The Price of Love: Aphra Behn, Prostitution, and the Dowry in The Rover :
1. Angellica's View on Financial Negotiations Before Marriage :
Angellica Bianca, the celebrated courtesan in Aphra Behn’s The Rover, delivers one of the play's most radical social critiques by arguing that the financial transactions surrounding marriage are no better than her own profession. For a modern reader, this comparison is startlingly apt, exposing the hypocrisy at the heart of 17th-century society.
The Explicit Commercial Exchange
The core of Angellica’s view rests on the financial reality of both "respectable" marriage and prostitution.
Angellica’s Trade is Honest: As a courtesan, her service is a clear, open commercial transaction. She names a price for her time and affection. She is buying her own freedom and security, and her patrons know exactly what they are paying for.
Marriage is a Hidden Trade: For an aristocratic or gentlewoman, marriage was cloaked in romance and duty, but the true driver was the dowry or "portion." This was a large sum of money or property her family paid the groom's family. A man married not just a woman, but a fortune and the social/economic security it provided. The bride was the package that came with the wealth.
In Angellica's eyes, the only difference is that she is explicit about the financial exchange, while marriage tries to maintain a respectable façade over the same exchange of money for a woman’s body, service, and companionship.
The Shared Lack of Agency
The comparison is further cemented by the fact that neither the courtesan nor the respectable bride often had true personal agency.
Commodities, Not People: Both women function as valuable commodities to be bought and sold by men. Angellica is purchased by her clients, but a gentlewoman like Florinda is effectively bartered by her brother for the highest family advantage.
Choice as an Illusion: The gentlewoman’s choice in marriage was often heavily constrained by family ambition and the size of the dowry she possessed. Angellica might choose her clients, but her ability to earn money and therefore her survival is still dependent on men's desire.
Ultimately, Angellica's critique forces the audience to confront the uncomfortable truth: if a woman's value is defined by the wealth she brings or the price she commands, the difference between the wife and the whore is merely a social label, not a fundamental economic distinction.
2. Virginia Woolf's Quote on Aphra Behn and The Rover
Virginia Woolf’s famous declaration in A Room of One’s Own is not a mere compliment; it is a profound historical statement about the foundations of female expression. She credits Aphra Behn with being the literary pioneer who "earned them the right to speak their minds." Examining Behn's pioneering career, and specifically her dazzling play The Rover (1677), reveals exactly why Woolf believed Behn deserved such eternal gratitude.
The Professional Achievement: Earning the Right to Speak
Woolf's point begins with Behn's sheer existence as a professional writer. Before her, women who wrote often did so privately, circulating poems or religious tracts among friends, or writing under a male pseudonym.
The First Professional: Aphra Behn was the first Englishwoman to earn her living by her pen, specifically by writing for the public stage. This required tremendous courage and skill in a male-dominated world.
A Public Voice: By succeeding as a playwright, Behn secured a platform the very public, often controversial, Restoration stage to voice her opinions, tell her stories, and critique society. This act was monumental. It provided a living, tangible proof of concept that a woman’s intellect and artistry could compete in the public marketplace. This professional triumph is the "right to speak" that Woolf refers to.
The Thematic Content: Speaking Through Her Characters
The true impact of Behn’s achievement is seen in the content of her work, particularly the rebellious and articulate women of The Rover. These characters use their voices to challenge the patriarchal structures designed to silence them.
1. Rejecting the Cloister and the Cage
Behn’s aristocratic heroines, Hellena and Florinda, refuse to be passive objects of exchange:
Hellena’s Desire for Agency: Destined for a nunnery, Hellena explicitly rejects a "voiceless life." She doesn't just want a husband; she wants adventure, experience, and choice. Her line, "to see the world a little, before I vow myself to that dunghill, the cloister," is a powerful statement for female self-determination. She insists on choosing her own fate, rather than having it dictated by her brother.
Florinda’s Right to Love: Florinda is nearly destroyed by her brother’s attempts to force her into a financially advantageous marriage against her will. She embodies the woman who insists on choosing her own husband based on love and personal loyalty (Belvile), asserting her heart’s desire over her family’s economic greed.
2. Confronting Hypocrisy with Unflinching Honesty
The courtesan Angellica Bianca is Behn’s sharpest mouthpiece for social critique. As detailed earlier, she openly compares the financial negotiations of marriage (the dowry system) to prostitution.
This character gives voice to the economic realities that trap all women, regardless of their social standing. Angellica's bold, explicit critique of male hypocrisy and the "respectable" nature of buying a wife is an example of the kind of frank, analytical perspective that Behn earned women the right to express.
3. Challenging Sexual Double Standards
Perhaps most significantly, Behn’s characters discuss sex, desire, and freedom with a frankness usually reserved only for male characters. They are not simply victims of passion; they are active agents in their romantic and sexual pursuits. By allowing them to participate in the witty, cynical, and libertine conversations of the Restoration era, Behn challenged the notion that women should be silent, chaste, and ignorant of desire.
This was an unprecedented shift in content. Behn effectively broke the first ground, creating a space for female writers to address taboo subjects and assert a nuanced, complex womanhood the very foundation upon which all future female writers, including Woolf herself, would build.
The "flowers" Woolf speaks of are the respect, recognition, and freedom that Aphra Behn, through her sheer audacity and talent, cultivated for all women who wished to write and "speak their minds" in the public square.
conclusion :
In conclusion, Aphra Behn’s The Rover stands as a pioneering work that questions the moral, social, and gender hierarchies of the seventeenth century. Through Angellica Bianca, Behn exposes the hypocrisy of a world that condemns prostitution but glorifies marriage both grounded in economic exchange and the commodification of women. Her fearless portrayal of female desire and agency challenges patriarchal norms and gives voice to women’s lived realities.
It is in this spirit that Virginia Woolf’s words in A Room of One’s Own ring true: Aphra Behn indeed “earned women the right to speak their minds.” Behn’s courage to write publicly, to critique societal hypocrisy, and to center women’s experiences in her plays paved the way for generations of female writers. The Rover is not merely a comedy of love and disguise it is a declaration of intellectual and emotional independence, marking Aphra Behn as a true trailblazer in women’s literary history.
Work citation :
The Rover (play) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rover_(play)
Behn, Aphra. The Rover; or, The Banish'd Cavaliers. Edited by Anne Russell, Broadview Press, 1995.
Aphra Behn https://share.google/mbeETHpRrVRH3Kfr0
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