Roving Hellena:
The Portrayal of Women's Roles in Aphra Behn's The Rover
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Florinda is, as are many women in such plays (and indeed in real life), someone to whom things are done. Hellena is not. She is the instigator in every contact she makes throughout the play, and rather than being happened to, she makes things happen. She is the one who encourages Florinda and Valeria to go in masquerade to the Carnival and to "ramble" through the festival crowd unhampered by their roles as proper young ladies. Later she dresses herself as a boy to investigate and interrupt Willmore's assignation with Angellica, again passing as something she is not.
Hellena is also very concerned with appearances, but not in the traditional sense; rather than letting them be used against her, such as when the two assaults on Florinda are excused or explained by the perpetrators as stemming from her appearance at the time, she uses them to her own advantage, and decides herself which societal vizards she will wield. (It is interesting that a woman who was intended to live her life hidden behind a veil -- literally and figuratively -- makes her own habits by which she can be recognized or not and chooses her own "veil" to take instead.)
Hellena makes quite a forthright actress. Although she meets Willmore first as a gypsy, then in "antic" dress with a mask, and finally as a boy, she always makes her own wishes and desires very clear. Her approach to romance is pragmatic and practical, and the risks she takes never afford Hellena so much trouble as the much more demure Florinda's do her. In Act III, Scene i, she tells Willmore how she is willing to be friends "until time and ill luck" make them lovers, and warns him of her nature by saying she will allow "one year for love, one for indifference and one for hate; and then go hang yourself" (p. 55). Their business is the same, she points out: "Yours to cozen as many maids who will trust you, and I as many men who have faith." (pp. 55-56)
Not only does she declare her "business" the same as Willmore's, she challenges him at his business when she later discovers his relationship with Angellica. He taunts Hellena by threatening to forget her "cruelty" with the other woman; she gives back his threat by reminding Willmore that there are men just as "fine, wild, [and] inconstant" as himself. Even as she artfully mums and masques, Hellena works with the best material there is for such machination: the truth. She is playing a game, and she has grown to love both the game and the object thereof.
Hellena's relationship with Willmore is based just as much on his regard for her frank and swift intellect as on the beautiful face he sees briefly at Carnival. Their verbal sparring in Act III, Scene i, is just as compelling (if not more so) than the actual swordplay seen later in the act.
During the course of the play, Willmore shows in his interactions with Angellica and Florinda what use he has for women who cannot keep up with him. Florinda, having been mistaken in the drunken dark for a loose woman, is ambushed and has nothing but her reputation and virtue to wield as weapons against Willmore's physical onslaught, weapons which do her little good without some male swordpower to back them up. Although she tries admirably, Angellica, with her coquette's bag of tricks, is little more match for him than Florinda; her pouts and postures, which very likely achieve much with other men or against lesser rivals, do not go very far with Willmore after he meets a woman who is his complement (Angellica, to her credit, recognizes this in her speech --"All this thou'st made me know, for which I hate thee" -- in Act V, p. 116).
Hellena is bold, fearless, and, as we discover in the final act, an heiress of considerable means. She stands on her own unlike any woman in the play. It is appreciation and admiration of her roguish behavior, as well as her audacity and wit, which keeps Willmore from embarrassing her when he does see through her boy's costume; although he does let her wonder, briefly, he soon makes clear his intentions: "If it were possible I should ever be inclined to marry, it should be some kind young sinner." (IV, ii, p. 92)
The lovers Florinda and Belville are good, kind people, whose high regard for one another seems based upon good and noble things, such as beauty of form and of spirit. Hellena and Willmore admire one another for the virtues of their faults -- that is, his inconstancy arouses her passion just as her escapades inflame his.
In the end, Hellena wins her quarry by mutual admiration, group acclamation (how often does a girl defy her brother's decree by throwing her fate to a vote?) and a beautiful pair of eyes. She is on at least equal footing with Willmore, and intends to stay that way. It is not surprising that this is the kind of heroine a woman like Aphra Behn would create: one who will not let herself be subjected to the roles a male-dominated society would force upon her. Hellena stays true to herself, sets and follows her own rules of the game, and gets away with much more than any other woman -- or indeed any man -- in the play (we are, after all, more certain that Willmore will stay true to Hellena than the other way around).
If we take a moral from this play, perhaps it should be this: On an level stage, in a world which provides equal footing for everyone, a woman should be allowed to move where and how she wishes with no fear, and with no concern for how others will judge her, whether she is a lady, a whore, a professional writer, an actress, a spy... or even a rover.
A handsome woman has a great deal to do whilst her face is good.
- The Rover, Act III, Scene i
Men, some to Business, others to Pleasure take;
But every Woman is at heart a Rake.
- Alexander Pope, "Of the Characters of Women"
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