Aphra Behn’s Restoration Comedy The Rover

Examine and elaborate The Rover of Aphra Behn in the context of gender and power relations.

Aphra Behn’s Restoration Comedy The Rover Or the Banish’d Cavaliers is a theatrical production of how female sexual masochism is suggested in the angelic reenactments of the erotic lyrics of Angelica Bianca’s song after being confronted with the assertive manliness of Willmore——resonating the former’s sexual involvement in the eroticization of male dominance and female submission. In the essay, “The Rape and Female Subjects”, Anita Pacheco points out that “Angellica Bianca’s loss of virginity outside the wedlock is the essential and inescapable meaning of her life.” Although a prostitute by profession, nonetheless Aphra Behn’s courtesan maiden Angellica Bianca’s chastisement of the unfortunate ; who cannot afford to pay for her favours; she stages and restages power relations through her beauty and chastity in thwarting all those misfortune. /”inconsistencies’ the sin of all mankin’ therefore I’m resolved that nothing but gold shall charm my heart”/ 

In the Angellica Bianca subplot, The Rover examines the psychology of the Spanish Mistress seeking subjectivity through provocation of the male desire——-the Petrarchan mistress adopts the profession of a harlot in part out of financial necessity. Furthermore, Angellica Bianca’s self construction as a ‘petrarchan mistress’ charts the attempt of a woman excluded from the marital marketplace to turn beauty into an alternative source of power. Angellica Bianca is the foil of Florinda and Helena—–the heroines whose rebellion against commodification of forced marriage destabilises their stance in the patriarchal hierarchy as ‘maidens of honour’.  Aristocracy and distinction of the upper class gentry women were objectified to be commodities of chastity and  champions of virginity ——-the patriarchal feminine ideals of exchange.Angellica Bianca’s beauty and her proportionately exalted price come close to recreating the physical inability of the ironically chaste petrarchan lady. The English gallants have shifted their assessments of adored beauty of the youth in Naples, establishing her popularity as a famous star heroine commodity. Angelllica Bianca connives the inn-lodgers gazing upon her glamorous portrait alludes to the female seductress in the role of paramour provoking eroticism in male as object of desire.  

Angellica Bianca’s narcissistic pleasure extinguishes her emotional and sexual impulses: Angellica will arouse desire in male but feel herself unaffected. Willmore’s theft of Angelica’s portrait reinforces the link between the prostitute;s self-blazoning and the validation of male sexual aggression. …/”a thousand crowns a month——by Heaven, as many kingdoms were too little”/ Willmore laments by the grief of financial scarcity and magre income of cavaliers; to procure the damsel; later sardonically blasphemes the fetishized objects of desire—the portrait of Angellica Bianca.  /”a plague of this poverty of which i never complained before; but when it hinders my approach to beauty which virtue could not purchase”/. Nevertheless Willmore and his banished cavaliers were heroic and chivalrous in performing their service with servitude an d rectitude to the glory of sufferings with “the best of men and kings”. Willmore’s theft of the portrait is symbolic of aggressive assertion of manliness in a diminishing context provokes a feud with Antonio which escalates in a large standing political rivals ———from which the English emerge bloodied but victorious, claiming the ownership of the portrait by “conquest”.