Aphra Behn’s The Rover: A Feminist Voice in a Masculine World

This Blog is a part of Thinking Activity assigned by Megha Trivedi Ma'am regarding The Rover by Aphra Behn where I will ponder up on some questions regarding the play and answer them.

Here is the video overview of my Blog-

Q-1 Angellica considers the financial negotiations that one makes before marrying a prospective bride the same as prostitution. Do you agree?

• Aphra Behn’s The Rover explores the entangled worlds of love, desire, and economics within the Restoration period a time when marriage was often less about affection and more about financial alliance. The character of Angellica Bianca, a courtesan by profession, exposes this moral hypocrisy with sharp intelligence and emotional depth. Her assertion that financial negotiations before marriage are no different from prostitution forces us to confront the uncomfortable truth about gender, power, and economic dependence in patriarchal society.

• When Angellica charges men for her company, society labels her immoral. Yet, noblewomen like Florinda or Hellena are expected to marry wealthy men in transactions that are also financially motivated—only under the respectable name of “marriage.” Angellica’s question, therefore, strikes at the double standard: if love is bartered for money or status, how is marriage morally superior to prostitution? Behn, through Angellica, dismantles the illusion of purity surrounding socially sanctioned relationships.

• I agree with Angellica’s critique, at least in the context of her world—and, arguably, ours. Her statement does not condemn love or marriage itself, but the commodification of women within those institutions. The Restoration society that mocks courtesans for selling their bodies simultaneously treats daughters as goods to be exchanged for dowries, land, or titles. Behn’s insight was revolutionary for her time: she refused to draw an easy moral boundary between “the wife” and “the whore.” Both are bound by the same economy of male power and female dependency.

• Moreover, Angellica’s experience reveals a tragic paradox—she is punished not for selling love, but for daring to feel it genuinely. When she falls for Willmore, her emotional vulnerability becomes her undoing. This exposes how society devalues a woman’s affection once she steps outside the rules of profit and transaction.

• In essence, Angellica’s argument compels us to rethink what society calls “respectable love.” Through her, Aphra Behn exposes the economic foundations of romantic and social order, revealing how women’s choices are shaped and often constrained by money. Thus, Angellica’s comparison between marriage and prostitution is not cynical, but painfully perceptive: both, in her world, are survival strategies in a system where love itself has a price tag.

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’.

• Virginia Woolf’s famous tribute to Aphra Behn—“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”—appears in her essay A Room of One’s Own. Woolf acknowledges Behn not just as a writer, but as a revolutionary woman who claimed a voice in a world that sought to silence her. Having read The Rover, I fully agree with Woolf’s statement, for Behn’s play embodies the courage, wit, and intellect that laid the foundation for women’s self-expression in literature.

• In The Rover, Behn portrays women who are clever, desiring, and assertive—qualities that were rarely celebrated in seventeenth-century drama. Characters like Hellena and Florinda refuse to be passive subjects of patriarchal arrangements. Hellena openly defies the convent life imposed upon her, choosing instead to explore love and pleasure on her own terms. Her witty exchanges with Willmore show her not as an obedient woman, but as an equal intellectual partner in verbal and emotional play. Through Hellena, Behn gives voice to a woman who seeks not only love but also autonomy—a radical idea for her time.

• Likewise, Angellica Bianca, the courtesan, represents another form of resistance. Behn refuses to portray her as a mere fallen woman; instead, she is intelligent, articulate, and morally insightful. Her observation that marriage and prostitution both involve financial transactions highlights Behn’s sharp critique of the gendered economy of her society. Angellica’s pain and passion humanize her profession and force the audience to question their moral assumptions. In doing so, Behn gives dignity and emotional complexity to a woman whom her society would have dismissed.

• What makes Aphra Behn extraordinary is not only what she wrote but that she wrote at all. In a period when writing professionally was considered improper for women, Behn supported herself through her pen—the first Englishwoman to do so. Her boldness to enter the male-dominated world of theatre and publish her work publicly was, in itself, a feminist act. Behn’s The Rover stands as proof of her artistic brilliance and her defiance of gendered restrictions.

• Woolf’s statement, therefore, recognizes Behn’s legacy as the woman who carved a space for female voices in literature. Behn’s heroines speak, think, and desire freely; they challenge patriarchal authority with humour and intelligence. The laughter and liberation in The Rover are not mere entertainment they are Behn’s protest against the silence imposed on women.

• To agree with Woolf is to understand that every woman who writes, speaks, or claims her creative space today walks the path Aphra Behn first cleared. The Rover is not just a Restoration comedy but it is a manifesto for female expression, wit, and will. And indeed, as Woolf beautifully said, every woman who writes owes Aphra Behn a flower.

References-

Ennis, D. J. “Beyond Woolf’s ‘Falling Flowers’: Aphra Behn’s Poetry.” Women’s Writing, vol. 27, no. 2, 2020, pp. 185-203. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27303663.

Rubens, Adah. “The Rover Summary.” eNotes, eNotes.com, 2025, www.enotes.com/topics/rover.

Todd, Janet. “The First English Woman to Make a Living as a Writer Was Also a Spy.” Literary Hub, 7 August 2017, https://lithub.com/the-first-english-woman-to-make-a-living-as-a-writer-was-also-a-spy/. Accessed 26 October 2025.