LIT103A - Paper #3

Darlene McCoy

Michael Ursell

LIT103A

14 March 2012

Early Feminist Extraordinaire, Aphra Behn

            According to Paradise Lost, John Milton’s “epic to end all epics,” women have been made of men for all time. Eve, only through Adam, has the ability to understand and communicate with God. In Milton’s time, virtually no female authors existed in high literature – there were no women to speak up for their gender, for their ability to think was so belittled that women did not even feel the need to write, and even if they decided to, common folk would not read their work over a man’s. Thus, very few female authors existed. However, with time, authors of the feminine genius sorts, such as Aphra Behn, have been inducted into the traditional British canon. Modern times, arguably less prejudiced, allow her text to be read and examined. Her play, The Rover or The Banished Cavaliers, can be read as an early feminist text, especially when contrasted with the inequality of genders present in Paradise Lost. In Paradise Lost, Adam holds power over Eve. In The Rover, Hellena, a heroine of the comedy, holds power over Willmore, a lead man interested in courting her. Adam and Eve are as they are in their Biblical setting – they are the mother and father of all creation. Willmore is a rover; Hellena a gipsy.

            In Paradise Lost, Adam’s first speech guides Eve before she says a word of her own, “But let us ever praise him, and extol / His bounty, following our delightful task / To prune these growing plants, and tend these flow’rs, / Which were it toilsome, yet with thee were sweet” (4.436-39). She replies, “O thou for whom / And from whom I was formed flesh of thy flesh, / And without whom am to no end, my guide / And head, what thou hast said is just and right.” (4.440-443). Adam’s correction of Eve before she speaks implies that she must be guided by him before she can speak. This creates a hierarchy in the text: first came God, then man, and then woman. This hierarchy places woman below man – therefore making men and women unequal in Paradise Lost. Eve’s first words are words of agreement with Adam. She does not question anything he says; she has no agency. Furthermore, Eve’s words are written by a man who assumes her voice, which further takes away from her already nonexistent agency. However, Milton’s apparent prejudice against women in his creation of Eve’s lines is not the only factor working to create gender inequality.

            In Paradise Lost’s depiction of Adam and Eve, the narrative speaker, not Eve, proclaims that God placed true authority in men, and then notes the inequality between a man and a woman: “Whence true authority in men; though both / Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed; /” (4.295-6) Adam and valor formed for contemplation (4.297); Eve and sweet attractive grace formed for softness (4.298). A valorous man is a man who can roar into battle and demonstrate his prowess, one who takes action, and in doing so, personifies courage, a characteristic worthy of praise and recognition. This attribute, and Adam, formed in order to behold the world attentively and with careful thought. Eve, on the other hand, formed with sweet attractive grace, pleasing qualities, for the reason of being soft – tender, weak, yielding – not contemplative like her counterpart, Adam. These words, used by the narrative speaker, who is genderless, demonstrates without Eve’s pro-hierarchy biased dialogue that women are not supposed to think; for they were not made to that purpose. They are instead, simply to be decoration the world of men. They are to be recognized only for their pleasing feminine qualities, not their thoughts or actions. However, this is not the last level of the text in which one may find gender inequality. Adam’s power reaches further than the voice of the narrative speaker.

            The epic form works to promote the gender inequality of Paradise Lost. An epic is a form that hails from the classical tradition. Paradise Lost is written in one meter and imitates noble deeds, as an epic does. However, traditional epic is written in heroic verse, and Milton wrote Paradise Lost in blank verse. The singularity of the meter implies that only one meter will do to describe all of space and time; there is no other way to form it. All other meters – such as heroic verse, are “barbarous” in comparison to Milton’s blank verse. Heroic verse is characteristic of classic epics, written by the Greeks and Romans, and if it is not displeasing to read or listen to, as it might not have been for Milton, considering he was a fan of poets that used heroic verse, why would he find it “barbarous” and unfit for his epic? The Greeks and Romans believed in more than one god – making them “barbarous.” Milton could not write his epic in heroic verse, knowing that it hailed from brutes who believed in pagan gods. For Milton, there is only the Christian God, and therefore only one form for his epic.

Classic epics are written about men of noble deeds, such as Odysseus. Milton is aware of this sentiment, and addresses it in the first lines of Paradise Lost, by evoking a Muse in order to “justify the ways of God to men.” (1.26). By ordering the Muse to sing of his tale that debunks pagan beliefs, he takes command of her, as a Muse is generally personified as a woman, and uses her ability to create beautiful poetry to do his bidding. Since Paradise Lost is such a literary success, it would seem that the Muse sang for him, and since the Muse has no personified retaliation in the tale of everything that ever was and will be, it can be assumed that her retaliation is not hidden, but nonexistent, because the Muse’s gender is female, and women are not supposed to question their male betters. This abusive use of the Muse, contained in the form of Paradise Lost, a tale of noble deeds, further points to the inequality of gender present in the text.

However, not all literature was as heavily prejudiced against women. The power relations between Willmore the rover and Hellena the gipsy can be read as a text to combat the inherit gender inequalities present in Paradise Lost. A rover, in the context of Aphra Behn’s play, is an exiled Englishman – a cavalier. These men were royalists in the English Civil War who supported King Charles I and his son, Charles II. When Parliament took power, they became suave pirates and saucy rogues in order to survive the onslaught of Puritan values. A gipsy – a cunning, deceitful, fortune-telling woman, was like a rover in the sense that a gipsy has no affiliation with any nation. Hellena and Willmore’s status puts them on an even playing field – for both a rover and a gipsy are of wit and cunning – their only difference is gender.

Hellena and Willmore meet during Carnival times and he begins to attempt to court her by “giving his heart” to her. After some time progression in the play, Hellena dresses in “antic different” garb, making her hard to recognize. Willmore and his friends soon enter the scene, and Willmore begins boasting about his experiences with another woman, exclaiming, “By Heaven, Cupid’s quiver has not half so many darts as her eyes! – Oh, such a bona roba! to sleep in her arms is lying in fresco, all perfumed air about me.” (191). Hellena secretly internalizes his words. Later in the play, Willmore, enticed by his friends, begins to think about Hellena again. She appears on the scene, reveals her face to him, and then accuses Willmore of seeing another woman. He defends himself, saying that the house he exited was of a man-friend. Hellena then uses Willmore’s own words against him: “And wasn’t your man friend, that had more darts in’s eyes, than Cupid carries in’s whole budget of arrows? Ah such a bona roba! to be in her arms is lying in fresco, all perfumed air about me – was this your man friend too?” (195). Willmore, who can do no more than stutter, submits to the power of Hellena’s rhetoric, and then swears “I do never to think – to see – to love – nor lie – with any but thyself.” (196). Hellena’s choice to stay hidden from Willmore in order to observe him shows her cunning thought and her agency. A woman of less cunning might lose control of her emotions and blatantly accuse Willmore of lying with another woman. A woman of less agency might not think to question Willmore’s actions at all, even if presented with evidence of betrayal. Hellena, however, goes beyond simply accusing Willmore of foul deeds; she uses his own words – the means of his power over others – in order to gain power over him. She demonstrates that she can use a man’s words as well as Willmore, if not better than he.

In the final scene of the play, Hellena and Willmore banter as they do: they use each other’s rhetoric to assert power over the other. Hellena then decides to walk away from Willmore, and finally, the rover cannot control his love for her. He stays her, and then says, “Nay, if we part so, let me die like a bird upon a bough, at the sheriff’s charge, by Heaven both the Indies shall not buy thee from me. I adore thy humor and will marry thee, and we are so of one humour, it must be a bargain – give me thy hand. – And now let the blind ones (Love and Fortune) do their worst.” (243). Willmore’s marriage proposal allows Hellena to claim victory over him. Furthermore, Willmore asserts that “love and beauty have their own ceremonies;” which implies that if Willmore is to marry, he is to marry for love and beauty – not to make another human being his property. As women became the property of the men they married in the time of The Rover, this notion of marriage for “love and beauty” is another victory for Hellena.

These ideas are quite radical for the times in which they were written. If a culture such as Aphra Behn’s held these ideas of women as property to their husbands because they are lesser than men, how is it possible that her play was a smashing success? Would not the audience members begin to question the play as soon as Hellena presents herself as a wit? The form of this play – a comedy – undermines all of Hellena’s wit and agency – for she performs her role as a joke for the common person to laugh at. Comedy began as an imitation of “lower people,” but only in the sense that what is ridiculous is part of what is ugly. After evolution into a respectable form, comedy takes away the look of personal ridicule to make its stories more universal. Therefore, audience members of a comedy would have prior knowledge that what takes place on stage is supposed to be ridiculous. In Act III, Scene I, Hellena’s [aside] is a rhetorical device aimed at getting the audience’s attention. Her [aside] lines are, “Here’s fine encouragement for me to fool on.” They are in reference to Willmore boasting of his lying with another woman. This line implies that to ponder Willmore’s actions and words would be to fool. Therefore, for Hellena, to think would be foolish. Her choice to think on the matter anyway could be found to be ridiculous by the audience; she would play into the audience’s expectations of a comedy. These lines would be especially effective as a rhetorical device for they would capture the audience’s attention by directly addressing them with knowledge they are well-aware of. Knowing that the play further emphasizes their thoughts would allow them to relate to it and further draw them into its action. While Hellena could be seen as an early feminist hero, the play’s form undermines that notion. However, the audience members would not find as much pleasure in the play if Hellena were not as witty and cunning. Her person allows them to be pleasured. Therefore, she, and her creator, Aphra Behn, are in control, and have the last laugh at curtain call.

Aphra Behn’s genius allowed her to subtly promote feminist ideas in an incredibly misogynist time. Her careful contemplation allowed her to create a feminist hero, Hellena, undermine her using the form of her work in order to make her work well-read and successful, and then allowed her to remain in control. The common audience member viewing The Rover would not have been able to discern a feminist agenda – for a feminist agenda was such a radical idea at the time that not even comedy, the container for ridiculousness, could ground such an idea. It comes as no wonder, then, that Virginia Woolf, one of the largest figures in the tradition of women in literature, commented, “All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their mind.”