Performative space - The Rover

• The setting of carnival time in Naples in Aphra Behn’s play The Rover allows two sets of characters to explore their sexual desires in a “performative space” that grants them an unusual amount of freedom from external constraint, from public view, and from suffering the consequences of their actions. The term “performative space” refers to the way that characters on and off the stage respond to differing expectations that are associated with place and dress. The Rover explores three performative spaces: the carnival world, the theater, and London society. Carnival time is the epitome of a special performative space. Carnival goers for various reasons take advantage of the anonymity of this masked affair to engage in relationships that would otherwise be denied to them, because of their class or gender. Since the carnival represents the world turned upside down, carnival time in Naples is a time for experimenting with role reversals. 

•  During carnival time, a mood of licentiousness descends upon Naples, a city that in the seventeenth century was not known for its prudishness in the first place. Wearing costumes and masks to hide their identities, the participants are free to act on impulses they would otherwise suppress. The carnival offers a perfect opportunity for two unmarried sisters, according to critic Heidi Hutner in “Revisioning the Female Boyd,” to “ramble: to leave the house, to speak their minds, to approach men of their choice.” Going against her brother’s command that she be locked up in the house until Lent, Hellena goes to the carnival to find a man and feel “the vanity and power” of being desirable to him. Dressed as a gypsy, she acts like one, displaying her body provocatively and pretending to read Willmore’s palm, while hiding behind her mask. The freedom of carnival time lets her act upon impulses that a young lady would not normally indulge.

• For the male characters, too, carnival time gives people license to act out sexual desires. As Willmore exclaims to his fellow cavaliers, “’tis a kind of legal authorized fornication, where the men are not chid for’t, nor the women despised, as among our dull English.” They, too, wear masks to avoid being held accountable for the consequences of their dallying. Captain Willmore and his friends plan to take advantage of the sexual freedoms of young ladies in a carnival mood. The men drink, too, and drunkenness opens up a performative space that excuses swinish behavior. When Willmore blames his attempted rape of Florinda on the “influence” of the “cursed sack” he had been drinking, the others readily accept this excuse. But it is not just drink that influences Willmore: he responds to the influence of the performative space he occupies. The setting of the carnival is a catalyst that compels the characters to act compulsively. 

Behn fashioned her Hellena after Shakespeare’s Helena, not the Hellena from Thomas Killigrew’s play Thomaso; or, The Wanderer, the play she adapted. Behn replaced Killigrew’s Hellena, “an old decayed blind, out of fashion whore... that has neither teeth nor eyes,” with a young miss who knows herself to be “well shaped,” “clean-limbed,” and “sweet-breathed.” The playwright also reversed the old Hellena’s fortune so that the young noblewoman could express what Behn (and the aging prostitute) knew to be true: that “a handsome woman has a great deal to do while her face is good.” Therefore, Behn’s Hellena dons the costume and inhabits the performative space of a prostitute, pinning advertisements to her clothing to underscore her purpose, in case anyone missed it. To all eyes, Hellena is a whore. From the perspective of the viewer, the “play-acting... and reality... collapse into each other, and the boundaries of performative and essential self becomes indistinct,” as Derek Hughes explains in his work The Theatre of Aphra Behn. To Willmore, Hellena really is his “gipsie girl,” and he does not comprehend that she is a titled lady until he hears it twice.



For Hellena’s part, performance and reality have merged, for she continues the relationship as a hybrid of her gypsy persona with her identity of a mischievous nun-to-be. She has merged the two identities by enacting the gypsy part in the performative space of the carnival, and the resultant woman is equal to the challenge of taming the Rover’s wandering habits. Although, as Heidi Hutner points out, she is “brought back into the patriarchal fold,” when she requires and gets her brother’s approval, she occupies her own performative space within the marriage. In The Rover, Behn raises significant questions about the extent to which the social/sexual self truly represents the essential self. In seventeenth-century London, the traditional performative space for marriageable women was confining; even a gypsy, common prostitute, or high-priced courtesan had more freedom. Behn also,

“THE SETTING OF CARNIVAL TIME IN NAPLES IN APHRA BEHN’S PLAY THE ROVER ALLOWS TWO SETS OF CHARACTERS TO EXPLORE THEIR SEXUAL DESIRES IN A ‘PERFORMATIVE SPACE’ THAT GRANTS THEM AN UNUSUAL AMOUNT OF FREEDOM FROM EXTERNAL CONSTRAINT, FROM PUBLIC VIEW, AND FROM SUFFERING THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTIONS.”

 demonstrated that in the courtship marketplace it was often difficult to distinguish one mode of performance from the other, for the lady and the prostitute had to employ similar tactics to get by in life.

As in the carnival, within the performative space of the theater itself, it was also often difficult to distinguish between prostitute and lady of quality. The theater was the other public forum where masked prostitutes masqueraded as ladies of quality. In the theater, they could rub shoulders with women of quality, some of whom wore masks to playact as prostitutes. Thus, the audience was, in some ways, another world turned upside down. Charles II had reinstated the theater after twenty years of grim Puritan suppression, and here he wanted to celebrate his triumph over them. Many of the plays he supported legitimized his own licentious behavior by staging it for the audience to celebrate with him. His interest in theater created a new performative space for women, too, one that was both liberating and problematic. He had proclaimed through an act of Parliament that women must play women’s roles, thus inventing the career of the actress. However, by putting themselves on display in this fashion, they were instantly considered prostitutes, and the treatment they received at the hands of gentlemen at the back door of the theater usually succeeded in transforming them into such. Meanwhile, in the audience, prostitutes wearing masks were easily confused with ladies of quality, also wearing masks. The mask lent the woman an air of mystery and sophistication that was useful to prostitutes and ladies alike. However, as Anne Russell points out in her introduction to the Broadview edition of The Rover, “the distinctions between prostitutes and ‘respectable women’ became blurred. The mask became a sign of the prostitute but a sign which, with its offer of anonymity, could offer some freedom from conventional roles for any woman who wore it.” That inveterate playgoer of the seventeenth century, Samuel Pepys, frequently observed the confusion. In one diary entry, he records his reaction to a lovely woman in a mask, saying that “one of the ladies would, and did, sit with her mask on all the play; and being exceedingly witty as ever I heard a woman, did talk most pleasantly with him; but was, I believe, a virtuous woman and of quality.... A more pleasant rencontre I never heard. But by that means lost the pleasure of the play wholly.” He was more entertained by the masked audience member than he was by the play, and it would have been difficult for him to ignore her, since the Restoration theater was lit uniformly, such that the audience was as visible as the play. Sophisticated banter and sexually provocative behavior being in fashion at this time, the theater was itself a performative space for enacting, watching, and practicing the sophisticated actions of the royal court. Prostitutes could learn to be witty, like the lady Pepys observed, and ladies could learn how to display themselves, like—and not like—prostitutes.

To a large extent, Aphra Behn produced exactly what Charles II and his audience wanted: an erotic and sophisticated entertainment. Yet, because of the social bias against female playwrights, she could not at first take credit for her achievement. She, too, was “masked,” for in her prologue she refers to the playwright as an anonymous “he,” and she refuses to identify herself as the author of her work. Nevertheless, Behn opened up a new performative space for women writers, not just as “the professional woman writer as a new fangled kind of whore,” as Catherine Gallagher claims in her essay “Who Was That Masked Woman? The Prostitute and the Playwright in the Comedies of Aphra Behn,” but as a woman writer with, like her heroine, Hellena, the wit and power to control the theatrical performative space through establishing her own ground rules. She created this space, and by doing so, she invited other female writers to populate it.




Work Citation

The Rover. (2020, April 23). Retrieved from https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/rover