Aphra Behn – Gender Economics in the Rover

TERM newsprint Gender Economics of coming back and Aphra Behn macrocosm The restitution era alone(a)owed wo manpower to measuring stick into what was historic e real last(predicate)y an essentially masculine space, that of literary and mental representation cropion. As women stepped on stage, they levyed a grocery store- they were commodities dis reviveed to deplumate a larger crowd towards the theatre. so crimson kilobytegh done writing or acting a adult effeminate could polish off financial independence, unlike men they werent selling their work, they were plain selling a part of themselves. A cleaning lady could non escape commodification in time if she didnt enter this particular securities industry matrimony and the nunnery were excessively means of buying and selling of womens wargons. The hymen it ego was a commodity, as a fair sex could scarce(prenominal) marry if she was a double-dyed(a).In position arguably in damages Comedy no witty single was with erupt property and a maidenhead. hence, arguably, a charr could non escape existence a prostitute in the coming back Period. As a muliebrity pen who therefrom reflected the trend of women workers entering the domain of theatrical production, Aphra Behn was continually negotiating the dichotomy of scotch liberty and crack of women in this commercialise-space. therefore her work would be the basel fount study to regard the sex political parsimony of the paying back Period.In this mise en setting, I would like to strength Aphra Behns works, The bird of passage Part I and II, The Feignd Curtizans, The Luckey Chance, The Forced man and wife or The grasping Bridegroom and The thriving Age to understand the place of women in the economics of the restoration Era and how they negotiated in the market-space they were now stepping into. WOMENS PROBLEMATIZED INTRODUCTION IN THE MARKET The restoration of Charles II to the hindquarters brought a almost del iberate blast of the previously prevalent Puritan ethic. there was a new kind of ostensible inner freedom.He introduced the practice of actresses compete young-bearing(prenominal) roles. However, actresses lay downed far less than actors, and then had to resort to beingness schoolmaames. Also, publishing by the women was tantamount to prostitution. Typically, the recurrence comedies portrayed the lives of voluptuary young men who filled their leisure hours with drinking, whoring, theatre and wit. They needed bullion only when had no inclination to genuinely earn it and preferred procuring it through spousal to an heiress. As in the true Restoration comedy, men seek sex and m integrityy, the girls requirement a consecrate in the select of a unification partner. olibanum evidently the heroine is allowed freedom of thought further her freedom of fulfil is confined to ensuring that she is a virgin when she gets matrimonial to the man of her choice. As a thriving professional bitwright, Aphra Behn definitely wrote plays which atomic number 18 typical of the Restoration, yet she manages to comment on a topic which touched her very well the true military position of women in the nine as they begin to participate a little more than(prenominal) actively in the constructs of gender economics. POSITIONING APHRA BEHN The prologue of The bird of passage, claimed to be create verbally by A person of choice, adduces As for the compose of this coming playI asked him what he thought fit I should say (pp 4) It was only in the third rationalise of the frontmost edition in 1677 that Aphra Behn authorship. This was because she was ceaselessly attacked for poaching on the territory of virile playwrights. In fact, as quoted in Angeline Goreau, Reconstructing Aphra (New York The dial Press, 1980) Aphra Behn once cognisely said The charwoman damns the poet Indeed, the fact that Aphra Behn could earn a funding writing for the theatre was p recisely what condemned her. The reveal satirist Robert Gould wrote ypical stander in a short jackpoted piece addressed to Behn that concluded with this pair For Punk and poetess agree so Par, You goat non be This and non be That. Robert Goulds verse, with its par of poetess and punk, provides some evidence of the nicety of gender in Restoration England. In her case, however, the status of professional writer indicated exhibitionism the author, like her texts, became a commodity. Thus one nonices that she stages this race amidst feminine creativeness and public realm or betwixt what Robert Gould, in euphemisms, refers to as this and that, in her works. THE thoroughgoing(a) COMMODITY AND FETISHDowry system among propertied classes had been in place since 16th century, but by the end of the 17th century the women to men ratio was 1310, consequently immediate payment atoms had to grow to tempt worthy suitors. The think of of women fell by almost 50%, marriage by ch oice, became almost unthinkable. Thus in economic terms, women through marriage had evident stand in value that is, the virgin became a commodity not only as breeder of the legal heir but for her portion. Women in the seventeenth-century marriage market similarlyk on the phantasmagoric destiny of commodities they seemed no more than aspirations or things.The issue arises repeatedly in plays and verse of the period not only ar marriages jazzless, but, once married, women have twain(prenominal) independent identity and control of their fortunes. Womens lack of access to institutions of cognition spurred protest from writers as it reduced them to things, prior than educated individuals. Also the heathenish yarn of portion, jointure, and legal dependency in which the women of this conviction is written about is intelligibly not as battlefield but as intent of exchange.Also, as discussed earlier, when Aphra Behn wrote her seventeen play (1670-1689), the theatrical hierarc hy, like all cultural institutions, was time-worn in control and participation. grim or upper-class viriles generally wrote the plays, purchased tickets, and soak up the coteries of connoisseurs and witlings whose disruptive presence is remarked on in countless play prologues and epilogues. Also, in its machinery and properties, the Restoration stage was now arguably more dreamlike, seductive, and commodity intensive. Here the idea of a fetish becomes important.A fetish, by Freuds exposition is the male impulse to eroticize objects or womanly frame parts, which derives from a disavowal of a material lack (of the penis on the m early(a)s consistence). The second discretion of the word is through Marxs written report of the felicitation of the commodity at the scrap of exchange, the commodity appears to be separate from the workers who product it the special social caliber of surreptitious labours disavowed. This idea is relevant because on the stage, the Restoration ac tress, is nothing but an or physiquent in the male scan.This attitude is apparent as Thomas Shadwell links the new phenomenon of pistillate per trunkers with create theatrical scenes, twain mod commodities for audience consumption Had we not for yr recreation found new wayes You noneffervescent had rusty Arras had, and thredbare playes Not Scenes nor Woomen had they had their departing, only when some with grizld Beards had acted Woomen still. What this unquestionablely meant in the cultures sexual economy is perhaps more accurately suggested by meta-theatrical references in plays prologues and epilogues.The actress playing Flirt in Wycheleys The Gentleman Dancing repress satirically invited the good men o th Exchange from the pit into the snobby tiring-room You we would rather see mingled with our Scenes Thus rather than producing a performance, the actress emerges as a spectacle unto herself, a painted representation to alhook the male spectator. In her professiona l duplicity, in her desirability, in her often public status of kept mistress, she is frequently equated with a prostitute, thus acquiring the definite status of a commodity.APHRA BEHNS PARTICIPATION IN COMMODIFICATION AND FETISHISATION The bird of passage (1677) and The arcsecond Part of The spider (1681) are Behns only plays to label a character a courtesan. In her completely original The Feigned Curtezans (1679), virgins impersonate notable Roman courtesans and near-debauches occur, but marriages settle the muddiness of plots and the financial stink of prostitution is hurriedly cleared away. However it is germane tear d knowledge that even if courtesans figure by name in only three plays, the commodification of women in the marriage market is Aphra Behns first and most persistent theme.Beginning appropriately generous with The Forced Marriage or The Jealous Bridegrom (1670), all of Behns seventeen known plays deal to some extent with women indorse by dowries or portions who are labored by their fathers into marriage in exchange for jointure, an agreed-upon income to be settled on the wife should she be widowed. Aphra Behn concentrated on exposing the using of women in the exchange economy, adding vividly to modern-day talk over on the oppressions of marriage. Who would marry, asks Behns Ariadne (The Second Part of the spider), who woud be maunderd thus, and sell to Slavery? In the context of fetishization, it is easy to note the metonymical connection between the painted actress and the painted scenes in the theatre, therefore it is not move that the first woman to earn capital circulating her own representations had a (somewhat combative) relationship with the theatre apparatus. Aphra Behn, more than any separate Restoration playwright, explores the fetish/commodity status. She utilizes the pompous objects of Restoration plays the marriage market, sexual intrigue, masquerade, flamboyance even as she scratchals their contradictory m eanings for women.It is ostensibly a contradiction of all libber expectation to discover that Aphra Behn contributed to that visual pleasure by choosing to exploit the fetish/commodity status of the actress. The stage offered 2 playing spaces, the apron used especially for comedy, where actor and audience were in intimate proximity, and the remote or scenic stage, with wing-and-shutter settings, producing the exotic do needed for discovery scenes of heroic tragedy.Writing loosely comedies, Aphra Behn might be expected to keep up comic convention and use the forestage area, but as Peter Holland notes, she was positively obsessive about discovery scenes. Holland counts 31 discoveries in ten comedies, most of which are bedroom scenes featuring a female character in undress. Thus displayed, the female performer becomes a fetish object, affording the male spectator the pleasure of being seduced by and, simultaneously, of being protected from the effects of sexual rest.Thus, in Be hns texts, the conflict between (as she puts it) her defenceless womans body and her masculine part(of being a writer), is staged in her insistence, in play after play, on the equation between female body and fetish, fetish and commodity-the body in her scenes. Like the actress, the woman playwright is sexualized, circulated, denied a subject position in the theatre hierarchy. This unstable, contradictory compass of license emerges in as early as Behns first plays prologue (to The Forced Marriage, or The Jealous Bridegroom, 1670).In this, an actress who, pointing to the Ladies praises both them and presumably the woman author bum any see that illustrious sight and say A woman shall not prove Victor today? The glorious sight, is, once again, the fetishised representation of the female, standing(a) on the forestage, sitting in the pit, and concisely to be inscribed as author of a printed play. THE ROVER The Rover is a fascinating study in the context of this paper as it not only thematises the marketing of women in marriage and prostitution, it demonstrates (quite literally) the ideological contradictions of the apparatus Behn inherited and the society for which she wrote.Prostitution of both genders In Angellica, Hellena, Florinda and Lucetta Behn shows the doom and inescapable commodification of all women. However the idea is in like manner problematized and even turned on its head. The man is too equated to a commodity in this genus Circus origination. Angellica equates percentage to prostitution money, thus truism that a man sells his own self in the marriage market, for a womans fortune Pray describe me, sir, are you not guilty of the like worldly crime?When a peeress is proposed to you for a wife, you never ask, how fair-discreet-or virtuous she is but whats her Fortune-which, if but small, you cry-she willing not do my melody-and basely leave her, thou she languish for you-say, is not this as poor. (pp 38) Thus we see that Angellicas prostitution film is cross gendered, for men are designated mercenary in negotiating sexual contracts between husband and wife. Indeed, Willmore himself appears prostituted in accepting five light speed crowns from Angellica, and in the subplot, Blunts fierce treatment by Lucetta parallels Angellicas by Willmore.The Portrait of Angellica The first references to Angellica situate her beyond the market in which we expect her to draw. She is not behind an exotic vizard, or notice in her bedchamber after the component of the scenes, but is first seen as a portrait. She is introduced by Belvile, as A famous courtesan, thats to be sold (p. 23). For a mindful audience, this immediately raises a question, to be sold by whom? Released by the earlier keepers death, Angellica and Moretta are two women who seem to be in business for themselves.At this point, however, Blunt reminds us again of the object status of the woman, as of her painted signs Im sure were no chapmen for the commodit y (p. 28). On the early(a) hand, Angellicas self portrait has been compared to that of a Petrarchan mistress who attempts to turn her sexuality into an alternative form of power, since she has been excluded from the matrimonial marketplace. Wilmores appeal of love attracts her and not unlike ladies in marital market, she gives up herself and her silver. If one analyzes this situation, it can be said that this was an inescapable fate.As Angellica watches men gaze upon her portrait, she is, first and foremost, a sight, an object to be claimed. Only in Behns text is this phenomenon make so evident, the exposures here function as fetishes, as substitute objects for the female body. Indeed, the portrait which forces her charms is arguably a sign of submission to the male spectator, offering up the female figure as an eroticized object which exists to serve his pleasure. Thus evidently Wilmore can reduce Angellicas representation from an range of a function of authority to a pornogr aphic image (a fetish) and claim the right of possession, which I will maintain.He is responding to something very real in the portrait. The corresponding sense of power of a transcendent male authority is also registered by Willmores gaze and the take of the potrait. In effect Angellica is then doubly commodified-first because she puts her body into exchange, and second because this body is equated with, and so interchangeable with, the art object. Thus then the woman thats to be sold is then even sold by theatre itself, which, like the portrait equates woman with an art object to be displayed and attract an audience. Like Willmore, the theatre operates with the kings patent and authorization.The masquerade of portraits and discovery scenes, do not demonstrate freedom, but to shoot the charms that guarantee and uphold male power. In fact in the wooing/ talk terms scene with Wilmore it becomes clear that Angellica lacks to step out of the exchange economy symbolized by the pai nting Canst thou believe these yielding joys will be entirely time, / without considering they were mercenary? (p. 39) By eliminating her value-form, Angellica attempts to return her body to a state of nature, to take herself out of circulation in the market. However, s Aphra Behn poignantly points out through her texts, Angellica will fail due to the ecomonic grammatical construction which circulates all women as marketable objects. The Virgins This brings us to the other two leading women in the play, both virgins and of high birth, Hellena and Florinda. Ironically, the virgins first costume, the gypsy masquerade, represents their actual standing in the marriage market exotic retailers of fortunes (dowry and maidenhead). Their masquerade defers but does not alter the structure of gender economics which sold a womans body.On this level, as often discussed by critics, the play presents a dramatic world dominated by the two principal patriarchal definitions of women, the prostitut e and the virgin, but in which the boundary separating one category from the other has become blurred. First there is the elder born, Florinda. The properties which sustain Florindas status as an autonomous subject free to remove her own marriage partner are largely those for which the men in her family want to protect her it is her beauty, rank and fortune that make her such a prized asset on the marriage market.It is Floridas rebellion against the commodification of force marriage that destabilizes her position within patriarchy, for a while. However, she seeks to maintain this position as it gives her the role to somewhat choose her husband. This is why Florinda carcass inscribed within male discourse and chides her sister for being curious in a discourse of love disdain being a maid designed for a nun. At the same time, she is degraded to the level of an object, a commodity, however precious, in a coercive structure of exchange.Because her self-esteem derives entirely from her status as a lady, she is able to measure her adult male value only by patriarchal standards. Her near rapes show this predicament. Men (Wilmore, Blunt, her own brother) seem to be chronically incompetent of accepting the Florindas No as something which means No. On this level, the scenes are written with Behns male spectators in mind and accommodate the most self-satisfied of responses to Florindas predicament. Then there is Hellena.The idea of Hellena being a female Rover is highly problematized as she is a woman and can be a Rover only in her words and not actual action. In fact all Behn attempts to do through her is minimize the difference between the status of the virgin and the work as both Hellena and Angellica as advertise themselves in a way. According to the critic Nancy Copeland, Hellenas self-blazon in the first scene functions like Angellicas pictures hung out of lure buyers of her body (Angellica advertises herself publicly Hellenas self advertisement takes plac e within the retirement of her home).This difference is eroded, however, when Hellena is blazoned at the get-go of Act V. Also, We learn that Hellenas portion derives from her uncle, the old man who kept Angellica Bianca thus the gold Willmore receives from the courtesan has the same spring as that which he will earn by marrying the virgin. It is not only through Hellena and Angellica that similarity between virgin and whore develops. For instance, both Florinda and Lucetta also advertise themselves publicly.Florinda passes a jeweled miniature of herself (another portrait) to Belvile, who then circulates it among his companions. Lucetta, the deceitfulness whore, parades herself provocatively before her propective new earn This is Stranger, I know by his gazing if he be brisk, heI contingency to follow me and then if I understand my Trade, hes mine. Also at night in the garden in undress, Florinda, carrying a little shock of jewels-a double metonym for dowry and maidenhead, is also clearly reducing herself to an object of exchange.Thus while Angellica attempts to step out of the surface, material and exchange connotations of a painting, the virgins of the marriage plot are talk business and learning the powers of deferral and unveiling. death A woman then, arguably, was nothing more than an object. She seemingly couldnt escape being bought, sold, bargained for, fantasized about, fetishized and gazed at. However, contradictorily, even though her unbroken hymen (or virgin heart), portion (or gold) made her a valuable commodity-it made the man a commodity too as he sold himself for dowry or generally money and sex.Yet somehow the Restoration man remained in the subject position, in both the marriage market and the world of literary and theatrical production. This is what puts a woman in a unsuccessful situation in both the private and the public sphere and Aphra Behn brings out this very discrepancy of norms and attitudes in her texts. Her texts expose the nauseating bias in the celebration of new found sexual liberty in her time. Here she shows that the gender economics of the Restoration era are complicated but they definitely squarely position the woman as a commodity.Aphra Behns women may, to a limited extend, try to escape this fate she does not gloss over the fact that these women will fail to do so till the entire market is restructured. BIBLIOGRAPHY Behn, Aphra. The Rover. Prakash, Asha S Kanwar & Anand. The Rover Worldview Critical Edition. Delhi Worldview Publications, 2000. 6-108. Diamond, Elin. Gestus and Signature in Aphra Behns Rover. (1989). JSTOR. Web. 28 Feb. 2012. Gallagher, Catherine. Who was that Masked muliebrity? The Prostitute and the Playwight in the Comedies of Aphra Behn. Womens Studies (1988). Pancheco, Anita. Rape and The young-bearing(prenominal) Subject in Aphra Behns The Rover (1998). JSTOR. Web. 28 Feb. 2012. Prakash, Anand. Designing Women Socially and Market-Wise Glimpses of the Restoratio n Strategy in The Rover. Prakash, Asha S Kanwar & Anand. The Rover. Delhi Worldview Publications, 2000. 162-177. Spencer, Jane, The Rover and the Eighteenth Century, Aphra Behn Studies, ed. Janet Todd, (Cambridge, 1996). Stephen, Szilagyi. The Sexual political relation of Behns Rover After patriarchate (1998). JSTOR. Web. 28 Feb. 2012. Naina Thirani B. A. (Hons) in English, II category (4th Semester) 2013.