"The Perils of Florinda": Aphra Behn, Rape, and the Subversion of Libertinism in the Rover, Part I (1996)

Critics agree that the plays of Aphra Behn illustrate female empowerment, the victory of witty, free spoken women who force males acknowledge their essential importance and value, apart from sex, money, and social convenience.1 Surely that seems true of her best-known play Rover. At the play's conclusion we find the accommodation and socialization of male desire in marriage. Hellena wittily lures Rover, Willmore, into marriage on her terms, and although he professes reluctance (very much in the manner of Shakespeare's Benedict), he is obviously well pleased with his bargain. Both Hellena and Florinda, the ostensible heroines of Rover, I, need control their lives, live free - and this is in line with Behn's feminism overall. Yet it is possible see in Rover a contradictory suggestion: that female empowerment is highly problematic. issue is complex, and I do not disagree with Cheri Davis Langdell's suggestion that Behn is the first feminist writer, and one conscious politically and sexually of the potentially revolutionary or subversive character of a woman's act of contributing literary tradition not intrinsically her own,2 but I see in the play a serious reservation concerning the power of women gain real freedom and autonomy. One may indeed conclude at the conclusion of Rover that Behn's desire for a perfect freedom for women is more of a wishfulfillment man a genuine possibility. fate of her central female characters, Hellena, Florinda, and Angellica Bianca, in Rover is highly ambiguous, and for Hellena, far from assured.Although she was allied with the Tory playwrights and a royalist, I see Behn in Rover as challenging the politically correct libertinism seemingly applauded in such plays of the period as Man of Mode and Country Wife. Frederick M. Link says: The tone of the play is set by Willmore; his gaiety and rather amoral attitude toward life make him the very type of the Restoration gallant. He is for any adventure and any beautiful woman, so long as the adventure is not dishonorable and the woman not set on marriage.3 In his introduction Rover, Bill Naissmith sees that Willmore is an ambiguous character, yet asserts that he is Behn's articulate spokesman for free and uninhibited love - with which she is clearly in sympathy in Rover as elsewhere in her writing.5 I think, however, that Behn is too good a playwright subscribe uncritically this facile doctrine of free love. In Rover she shows the glamour of libertinism (embodied most fully in Willmore) as a purposeful mask, concealing the dangerous, aggressive impulses that generate deceit. Here Behn completely alters her source, Killigrew's Thomoso, where Killigrew's primary objective, as Jones De Ritter notes in an excellent article, is to provide general uncritical approval for the title character.5 Behn's challenge is covert; she must in Rover validate the idea of the Cavalier, but at the same time indicate the serious problems implicit in such a code of male behavior. As Joseph Musser observes, neither Behn nor her audience could have considered the play very radical or revolutionary,6 and yet, the implications of Willmore's actions provide a subtle criticism of the libertine mentality. Behn draws a careful distinction between Belvile, the cavalier as true gentleman, the man of refined sensibility, who can feel real love and commitment Florinda, and Willmore, the extravagant rake whose reckless frivolity reveals the aggressive, destructive tendencies that Behn wishes highlight.7 Although Belvile may represent the Cavalier at his best, the tide character, Willmore, is of course at the center of the play and of her criticism.I focus in this paper on two remarkable scenes in Rover, Part I. Both dramatize an attempted rape. Bom scenes are long and are emphasized in the text. I cannot say the scenes are unique Behn; they are found, somewhat differently presented, in her source, Killigrew's Thomoso. …