubled, at the close of Th Rover, by the
violence directed towards them.
Angellica: “inconstancy's the sin of all mankind, therefore I'm resolved that nothing but gold shall
charm my heart” (2.1); calls marriage a “mercenary crime” (2.2)
How can we square Behn’s seeming love to virile, martial masculinity with her interest in witty,
confident women? Politics vs. gender?
What is identity for Behn?