The Rover Aphra Ben

The Rover, published and first produced in 1677, was Aphra Behn's most successful play. The original full title, The Rover, or The Banish 'd Cavaliers, indicates that the play was a tribute to the formerly exiled cavalier and newly reinstated king, Charles II. The Rover is a dark comedy that mixes themes of prostitution and rape with comic buffoonery. The play expresses its author's objections to the vulnerability of women in Restoration society. Perhaps ironically, it also appeals to the prurient interests of the audience by putting women in morally compromising situations. Based loosely on her contemporary Thomas Killigrew's 1564 Thomaso, or The Wanderer (1664), Behn's play is leaner, less lewd, and more profound. The plot follows the fortunes of opposing lovers, one a woman of quality masquerading as a courtesan and one a wandering rake whose philandering days end when he falls in love with her. Several near-rapes and the tragic case of a jilted courtesan, another character in the play, balance the comic treatment of sexual politics in the seventeenth century. The rover of the title is either Willmore, an exiled English sea captain on shore leave to enjoy the carnival, or Hellena, a young woman hoping to experience life and love before being committed to a convent by her brother. These two rovers meet and fall in love amid witty debates and sexual maneuvering. Willmore has many parallels to Charles II, whose exploits during his twenty-year banishment from England were well known. Charles II enjoyed the play so much that he commissioned a private viewing of it.

Aphra Behns The Rover is an interesting and humorous play that has a major focus on the female characters. A number of female characters have prominent roles and are portrayed as strong and independent. In the first act, Hellena can be regarded as an individual who strives for what she wants. She is able to convince Florinda to go to a Masquerade. Throughout the play her character continues to develop with clear motives and personal goals. For example, Hellena pursues Willmore. This is a quality that is usually attributed to a man. The man is typically seen as the pursuer. By the end of the play, Hellena is able to convince Willmore to marry her despite his initial hesitation. This again shows strength and determination in this female character. Angellica is another female character who initially and innocently accepts what she is told but after being betrayed, she takes initiative and seeks revenge on Willmore. She wants to keep a close eye on Willmore and in Act III Scence 1 she instructs Sebastian to follow the woman she saw with Willmore. Later, in Act V Scene 1 she comes close to killing him for being unfaithful. This demonstrates that Angellica is not content simply with being a victim but instead stands up for herself by confronting Willmore in a violent manner. Lucetta also is a female who demonstrates independence and wit. In Act III Scene 2 she is able to trick Blunt into believing that she will have sexual relations with him but instead robs him and leaves him without the majority of his clothes. Throughout the play it is evident that not all the females are victims. In Act III Scene V, Florinda is almost forced by Willmore to engage in sexual relations with him against her will but it does not happen because Belvile and Frederick arrive in time to stop Willmore. Another time Blunt and Frederick almost sexually abuse Florida because they thought that she was a harlot but they decide to wait for Belvile when they discover that she knows him and offers Blunt a ring. The play had

many humorous moments especially when the men had their plans interrupted or frustrated. The play outlined a general standard for treatment of women by men. If a woman was perceived to have character or position, she was treated with respect and dignity. However, if a woman was perceived as less respectable or a harlot, the men felt they were free to treat her any way they wanted. In Act V, it is astonishing to see how quickly Frederick and Blunt ask Florinda forgiveness for their actions when they discovered she is Beviles betrothed.

Patriarchy in Aphra Behns The Rover In her play The Rover, Aphra Behn uses the treatment of women to suggest the presence of a strong patriarchic society and what harm can become of it. The main female character Florinda is manipulated, used, and treated horribly by men in instances of near-rape, battering and beating, and foul language among other things. Behn also uses Willmore, one of the main male characters, and his attitude towards women to prove her point. By doing this, Behn is suggesting patriarchy is dangerous for women, and their lack of fighting against it presupposes what can happen to women over time if this strong patriarchic society is allowed to flourish. In act three, Florinda is almost raped by a drunken Willmore. He doesnt know who she is, he thinks shes just, A female! By this light, a woman! Im a dog if it be not a very wench (III.v.16 17). This shows that he only sees her as a sex object. He then tries to take advantage of her. As she puts up a struggle, he says, Come, come, take it or Ill put it up againWhy, how now, mistress, are you so high ith mouth a pistole wont down with you? ...Come, no struggling to be goneIm for ye (III.v.67 72), trying to force her into submission. In another instance in act four, the same thing nearly happens again to Florinda when she ventures into Blunts house. Blunt has been tricked by another woman and decides to take his revenge out on that woman by sleeping with Florinda. He gets very physical with her and Florinda protests with, Dare you be so cruel? (IV.v.51). Blunt replies with this heartless speech: Cruel? ...as a galley slave, or a Spanish whoreI will kiss and beat thee all over, kiss and see thee all over; thou shalt lie with me too, not that I care for the enjoyment, but to let thee see I have taen deliberated malice to thee, and will be revenged on one whore for the sins of another (IV.v.53 57), indicating that he only sees her as a thing, rather than a person. These instances of how horribly Florinda is treated show how Behn thinks women are seen and even treated in the patriarchic society. Florinda, and all women, appear as just playthings to be used as one wishes. Willmore is the prime example of how horribly women are treated in this play. He nearly rapes Florinda, he attempts to seduce Hellena upon first meeting, he sleeps with Angellica after hes made a vow of love to Hellena, and he makes sexual comments to just about every woman he encounters. Behn also uses him to show how easily women are manipulated by men. Women are only sex objects to Willmore. When he and Hellena meet again at the end of the play, Willmore convinces her that he is trustworthy. Then he launches off into trying to persuade her to sleep with him again, just as he did when he first met her: Therefore, dear creature, since we are so well agreed, lets retire to my chamber; and if ever thou wert treated with such savory love! Come, my beds prepared for such a guest all clean and sweet as thy fair self (V.i.430 434); however, she wants them to be married first. With what appears to be out of disparity, he agrees. Willmore is only concerned with sex. As he says, his bed is already prepared for the deed! Manipulating women and using them to fulfill his selfish sexual desires is his only purpose in this play. By titling this work after him for he was a rover Behn places the emphasis on him and the way he treats women. Having him treat women as he does, suggests the society is largely patriarchic and causes women to suffer just as the women in this play did. The women who are suffering dont put up very strong fights against the male domination in this play. For example, during the scene where Blunt is trying to sleep with Florinda as revenge against another woman, Florinda doesnt argue with him very much or put up a strong fight. She merely says things like, must I be sacrificed for the crimes of the most infamous of my sex? (IV.v.63 64) and I think he will not, dares not be so barbarous (IV.v.88). She even mentions that her love Belvile will not like Blunt taking advantage of her as he plans. She doesnt struggle against him or anything; instead

she basically hands herself over to him when she says, if you find me not worth Belviles care, use me as you please (IV.v.125 126). There is no fight in her whatsoever. Hellena also gives in quickly to Willmores persuasion in act five, suggesting that women fall victim to men too easily.One might argue that because Florinda ended up happily marrying Belvile, and Hellena ended up marrying Willmore, Behn is not taking a stab at patriarchy in society. If patriarchy is so bad, why do these women end up happy at the end? Firstly, Hellena and Willmore marry not out of love, but for other reasons. Willmore only wants to marry her so he can get her into his bed faster, so he says anything that he thinks will convince her to give in. Hellena, having never been with a man before, has no one to compare Willmores manipulative and degrading personality to. She falls victim to male domination and will most likely suffer a heartless, sex-centered marriage as a result. Florinda and Belvile have to go through drastic means in order to be married. They truly love each other, or so it seems, but because of the patriarchic society, Florindas father and brother wont allow them to be married. She was treated as a prize awarded to the most eligible candidate. Here, Behn is showing how damaging the patriarchic tradition of arranged marriages can be to those involved. Even though they ended up together, they had to fight a battle to do so. By ending the play this way, Behn is saying people who love each other shouldnt have to fight to be together, thereby proving this patriarchic practice unfair. By placing an emphasis on the man who uses women as sex objects by titling her play after him; by having almost all the female characters in the play treated horribly, used, and manipulated; and having the female characters barely putting up a fight, Aphra Behn suggests the heavily patriarchic society that exists is too extensive and is dangerous for the women in it.

Aphra Behn's The Rover: Evaluating Women's Social and Sexual Options http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/268/2/aphra-behns-the-rover-evaluatingwomens-social-and-sexual-options Following the collapse of the Puritan Protectorate in 1660, the halls of court seemed to buzz with a festive attitude: Out with the old and in with the older. Cavalier revelries under Charles II regained the notoriety of their pre-Cromwellian counterparts. Britains king led his noblemen by example with a hedonistic lifestyle of parties, sex, and extravagant spending. The social and sexual freedom of this libertinism, however, did not extend to ladies. Although women might crave higher degrees of autonomy and sexual expression, their lives still fit within the boundaries of three roles: nun, prostitute, or wife. Between the categories of virgin and whore lay a void, not a spectrum; one could give the whole cargo or nothing (Behn 164). Performed in 1677, Aphra Behns play, The Rover, speaks to this double standard, which limited her female peers sexual desires to the realm of convent, brothel, or home. Set loose in the topsy-turvy world of Carnival, her characters demonstrate the active, complicated game required of women seeking to secure personal happiness. The dangers of the chase and the plays tidy conclusion, on the other hand, suggest at how ladies neither could nor should stray too far into the masculine roles of wooer and possessor. Late Stuart society, Behn seems to lament, offered no place to the sexually free, libertine woman. The fall of the Puritan Commonwealth did little to dispel the political and religious tensions that affected the early Modern British conception of womanhood. Even after the Protectorates end, Roundhead beliefs dictated the necessity for female subordination and obedience to her husband, as ordained by several Bible verses (Hughes 295). Eves role in the division of mankind from God fuelled[a cultural] conviction of the weakness and sinfulness of women (295). Thus female sexuality was perceived as a spiritual flaw to manage. Male governance of the female body, once responsible for Adams downfall, led to a Puritan masculinization of desire the creation of woman as other and as objectthat [was] crucial to a sexual

ideology that insists on the indivisibility of feminine chastity from feminine identity (Hutner 104). By appropriating sexuality, Roundhead men narrowed the confines of womens acceptable roles in society to one alone: the wife, family-oriented and sexually pure. Neither Catholic nun nor transgressive prostitute met Puritan expectations for women.

Written seventeen years after Richard Cromwell left England, The Rover responds to these vestiges of Puritan belief in English society. In her epilogue, Behn mocks the strait-laced prudishness that would turn humor into a form of sinful self-pleasure: The devils int if this [play] will please the nation / in these our blessed times of reformation (Behn 242). She disparages judgmental leaders, who damn everything that maggot disapproves, want to censor theatre, and to dull method all our sense confine (242). Her derision places under public scrutiny the validity of Puritan disapproval. If an audience member doubts the sects condemnation of one aspect of society, other frowned-upon practices might be thrown into question. Accusing the Puritan voice of restricting the audiences sense encourages the publics examination of normative understandings of the English culture, specifically in regards to gender. Royalist libertinism seemed to offer the sexual liberation for which Behn hoped to attract support. The movement romanticized the image of the wealthy court rogue as passionate womanizer and at least allowed for womens free enjoyment of sexual pleasure (Staves 21). As one scholar wryly remarked, however, the idea that late Stuart ideology created a liberating space for women is as false as a school childs notion of the jolly cavalier (Owen 15). The transition back into the loose, showy world of the monarchy merely removed the insolence of commonwealths from executive, not social, power (Behn 242). For women, both cultural expectations, influenced by Puritan beliefs, and reality problematized any desire for sexual freedom. Where the hedonistic ideology encouraged passion outside of marriage, few ladies could not support themselves without stable male support (Staves 21). Breaking from the exalted vision of the lovely maiden, young women risked public judgment and scorn, loss of reputation, disease, and pregnancyall of which would be detrimental to maintaining the libertine lifestyle from which they originated. Prostitution could achieve this sexual freedom by trading reputation for money, but such work failed to attain the devil-may-care passion associated with Charles IIs court. Behns female characters strive for independence within the limitations of the English system of courtship and marriage. In The Rover, the three leading ladies are all capable and proactive young women who exhibit the initiative and daring reserved for cavaliers (Burke 122). Over the course of the play, each takes upon herself the position of active wooer. Maidenly Hellena openly vows to do not as my wise brother imagines [for her future], but to love and to be beloved by reeling in a husband (Behn 170). Her virginal sister, Florinda, and the sexually liberated courtesan, Angellica Bianca, adopt similar goals in pursuit of passion. They are nothing like the subordinate females of Puritan propriety, but witty, competent matches for the men they meet. Through their strong personalities, Behn suggests at early British womens potential to feel and act confidently on sexual feelings, thus [demasculinizing] desire and [subverting] the construction of woman as a self-policing and passive commodity (Hutner 104).

Angellicas attempt to unite her sexuality with true love fails. She is initially immune to the general disease of [the female] sexthat of being in love (Behn 157). She can sleep with whomever she wants and has found a way around Behns observation that women need reliable male support. However, her life lacks the romantic passion of the hedonistic lifestyle. Moreover, Angellicas sexual liberation, for which lovers must pay to experience, contributes to her inability to snag Willmores long-term affection. His lust could have been satiated with her portrait since someone else would have the thousand crowns to give for the original (Behn 160). Her relegation back to courtesan shows how transgressive, premarital sex and proper marriage cannot mix. As a sexual female, Angellica has no place in world when in the throes of libertine love: she can be neither indifferent courtesan nor devoted wife. The actions and treatment of women in Aphra Behns play expose the narrow social limitations within which early Modern British women found themselves. Hellena and Florinda have the potential to explore their sexual freedom at Carnival, but they focus instead on securing financial futures with men they like. Sex may be used, as Hellena shows, as a bartering chip to obtain a promise of marriage; when loosed for a young womans pleasure, however, sexuality keeps her from happiness. Through Angellica, Hellena, and Florinda, Behn reveals that the libertine female has no place in late Stuart society. The playwrights observation comes as a wistful warning at a time when women seemed to push the limits of tradition. Actresses appearing on stage might feel they had found a career of bodily expression, but from Behns experience as a woman with male colleagues, the freedom is a faade. Women on stage faced fetishization and loss of status. Behns commentary on womens position in the late Stuart period serves to point out the double standard of libertinism in court life and the public sphere. By exposing and mocking the Puritanical and Cavalier restraints imposed on ladies, she encourages viewers to reevaluate womens limited roles in the new age. How Appropriate is it to classify The Rover as a feminist play? In order to discuss this question it is first necessary to try to define what feminism is. This is not an easy task because the term has been adopted by diverse womens groups in society to suit their own purposes, but the New Penguin English Dictionary (1980) describes feminism as the advocacy or furtherance of womens rights, interests and equality with men in political, social and economic spheres. Taking this definition as a basis for discussion then, how does the text of The Rover advocate these feminist principles? It would seem clear that Restoration theatre, although allowing a degree of sexual implicitness on stage, was also bound by the norms of social propriety. As W.R. Owens remarks in his 1996 essay Remaking the Canon: Aphra Behns The Rover, The notion that men and women had separate spheres of activity was very powerful in the seventeenth century, and it is clear that the prescription was acknowledged by many women as well as men. These separate spheres were still firmly in place during Charles IIs libertarian reign, and although a degree of sexual explicitness and bawdy language on stage were a source of titillation for the upper-class audiences, it may be argued that these freedoms were merely cosmetic as far as any notion of feminism is concerned. Behn was writing in a particular time in English history when the social austerity of Puritanism had been replaced by its antithesis, a reaction which encouraged typically masculine stereotypes represented by the rake, or The Rover in Behns version. Behns treatment of her central male character, Willmore, is sympathetic to his behaviour, or at best neutral .Willmore embodies all aspects of the Restoration stock character of the rake, a swashbuckling womanizer and drunkard with no respect for women as equals. He is a type of man held up as an ideal in the society which Charles II fostered. The rake is a remnant of earlier texts and myths from the Middle

Ages and renaissance popular fiction, and has been represented by other writers such as Cervantes in Don Quixote and Boccaccio in The Decameron. In later times Byron used the type as his hero in Don Juan, but Behn does not endow her hero with any of Don Juans saving graces, which include chivalry and a capacity for self- reflection. Whereas Don Juan is a multifaceted character, Willmore is essentially onedimensional. Behns feminist supporters have conspicuously avoided this dichotomy. Willmores attempted drunken rape of Forinda shows a masculine logic which is not rebutted convincingly by Florinda in any feminist sense. Willmores justification of rape (III, 5, 30) ends with the statement Thou are therefore as a good Christian, obliged in conscience to deny me nothing, which is the conclusion of a comic argument designed to convince Florinda to capitulate. Florindas reaction to Willmores attempted rape raises nothing more than the role Heavens! What a filthy beast this is!. Here, Behn makes no attempt to discuss the immorality of rape, which is a central problem for feminist writers, in any serious manner other than to provide Florindas stock comedic reaction. Much has been made by some critics of the role Lucetta, the low-class prostitute, who tricks Blunt by seducing him with the promise of sex, but once he is naked, drops him into a sewer instead. Heide Hunter in Revisioning the female body (as cited in Owens ,1996, p 167) claims that Lucetta has stripped him of his masculine garb, inferring a reversal of the traditional seduction (like that of Angellica Bianca by the Rover), in which the woman, as the object of desire, is seduced and abandoned. From a feminist perspective this apparent reversal of roles would seem an obvious basis for an extended argument showing how Behn mirrored the Angellica/Rover affair with the Lucetta/Blunt fiasco, but the question remains whether Behn intended this comparison to be made in terms of gender role reversal. It seems far more likely that Lucetta and Blunt simply provided a farcical sub-plot and perhaps a way of providing Behn with an inept foil to enhance her hero, Willmore. The roles played by women in The Rover are claimed by Owen to be a criticism of the oppressive restrictions paced on women (Owen 163). However, as Katherine Rogers points out in Feminism in Eighteenth-Century England, (1982, cited by Owens) Behn suggests no criticism of (Wilmores) behaviour, and rewards him with Hellena, the most desirable of women. Owen goes on to claim that the women in the play are given a striking degree of power and independence. However, it is difficult to find an example of this in the text. Florinda and Hellenas discussions of arranged marriages in Act I are reserved and non-confrontational in tone. Such muted sentiments have been a theme in literature since Euripedes wrote Medea two thousand years earlier. Behns treatment of the issue cannot be considered as revolutionary or feminist in this light, and indeed, stronger roles for women showing greater empowerment were written by Shakespeare some two generations earlier than The Rover, for example Rosalind in As You Like It. The Rover undermines the modern theatre-goers suspension of disbelief in the way in which Hellena pursues the unprincipled and overtly sexist Willmore. Indeed her attraction to the man appears nonsensical, and can only be explained in the light of the prevailing culture of the time, one in which the masculine stereotype represented by Willmore is inescapably appealing to the opposite sex. It is Hellenas slavish attraction to Willmore which negates any notions of an empowered woman. Hellena may have been single-minded in her determination to marry such a unprincipled misogynist, but this merely supports the view that Behn was writing for patriarchal, masculine tastes, rather than for a supposed feminist sub-culture. Owen claims that Behns treatment of rape is profoundly feminist (Owen 164) but is this assertion borne out in the text? Owen uses Blunts misogynistic rage as a case in point, and uses Willmores statement that a judge, were he young and vigorous, and saw those eyes of thine, would know twas they gave the first blow, the first provocation (III,5,38-39). This is of course the rapists ageold justification for the act; that it was the woman who first provoked it by her appearance and demeanor. But again, Behn does not actually comment on Blunts outburst through the vehicle of Florinda, his intended victim. Florinda merely protests in the conventional manner in which women should, by responding with dare you be so cruel? (IV, 5, 40). Does this response constitute a profoundly feminist treatment of rape? Throughout all three attempted rape scenes in the play, the men are given the bulk of the dialogue. The women merely interject. In the last rape attempt on Florinda where the assailants

include her own brother, Pedro, her final response is a single line expressing forgiveness ! (V, 1, 168). Again, it could be argued here that Behn is simply pandering to contemporary taste. There have been very few modern productions of The Rover, possibly because of the contradictions already discussed when the play is performed from a feminist perspective. The dictionary definition of feminism quoted above is certainly not satisfied by the play. However, as Owens reminds us (Owen p.175) it is supremely important to remember that The Rover was written as a comedy. In true classical style, there are no deaths and most of the major characters are paired off and happily married. Behn may also have intended to contrast the excitement of the Willmore-Hellena courtship with the dull and predicable one mirrored by Belvile and Florinda, thereby parodying the differences between a libertine, sexually explicit Reformation court and that of the recently defeated Puritans. Taken in the context of court and social life at the time, this approach to Behns work is more plausible that any feminist interpretation. The play is relatively unknown in performance, unlike Shakespeare or Ibsen, and as such it should be approached as a period-piece, using staging, costume and props from the seventeenth century in order to create an authentic representation of the original. It is only later in the career of re-discovered work that modern cultural and social interpretations should be attempted. The WPT production of 1994 is a modern interpretation with minimal staging and props. The masquerades are presented convincingly in a classical style however, which is essential in conveying the idea of a character being given more freedom of expression in a disguise. Similarly Hellenas cross-dressing affords her with a more masculine authority than she would otherwise have been capable of as herself. However, the director has attempted to introduce elements which are patently not relevant to Behns vision, nor in any way intended by her. The English cavaliers all dress as 19th century colonialists, complete white linen suits, spats and fedora hats. This is obviously a way of foregrounding the English ex-colonials collective sense of guilt. But it is superfluous and distracting here; there were no colonialist issues in Spain in the seventeenth century. England never colonized Spain or any of her neighbours. Colonialism was an issue in another world entirely, that of Asia, and not until at least a century later. By introducing such distractions, the director has forgotten that, as Owen has reminded us, The Rover is essentially a Restoration comedy, and one written by a woman. As such it does deserve a place in the feminist literary canon. It was no small achievement by Behn to have her works published and performed in seventeenth century England. For this at least, feminist writers should be thankful. The character of Hellena in Aphra Behn's The Rover could be described as outspoken, witty, and rebellious. This article will focus on Hellena's rebellious nature and explore the deeper meanings of it. We find Hellena rebelling against her brother Pedro's wishes to send her to a nunnery, against the conventional system of honor expected of 17th century women, and against the traditional roles of females in society. These three areas will be studied in depth to reveal the reasons for, and the results of, Hellena's rebellious nature. Hellena's personality is set forth almost immediately in the play when she says to Florinda, "Now hang me, if I don't love thee for that dear disobedience. I love mischief strangely...". The Rover creates a picture of a society dominated by men, and Hellena is clearly not a woman who wants to be controlled. In the first scene, we discover that the futures of Hellena and Florinda have already been determined by their father, and their brother Pedro plans to carry out his wishes. Florinda humbly submits to her brother: "Sir, I shall strive to do as shall become your sister". But the outspoken Hellena openly rebels in the face of her sister's obedience: "As becomes his sister! That is to be as resolved your way as he is his". In this way, Florinda is a foil to

Hellena because she is portrayed as the "ideal" subservient woman while Hellena is much more of a free spirit. Presumably, one of Hellena's chief concerns as a prospective nun should be chastity, but she is much more concerned with expressing her sexual desires. Pedro scolds Hellena by remarking that she is "not designed for the conversation of lovers". However, it is Hellena's conversation with Pedro that sheds light on Florinda's desire to marry Belvile. In this way, Florinda is also a parallel to Hellena because they are both being forced, by men, to suppress their desires. Hellena's rebellion against her brother and against the convent is clearly a stance against being controlled by men. This brings us to our second point regarding Hellena's rebellion against the conventional system of honor expected from the women of her time. While this is closely tied to the first area we explored, it has specific qualities that need to be examined. The ideal 17th century woman was one who ate very little, fainted easily and often, and blushed whenever she was looked at. Her code of honor was primarily influenced by her duty to obey men and to remain chaste. This code is turned on its ear early by Hellena and is exemplified when she and Willmore meet for the first time. We discover that neither is searching for a permanent relationship -- they are just looking to "get it on". Once again, we see Florinda serving as a foil to Hellena. While Florinda has been portrayed as a virtuous maid, this stands in stark contrast to the frank sexuality of Hellena. Hellena also breaks the code of honor by relying heavily on deception, specifically, by disguising herself as a man. Deception is involved throughout the play and Hellena's disguise is a means of hiding her identity and, thus, liberating her from the restrictions placed on it by a patriarchal society. The ideal woman of this period would certainly never break her code of honor by defying the authority of a male, but Hellena not only breaks the code, she proves to be an equal wit to the most outspoken man in the play -- Willmore. The third point regards the traditional role of females. This point encompasses the first two that we have looked at, but it also serves to put an exclamation point on one of the main themes of the play. With the rebellion of Hellena, Behn is resisting the double standard applied to women as well as the idealization of what a "proper" woman should be. A good place to start would be to point out that Angelica Bianca is introduced as a second foil to Hellena. This may be difficult to see at first because, as a prostitute, Angelica certainly falls outside the guidelines of an ideal or a proper woman. But on closer examination, the contrast will come to light. Angelica has vowed that "nothing but gold shall charm my heart". In declaring this, she has suppressed her natural desires in order to market herself as a prostitute. Romantic love, in the traditional sense, is not a possibility for a woman whose identity is defined and devalued as a prostitute. This is why she must attempt to cast aside the identity imposed on her when she begins to fall in love with Willmore. As long as she is locked into the stigma that goes along with prostitution, she will never be able to pursue her "natural" desires. Likewise, Florinda's natural desires are also held captive by her idealized maidenhood. By showing the limits on self-expression and sexuality in the female

identities, the "unnaturalness" of these roles are revealed, whether it be nun, maid, or prostitute. When Hellena steps out of the traditional female stereotype of her day, her contrast with the other two women comes to fruition. Instead of being jealous of finding Willmore with another woman, Hellena teaches him a lesson by matching him in wit and beating him at his own game. In this way, she stands in direct opposition with Angelica who, because of her jealousy, threatens Willmore's life. Angelica has physical beauty, but Hellena has that plus wit and humor to match Willmore's. In conclusion, we have examined how Hellena rebels against her brother and the nunnery in order to avoid being controlled. We have also seen how her rebellion against the conventional honor expected from women of her era not only liberates her from restrictions, but ultimately wins her the title character himself. And finally, we have explored how her rebellion against traditional female roles places her in contrast with the other women and yields a positive result. As the female characters push at the boundaries of identity allotted to them, we come to see that a woman's nature is not contained within a label, whether it be nun, prostitute, or maid. However, Behn does show that living "happily ever after" in a patriarchal society is not an easy task, and it is only Hellena's courage to rebel that makes it possible. Rick Huffman is a National long-haul driver who spent 20 years in the broadcasting industry before becoming a trucker. He describes the career change as, "...the best decision I ever made on one day, and the worst one I ever made on the next. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3792993