Licence my roving hands, and let them go….

Hi guys.

With The Rover, I’d like to discuss one of the points which stuck with me after reading the brief introduction to the text: the reoccuring motif that “male characters have difficulty in distinguishing a ‘maid of quality’ from a harlot” within both this work and the other plays we’ve covered.

 It’s interesting to note that from the perspective of the audience, the characters in Restoration Drama are so sharply drawn that we, unlike the characters in the play, never have any doubt as to whether a woman is supposed to be a virgin or a whore. It’s always pretty clear: there’s the harlots, or girls that are overtly fun and sexual (Hellena, Margery, Angellica, Lucetta, Melantha, Doralice, Kate Wright, etc) and then the maids of quality, who by virtue of their “quality” are not (Florinda, Palmyra, Amalthea). And needless to say, never the twain shall meet. In cases where the narrative is split, the good girls are often engaged in the more serious plotline that require a suitably impleriled virgin (presumably because we care more about the welfare of nice girls than sluts). With all the bases for serious drama and moral sympathy overed, the women in the comic plot are free to flirt and jilt to their heart’s content. They give us something to keep us watching when we start making the puke face behind Leonidas and Palmyra’s back. 

In The Rover, we are meant to care deeply what happens between Florinda and Belville because these characters are morally appealing. They fight the good fight and love one another, and are bound by their circumstances to go through all sorts of unpleasant things to get together. However, it’s the Gypsy plotline with Willmore and Hellena that seems to be really interesting, both for us and for the contemporary audience which called for the popular Willmore’s return.  Despite the interest they add, the bad girls don’t have a whole lot of social capital within the context of the drama, since it’s men like Willmore or Horner that are calling the shots in the end. But it’s the harlotry of women that often moves the plot forward in ways that couldn’t be accomplished by moral virtue.

And women, of course, are usually punished for being bad. Margery gets stuck with her “musty husband” and is threatened with a penknife to the face. Angellica the courtesan is cheated on, taken advantage of, and forgotten, and Hellena (as we find out in the intro) is pillaged for her resources and conveniently dies. Even usually-good Florinda is nearly gang-raped by Blunt and Frederick when she chooses to sneak out. As a woman you’re going to receive some serious fear and retribution when you break out of your role. Horner and Willmore, however, make out fine with tons of sex and the wives they want, save some interim social embarassment.

From what I understand in, say, Alain’s blog and the comments thereon, we sort of wonder if we’re supposed to be critical of Willmore or what. We wonder exactly how we’re meant to veiw him as a character, and through the plays there’s enough shades of authorial intention and dramatic action to cause us to speculate on things like motivation, morality, desire, etc within the male cast. But with the women, not so much. They’re a harlot or a maid of quality, and we know which they are from the start. The question of their sexual/matrimonial availability simply provides a place for the men in the play to act out their own foibles and have a good (or bad) time, creating a homosocial drama without fleshing out the girls themselves.

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