The Rover Part I (1677) Written by a “Person of Quality”: Aphra Behn

Abstract

[eng] There is one female playwright of the Restoration period whose work continues to be performed throughout the world. Albeit silenced during the 18th and 19th centuries because of a style of writing not in line with the Romantic and Victorian sensibilities, she was rescued from obscurity in the early 20th century by Virginia Woolf who proclaimed that “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 minds.” This analysis discusses one of her plays: The Rover, the medium through which, using the language of sarcasm and humor, Behn gave agency to her female characters at the end of the 17th century. In doing so, she gave visibility and voice to the female resistance against male dominance. Aphra Behn has passed the baton, in spite of a two-hundred-year hiatus, to the female resistance movements of the 20th century and now globally, in the 21st century, to the #MeToo movement. These are women who, despite having been given ownership of their own voices still face the challenges of abuse of masculinity, and patriarchal dominance.