56 pages • 1 hour read
Aphra BehnThe Rover
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1677A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Masks and Costumes
The most prominent symbol in the play is the mask, which is central to the deception and mistaken identity that drives the action. For the characters in the play, when their faces and contextual identifiers are hidden, even their loved ones fail to recognize them. While the mistaken identities work to comical effect, they also comment on the nature of marriage in a world where marriage might be completely arranged or occur at the end of a very short courtship. The masks also obscure who is or is not a “person of quality,” creating further ambiguity around identity and social status. Removing one’s identity signifiers for a brief period is a way of taking off the binding social constructs that limit choice.
The masks hide the characters’ identities, but they also allow the characters to adopt new identities—and often, to speak more candidly than they can when presenting as their usual selves. The power of a new identity through disguise is used most effectively by Hellena. With her mask and costume, Hellena can speak freely to Willmore about love and sex. Willmore assumes correctly that she is a noblewoman because she is witty, but she is also mirroring back his level of frankness about an otherwise inappropriate topic. What attracts Willmore to Hellena before he sees her face is that she can match wits with him. Later, she outwits him by dressing as a page boy.
Conversely, some characters demonstrate an ability to disguise themselves without the mask. Angellica’s face is fully on display through her public portrait, but she makes her living by pretending to be the ideal lover. Willmore is far more effective in manipulating Angellica without a mask than he is at manipulating Hellena with one on. At some point in the play, each character must drop their mask—whether literal or figurative—to reveal who they are and what they really want.
Swords
In The Rover, the swords are a phallic symbol of masculinity and masculine dominance. At any conflict, the men bring out their swords, formulating masculinity as violent and frequently acting for secret personal reasons that are less noble than their official reasons. Don Antonio and Don Pedro draw and fight with Willmore over a perceived slight against Angellica after Willmore takes her picture down, but the real motivation is to mark Angellica as their territory. Later, when Don Pedro challenges Don Antonio to a duel, Don Antonio sends Belvile to fight in his place. The duel is ostensibly about Florinda’s honor and Don Antonio hiring a courtesan for a month on the day before their wedding, but the fight is really about Don Antonio claiming Angellica first.
Moreover, the connection of swords to male virility stands in as a symbolic representation of masculine violence in sex. While flirting with Hellena, Willmore says, “Faith, child, I have been bred in dangers and wear a sword that has been employed in a worse cause, than for a handsome kind woman” (18). He is bragging about how much he has used his sword, and comparing his wooing of her to a siege, which suggests that she is something to be conquered. Similarly, when the men find Florinda imprisoned in Blunt’s home, they measure their swords to determine who should be the first to rape her, once more creating a link between the sword as phallic symbol and as representative of male violence.
Throughout the play, the sword fights are largely flashy and ineffectual. The men fight, even when the supposed reasons for their fights are telling them to stop, because the underlying reason for all their swashbuckling is to prove that they are the most masculine with the best sword skills. They never really manage to solve problems, but they are sometimes able to chase the other men away from what they are guarding. The play mocks the men for their singular approach to problem-solving and domination, while the women wear disguises and creatively manipulate to actually manage to get what they want. At the play’s end, the Englishmen win their Spanish wives, accepting their victory without recognizing the female cleverness that brought success. The play suggests that for men, using swords and violence to take what they want is unnecessary, and a little more feminine finesse would go a much longer way.
The Carnivalesque
The Carnivalesque forms an important motif in the play. The setting of the play is Carnival time in Naples, or a period of wild celebration that ends with the start of Lent, which is forty days of austerity and religious devotion leading to Easter. The Carnivalesque is characterized by a world that is suddenly topsy-turvy, undermining the usual social hierarchies and conventions that regulate behavior.
In the play, the Carnivalesque is instigated by the wearing of masks and costumes, which removes identity and therefore the cues to act within social expectations. The suspension of social norms in the play allows the characters to redirect their lives, but for audiences, it highlights the absurdity of gendered standards. In the world of Carnival, the men fail to recognize and distinguish between sex workers and “women of quality,” a situation which simultaneously grants women like Hellena greater agency while also exposing them to more risks of violence and societal repercussions for rebellion. By the end of the play, the Carnival atmosphere has given way once more to more traditional arrangements, ending with a triple marriage and Angellica’s withdrawal back to her own usual business. The play’s ending suggests that, for all its subversive appeal, the Carnivalesque is ultimately short-term and limited in its effects.
