Name : Asari Bhavyang
Roll no :-4
Enrollment No:-3069206420200002
Course:-M.A (English)Sem1
Subject:-Literature of The Elizabethan &Restoration Periods
Topic:-What is Restoration comedy ? Justify The Rover as a Restoration Comedy?
Teacher Name :- Dilip Barad sir
Batch :- 2020-2022
Email :- asaribhavyang7874@gmail.com
Department :- The Department of English.
[1.] What is Restoration Comedy? Justify ‘The Rover’ as a Restoration Comedy?
Ans :-
Aphra Behn :-
Aphra Behn, a favorite of feminist literary critics, is considered to be the first woman to have made a living through her writing. There were other women writers before Behn, but few of them enjoyed financial success. Behn turned to her literary talent after the death of her husband, and she quickly proved her merit as well as her perseverance. Behn suffered from the biases of her time against women writers in general and women dramatists in particular. She was assumed by many of her contemporaries to be a prostitute; because of her connection to the theater and because at the time, women who sold their writing were seen as selling themselves. In her prefaces, Behn sometimes commented on her unique status as a woman writer and asked to be taken seriously as a writer, with equal right to freedom in what she wrote.
session video :-
Restoration comedy.
" Restoration comedy " is English comedy written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. Comedy of manners is used as a synonym of Restoration comedy. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime.
The Rover as a Restoration Comedy :-
Restoration comedy, like most other literary genres, was deeply influenced by its historical context. With the abolition of the monarchy, England entered a period of puritan repression call the Interregnum or Commonwealth led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell's rule was fraught with problems between himself and Parliament. Tensions arose over the nature of the constitution and the issue of supremacy, control of the armed forces, and debates over religious tolerance. In 1653 Cromwell dissolved Parliament, appointing himself Lord Protector. After Cromwell's death in 1658, and the failure of his son Richard's short-lived Protectorate, the army invited Charles I's son, Charles, to become King. The restoration of the exiled Charles II to the throne of England in 1660 put an end to the claustrophobic Cromwellian regime and its preoccupation with hard work, at the expense of leisure. This gave rise to an atmosphere of euphoria and a deliberate reversal of the Puritan ethic. People were determined to enjoy their newly regained luxury and there was a general spirit of Carpe Diem. King Charles II brought with him a sense of the fun and frivolity of the French court where he had resided in exile. The king had a hedonistic character - he had numerous mistresses and illegitimate children, and loved racing and gambling - which constituted a considerable influence on the art and literature of the time. When Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, the theatre companies were reopened and cast aside the Puritan restrictions of the previous eighteen years. The theatre of the time reflected the political and social changes brought by King Charles II's return to English soil. King Charles II’s most notorious mistress was Nell Gwynne, who was also one of the most famous actresses of the day. The unsentimental or "hard" comedies of John Dryden, William Wycherley, and George Etherege reflected the atmosphere at Court, and celebrated with frankness an aristocratic macho lifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. Thus, sexual promiscuity, systematic frivolity and unabashed materialism were evident characteristics of the restoration period. However, viewing the age only in terms of its Epicureanism would amount to having a rather narrow perspective of the times, as Bonamy Dobree points out in the essay ‘Restoration Comedy’. Great emphasis was, in fact, laid on taste and cultural refinement, with men from all sections of society striving to prove themselves as ‘wits’. All these features are reflected in the writings of the period, especially Restoration comedy plays, with Aphra Behn’s The Rover both conforming to the genre, as well as cleverly subverting it.
Socio- economic changes in England led to the rise of writing as a profession, with more and more writers becoming free agents, who wrote for the market. This greatly influenced their writings as the text now became a commodity, subject to criticism by the consumers, and vulnerable to being shaped by the same. In such a milieu, Aphra Behn was not only one of the first professional writers, but the earliest woman writer. Her very act of writing for money was a subversion of societal norms and expectations. In fact, it coincided with the introduction of women actors into English drama. Behn was thus a subversive entity herself, a woman operating in the world of literature, the domain of men. She exercised her wit- and made her women characters do the same- in a time when the predominant mindset decreed that women were sentimental creatures, “antagonistic to intellect”. There was a growing tendency, in theatre, to serve the interests of the audience slavishly by playing to their commodity fetish. The audience mostly consisted of market-oriented, pleasure-seeking individuals who watched plays not for contemplation, but merely for leisure. Behn, in many ways, played the same role as other playwrights, allowing the watcher to act as voyeur and serving him with a heady mix of eroticism, sex antagonism and materialism. However, what sets Behn apart is that she made sure her plays offered a critique of her times even while conforming to them. The fact that critics sometimes question Behn’s positionality while mocking the belittling of women, when she herself was ‘putting herself out there’ as a published author, only serves to throw more light on the double standard accorded to the judgement of women since times immemorial. As Shyamala A. Narayan says in ‘The Rover as a Restoration Comedy’, “The Restoration aristocrats prided themselves on their bawdy wit. The male playwrights were applauded for it, but Aphra Behn, being a woman, was vilified for it.” It is a function of the same society that refused to pay equal wages to women actresses and criticised the same when they were forced to become mistresses for fear of poverty.
The Rover submits to many Restoration comic tropes but also flouts them, primarily by setting the text within the carnival- a space characterised by licentiousness and short lived ness. This heightens the spirit of Carpe Diem- Seize the Day- and the flouting of rules in true Restoration style, but also serves to problematize behaviours as all acts can be explained away as part of the masquerade. In Florinda and Helena we have the stock figures of the aristocratic virgin and the witty heroine, respectively. Florinda is afraid to outrightly rebel against her brother and has to resort to entering the carnival to achieve her desires. She is aware of the value of her virginity and protects it to the very end to present to her beloved in marriage. The image of the youthful dame getting repulsed by a rich decrepit old man is also rather typical of the comedies of the time. The subversive aspect of Florinda’s behaviour is that she uses wanton means to achieve her ends. Florinda in the garden in a state of undress with a box of jewels in her hands is her moment of empowerment where she not only asserts that she will settle for no less than what she is ‘worth’ but also that her sexual desire, contrary to her brother’s expectations, is a force to be reckoned with.
Helena’s wit is a significant tool for setting up the battle of the wits. With her intellect, she becomes the sole match for Willmore, who despite his Casanova nature is drawn repeatedly to her. Her wilful pursuit of Willmore becomes the subversive element in this case, with her admiration for his inconstancy becoming a threat to the patriarchal notion of women as sentimental beings. Of the Rover women, Helena fares best because, although she is lustful, her power is based not in her sexuality but in her wit for adventure. It is true that both women- like many other characters in the play- return to the folds of society towards the end by seeking legitimacy from the institution of marriage. Women are almost always at the receiving end in Behn’s plays, especially since Restoration literature sought to be realistic. However, the fact that her women put up a mighty fight against restrictive norms mirrors her own sense of agency. Angellica Bianca’s romantic longings and her act of gifting her sexuality as well as money to Wilmore not only disrupts the usual transaction in the space of the courtesan’s house, but also acts as a facilitator of the general vocabulary of commerce used in the play.
Also many Restoration Comedies include a character “disappointed in love or fortune” who was written in especially to provide the extreme passion of despair . The rich prostitute Angelica Bianca, without chastity and modesty, thinks it is her privilege to seduce whomever she fancies. Behn’s radical awareness of the double standards of morality, by which men and women are enjoined to live, sounds most clearly in The Rover when Angelica points out that men effectively prostitute themselves in the marriage market when they marry a woman for her money and not for love. She tries to claim equal status with the men by using her sex as her power. Sadly, all her courtesan’s wealth cannot save Angelica from the bondage of “submissive passion” in which her true love for Willmore snares her.
Willmore, after whom the play is named, is the quintessential philandering rake, much like the model set by Charles II himself, imitated enthusiastically in many Restoration texts. However, Willmore is an alienated figure- an outsider, not tied down by any social roles- not because of deep cynicism or an active disregard for norms, but simply because of his free spirit and epicurean tendency. It can even be said that his fickleness arises from his natural attraction to charming women. Readers in more recent times may be more aware of the inappropriateness of Willmore’s behaviour, with our awareness of the feminist movement against the double standards that society uses to judge women. Yet, in order for the play to succeed, the audience must enjoy Willmore. We do not need to approve of him; in fact a critique of his licentiousness is built into the structure of the play as his chaotic sensuality almost destroys the happiness of the other characters, and does destroy Angelica. Antonio, for example, is a scheming, dishonourable two-timer who marries for money, betrays Florinda the day before her wedding and inveigles Belvile to fight his duel for him. By contrast, Willmore is neither calculating nor corrupt. He is naive. He assumes that everyone is motivated by the same indomitable, sensual Will as himself. His evil is more a blind spot than active malice. Willmore lives completely in the present tense. This frees him from the dominant motivations of greed and politics which Behn loathes in social relations. Willmore tells Don Pedro, “A Woman’s Honour is not worth guarding when she has a Mind to part with it”. By accepting Hellena at face value without her fortune and despite her warnings of intended inconstancy, Willmore roves outside the conventional Restoration fears of cuckoldry and material poverty. It is this spontaneity and honesty of spirit that Aphra Behn loved in him and which the audience must grasp at the same time that they see his shameful, dangerous sexism is unacceptable. The two rovers, Willmore and Hellena, share the same propensities; both are frank about their temperaments. Hellena’s attitude to female sexuality is as natural as that of Willmore. She has a natural urge to have a man who she likes. In fact she appropriates masculine discourse in her attempt to escape the nunnery. Willmore is undoubtedly the rakish hero, a Cavalier and flirts with women without any qualms of conscience, but it is Hellena who seems to be the real rover in the play. Behn wants to crown her with success in her revolt against the father’s decision to confine her to a life of nunnery.
Crisis in the aristocracy- of which Pedro’s character is a function- is also turned on its head by his ultimate acceptance of Florinda and Belvile’s marriage. At this point, it may be argued that the Belvile-Florinda romance itself, though very generic and typical of comedies, is problematized through the repeated attempts at the rape of Florinda, which Belvile reacts to a little too mildly, considering he has been set up the ‘knight in shining armour’. Belvile’s friends act as typical rakes by mocking his love for Florinda and claiming that women could only be used for sexual needs. Blunt initially seems to be purely a stock figure- one often found in Restoration comedies. He is an English country gentleman, rich but foolish, a ‘country bumpkin’, fooled by a wily prostitute. His attempts at projecting himself as a wit evoke much laughter from the reader. However the same character later become a mouthpiece for violent, horrific misogyny and his speech directed at Florinda where he threatens to rape her, beat her up and hang her from a window, disrupts the harmless bumpkin stereotype.
It cannot be refuted that the play ends in rather typical ways, with the prostitute returning to her trade, and the virgins being awarded with marriage- a proverbial ‘happy ending’. However, all men, women and institutions pass through the marketplace and are valued, just as the text, and even its author, is. Through the carnival, Behn gives space to her characters to explore their true natures, albeit behind masks. To quote Anand Prakash in his essay, ‘“Designing” Women Socially and Market- Wise: Glimpses of the Restoration Strategy in The Rover’, “ … Behn is not attempting in The Rover a typical Restoration comedy with fops and wits in the fray out to merely titillate us but a representation that focuses upon serious issues of freedom, identity and physicality, particularly with respect to women.”
Reference :-
- Butler, Sally. Suduiko, Aaron ed. "The Rover Summary". GradeSaver, 21 May 2015 Web. 15 February 2021.
- Fujimura, Thomas H. 1952. The Restoration Comedy of Wit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Hoyt-Disick, Gabrielle. "The Rover." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 11 Aug 2015. Web. 15 Feb 2021.
Thank you ,
Dilip Barad sir
words :-2413
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