The first scene of Aphra Behn’s The Rover is something that is familiar to us is modern day drama. Or should I say Soap Opera? The basic plot is as follows: two sisters talk about love, older sister has to choose between two men (her father’s choice of an old hairy rich guy or her brother’s stuck-up rich friend) but actually loves a third man. Just like something out of As The World Turns, the brother comes up with the brilliant idea for sister to marry his friend while Daddy is out of town. The ladies see another option: go out on the town, find the third man and tell him you love him. The difference between this play and The Bold and the Beautiful is that The Rover was first performed in the seventeenth century. It seems the audience’s need to be entertained by far-reaching plots has been around for a very long time.
So far I have made light of the play, but it’s about far more than just humour and irony. The play was written in a witty way, but by witty I mean the female author engaging in a self-mocking of pathetic, feeble and fickle womankind – this of course seen from a society dominated by men. Traditionally, women in the seventeenth century led rather sheltered lives: the younger sister in this family was “bred in a Nunnery” (inspiration for which Behn seems to have got from her own past) whereas the elder sister was brought-up to be married off in order to gain money and other assets to strengthen the family’s sphere of influence. This makes for an interesting contrast between a life of celibacy and a life of sex for money. The need for power, male power, is something that is very emblematic of the society of the day. The Rover draws attention to and mocks this male-dominated social system by showing us that women don’t fall into line, have escape plans for everything and usually find a way to get their own way in the end. Oh, how wicked we are!
