This reflective blog is written as part of the Youth Festival observation activity assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. It records my experiences and interpretations of various performances and fine arts events during Bhav Gunjan 2025 — the festival of youthfulness.
Below is the official invitation card of Bhav Gunjan 2025, which set the tone for the festival’s theme — “The Resonance of Emotions.”
The event commenced as per the schedule mentioned in the official invitation card of Bhav Gunjan 2025,
Themes represented in various tableaux of Kala-yatra.
The Kala-Yatra of Bhav Gunjan 2025 was a vibrant parade of imagination and cultural expression. Each tableau became a moving canvas — alive with colors, rhythm, and emotions. The themes reflected the diversity of youth perspectives and the spirit of social awareness.
1. Operation Sindoor :
During the Kala-Yatra of Bhav Gunjan 2025, the tableau presented by College Code 12 deeply impressed me for its emotional intensity, creativity, and powerful patriotic message. The team chose to depict Operation Sindoor, a significant humanitarian and evacuation mission carried out by India, symbolizing courage, unity, and national responsibility.
The tableau began with scenes of chaos and crisis, representing Indian citizens trapped in a war-torn zone. The performers effectively used sound effects, symbolic props, and expressive body language to portray the fear and uncertainty faced by civilians during conflict. Gradually, the focus shifted to the heroic efforts of the Indian Armed Forces, showcasing their discipline, compassion, and readiness to protect every Indian life, no matter where they were.
Through rhythmic movement, patriotic songs, and powerful visuals, the performers recreated the essence of the mission — the coordination between the Indian Air Force, Navy, and Ministry of External Affairs. The tableau beautifully highlighted themes such as national unity, bravery, humanity, and the strength of collective effort.
2. swadeshi Bharat :
Among the various tableaux presented during the Bhav Gunjan Yuvak Mahotsav 2025, one that truly caught my attention was based on the theme of “Swadeshi Bharat.” Through vibrant costumes, traditional music, and artistic expressions, this tableau celebrated India’s cultural roots and the enduring message of self-reliance promoted by the Swadeshi movement. It beautifully conveyed how art can serve as a bridge between the past and the present, inspiring a renewed sense of national pride.
Through the Kala Yatra, I learned how art can be a powerful medium to express national values and collective identity. The performances and displays reflecting the theme of Swadeshi Bharat taught me that creativity is not only about aesthetics but also about preserving and promoting our cultural heritage. It deepened my understanding of how tradition and modernity can coexist harmoniously in contemporary India.
Major themes in dramatic events like One Act Play , Skit , Mime , Mono-acting.
Skit 1. Truth Behind the Curtain:
One of the most thought-provoking performances I witnessed during the Bhav Gunjan Yuvak Mahotsav 2025 was a skit staged under the Dramatic Events category. This scene reflected deeply on contemporary social and religious issues, highlighting how modern society continues to struggle with questions of faith, identity, and moral responsibility. Through powerful dialogue, expressive gestures, and symbolic staging, the performers successfully portrayed the conflicts between tradition and modern values. Watching this performance made me realize how theatre can serve as a mirror to society—encouraging reflection, dialogue, and awareness about the issues we often overlook in our daily lives.
Skit 2. Sannata :
Another remarkable performance I witnessed was the skit titled “Sannata: Silence Amidst Social Challenges.” The tableau used silence as a striking metaphor to represent the unspoken struggles and suppressed voices within society. Each performer embodied a different facet of social reality — from inequality and discrimination to emotional isolation — portraying how silence can be both a shield and a form of suffering. The minimal dialogue and expressive body language created a powerful impact, reminding the audience that sometimes silence speaks louder than words. Through this performance, I learned that art can question the complacency of society and encourage us to break the silence surrounding injustice.
Play 1 : Love Beyond Barriers
The play beautifully captured the essence of love and tragic understanding, portraying how deep emotions often collide with harsh realities. In this particular scene, the intensity between the two characters reflected the timeless theme of love struggling against fate. Their expressive dialogue, heartfelt gestures, and traditional attire added depth to the performance, blending cultural authenticity with universal emotion. The scene reminded me that love in art is not merely about romance—it is about sacrifice, misunderstanding, and the silent endurance that defines human relationships. Through this performance, I realized how theatre can translate intimate feelings into a collective experience for the audience.
Play 2 : Nyay Ki Dahad The Roar of Righteousness
The play “Nyay ki Dahad: The Roar of Righteousness” was one of the most intense and emotionally charged performances of the festival. It depicted the fight against oppression and the quest for truth in a society often silenced by power and fear. Through symbolic staging, expressive choreography, and powerful dialogues, the performers portrayed how justice is not merely a legal concept but a moral force that emerges from courage and unity. The contrast between light and darkness, and the presence of divine imagery, added depth to the narrative — suggesting that even amidst chaos, the human spirit continues to rise for what is right. This performance reminded me that art has the strength to awaken social consciousness and inspire action against injustice.
Reading the Youth Festival Stage through Dramatic and Literary Frameworks
During the Youth Festival, I observed several performances that reflected the application of dramatic theories such as realism, symbolism, and social critique. Each act used theatrical techniques—dialogue, gesture, stage design, and characterization—to communicate deeper meanings beyond entertainment, embodying the essence of dramatic expression in literature.
1. Martin Esslin’s concept of the “Theatre of the Absurd.”
This performance resonated strongly with Martin Esslin’s idea of the “Theatre of the Absurd.” The large question mark became a visual metaphor for existential uncertainty, while the minimal setting and disconnected staging captured the sense of alienation central to Absurdist thought. Through fragmented dialogue and reflective postures, the play questioned the purpose of human existence in a chaotic world—transforming the stage into a mirror of modern absurdity.
2. Aristotelian Tragedy in “A Cry for Justice”
The play “Nyay Ki Pukar” visually embodied Aristotle’s idea of tragedy. The intense expressions, divine imagery of Shiva and Kali, and symbolic gestures captured the struggle between morality and corruption. This scene reflected Aristotle’s concept of mimesis, portraying a serious moral action that evoked pity and fear. The performance led the audience through catharsis, offering emotional and moral purification as justice triumphed over injustice. Through its unity of action and moral depth, the play stood as a living example of Aristotelian tragedy on the modern stage.
The Youth Festival performances can be categorized as modern tragicomedies blending social realism, emotion, and theatrical vibrancy.
The one-act play presented at the Youth Festival can be categorized as amodern tragicomedy infused with Bollywoodish theatrical style. The performance blended moments of intense emotional suffering with humor, song, and exaggerated physical expression, reflecting both tragic and comic elements. The actors used vibrant costumes, symbolic backdrops depicting divine figures like Shiva and Kali, and expressive body movements to communicate moral and spiritual conflict, suggesting the struggle between good and evil, oppression and liberation.
The sentimental tone emerged through its portrayal of human pain, faith, and redemption, while the anti-sentimental touch appeared in its exaggerated, sometimes ironic presentation—typical of Bollywood-inspired dramatization. Rather than adhering strictly to classical structure, it emphasized spectacle, emotional engagement, and social message, aligning it with modern tragicomedy that fuses serious themes with accessible, dramatic performance for contemporary audiences.
Thus, this one-act play not only entertained but also evoked reflection on human values, making it a modern hybrid form combining tragic, comic, and popular theatrical elements.
The Lalitkala Vibhag of the Youth Festival included a diverse range of visual art forms such as cartooning, painting, collage, poster-making, and clay modelling, each reflecting creativity, imagination, and socio-cultural awareness. These art forms provided students with a platform for self-expression beyond words, translating emotions and ideas into visual symbols.
Cartooning captured social and political satire with humor and wit, while painting and collage expressed aesthetic vision and contemporary concerns through color and form. Poster-making emphasized social messages and awareness, often aligning with themes like environment, unity, and peace. Clay-modelling, on the other hand, brought out the three-dimensional creativity of participants, merging craft and concept.
Together, these activities celebrated art as a medium of communication and reflection, echoing the same humanistic and expressive spirit found in theatrical and literary performances at the festival.
I also observed beautiful Rangoli designs that showcased cultural motifs, creativity, and the celebration of traditional Indian artistry.
1.Rangoli :
The Rangoli event added a vibrant and traditional touch to the Youth Festival. Participants created intricate designs using colored powders, flowers, and natural materials, beautifully blending artistic skill with cultural symbolism. Each pattern reflected themes of harmony, celebration, and devotion, showcasing how visual art can express both creativity and Indian heritage. The vivid colors and meaningful motifs made Rangoli not just a decorative art form but also a symbol of unity and positivity within the festival’s atmosphere.
2. Collage:
The collage-making event particularly stood out for its imaginative use of cut-outs and visuals to convey strong social messages, while the rangoli designs added a traditional and festive charm, symbolizing India’s rich cultural heritage through color and pattern. Together, these artistic expressions celebrated both individuality and collective creativity.
3. Clay Modelling :
The Clay Modelling event highlighted the participants’ creativity and craftsmanship through three-dimensional art. Using clay as a medium, students shaped imaginative figures and symbolic forms that reflected both aesthetic sense and conceptual depth. Many models conveyed social messages, cultural motifs, and emotional expressions, turning simple clay into meaningful artistic statements. This event beautifully demonstrated how art, when moulded by hand and heart, can transform raw material into a reflection of thought, culture, and individuality.
4. Instant Painting :
The Instant Painting event showcased the artists’ spontaneity, imagination, and quick decision-making skills. Participants were given limited time to create paintings that captured themes ranging from nature and culture to social awareness. Despite the time constraint, the artworks reflected remarkable creativity, color harmony, and emotional expression. This event demonstrated how artistic intuition and presence of mind can come together to produce visually striking and meaningful pieces in a short span of time.
5. Cartooning:
The Cartooning event brought a touch of humor, wit, and critical observation to the Youth Festival. Participants used simple yet expressive lines to comment on social, political, and cultural realities with creativity and satire. Through exaggerated expressions and symbolic imagery, the cartoons conveyed powerful messages that made viewers both laugh and reflect. This event highlighted how art can serve as a medium of social commentary, blending entertainment with awareness in a visually engaging form.
Yuvani ka Mahotsav :-
Although I did not participate in any of the events, being an observer at the Youth Festival—‘Yuvani ka Mahotsav’—was an enriching experience. Watching the enthusiasm, creativity, and dedication of the participants gave me a deeper appreciation for the power of art, culture, and expression. Each performance and exhibit—whether dramatic, musical, or artistic—reflected the vibrant spirit and energy of youth, uniting diverse talents under one celebration. The festival truly lived up to its name, as it was not just a competition but a celebration of youthfulness, imagination, and cultural pride, leaving me inspired and proud to be part of such a creative environment.
Conclusion :
In conclusion, the Bhav Gunjan Yuvak Mahotsav 2025 was not just an event but a celebration of creativity, culture, and youthful energy. From the expressive performances in the dramatic events to the vibrant artworks in the Lalitkala Vibhag, every moment reflected the talent and imagination of young minds. Observing these diverse art forms helped me understand how deeply art connects emotion, thought, and social awareness. The festival truly embodied the spirit of “Yuvani ka Mahotsav”—a festival of youthfulness—where passion met purpose and creativity found its voice. It was an experience that inspired me to value art not only as performance but as a living expression of identity and collective spirit.
This blog is submitted to Prof. Megha Ma’am, Department of English, MKBU, as part of the M.A. English coursework. It discusses Aphra Behn’s The Rover and Virginia Woolf’s appreciation of Behn as a foundational voice in women’s writing.
1) Angellica considers the financial negotiations that one makes before marrying a prospective bride the same as prostitution. Do you agree?
Introduction :
In the history of English literature, few figures are as boldly transgressive and persistently misunderstood as Aphra Behn. Writing during the Restoration period, a time when female voices in print were met with suspicion and moral censure, Behn’s work challenged social conventions surrounding gender, sexuality, and authorship. Her most celebrated play, The Rover (1677), set against the festive backdrop of Naples during Carnival, operates as more than a Restoration comedy of manners—it is a subversive critique of patriarchal economics and an assertion of female agency in a world that commodifies women’s bodies and silences their voices.
1. Angellica Bianca and the Economics of Desire :
At the heart of The Rover lies a question that scandalized its first audiences and continues to challenge modern readers: Is there a moral difference between marriage and prostitution? Angellica Bianca, the courtesan who commands both reverence and contempt, answers in the negative. Her view collapses the apparent moral distinction between the two institutions, arguing that both are governed by the same logic of exchange—a woman’s beauty and chastity traded for a man’s wealth or protection.
Angellica’s position emerges most strikingly in her confrontation with Willmore, the play’s titular “rover,” whose libertine desires mirror the larger masculine world of conquest and consumption. When he mocks her profession and questions her virtue, Angellica defends herself passionately, revealing a moral economy of sexuality that implicates all women in the same system:
“Why must we be the only creatures made to suffer by being faithful, and you the only ones that can be false with glory?” (The Rover 2.1).
Her words articulate the double standard of moral judgment that excuses male promiscuity while condemning female agency. For Angellica, the act of selling sexual pleasure is no different in essence from the act of selling one’s hand in marriage. Both involve an economic transaction—an exchange of body or virtue for security.
In the society Behn depicts, marriage is rarely romantic. It is contractual and financial, an arrangement negotiated between men over dowries, inheritances, and alliances. As Florinda’s forced marriage plot demonstrates, women’s consent is secondary to family interests. In contrast, Angellica openly acknowledges and controls her economic dependence on men. Her profession, while socially stigmatized, gives her a degree of autonomy that married women lack. She sets her own price, chooses her clients, and speaks her mind.
Thus, Angellica’s comparison between marriage and prostitution does not glorify her trade—it exposes the hypocrisy of a patriarchal order that disguises its own forms of exploitation under the moral veneer of marriage. In this sense, she becomes the play’s most intellectually honest character. Her self-awareness contrasts sharply with the male characters’ self-deception.
2. Prostitution and Marriage as Economic Parallels
Aphra Behn constructs Angellica’s argument not as a cynical rejection of love, but as a realist acknowledgment of women’s economic condition. In the Restoration context, women were denied legal and financial independence. As critics such as Janet Todd observe, “women’s chastity was a form of capital, and their social survival depended upon guarding or selling it” (Todd 42). Behn dramatizes this truth through the figure of Angellica, who transforms her sexuality into a marketable commodity.
The parallel between marriage and prostitution becomes especially clear when Behn juxtaposes Angellica’s commodified body with Florinda’s marriage negotiations. Florinda’s brother, Don Pedro, treats her as a tradable asset, seeking to marry her to a wealthy suitor, Don Antonio, rather than allowing her to follow her heart and marry Belvile. Pedro’s words are telling:
“I’ll not be fooled out of my fortune. You shall marry as I command.” (The Rover 1.1).
Florinda’s body, like Angellica’s, is a site of economic exchange. The only difference is transparency—Angellica acknowledges the transaction; Florinda is forced into it under the guise of family honor. Behn’s satire lies in the moral inversion: society condemns Angellica for selling herself openly but blesses Florinda’s coerced marriage as virtuous.
By linking these two women’s fates, Behn implies that the institution of marriage functions as a socially sanctioned form of prostitution, legitimized through law and religion. Angellica’s critique of this moral economy aligns her with Behn’s own feminist insight—that women’s value is determined not by virtue but by their marketability within a patriarchal structure.
3.Angellica’s Tragic Awakening: Love as Loss of Power :
Angellica’s tragedy lies in her attempt to escape the economic logic that defines her existence. When she falls in love with Willmore, she momentarily abandons her self-control and ceases to think in terms of commerce. This emotional surrender, ironically, marks her downfall. Willmore’s betrayal is not merely personal—it symbolizes patriarchal society’s exploitation of female vulnerability.
In the famous scene where she confronts Willmore with a pistol, Angellica embodies both the rage and helplessness of a woman betrayed by a system that denies her emotional legitimacy. Her love, once commodified, becomes worthless in a society that views female desire as dangerous. As she laments:
“Love me! Thou canst not; thou art false.” (The Rover 4.2).
Angellica’s outburst is not the irrational jealousy of a courtesan, as some critics have argued, but the existential cry of a woman awakening to the futility of love in a market-driven world. Behn refuses to sentimentalize Angellica’s pain; instead, she uses it to expose how even love, the supposed antithesis of commerce, becomes another form of transaction when filtered through patriarchal power.
Angellica’s tragic recognition—that emotional sincerity cannot survive in a world governed by profit—turns her into one of the earliest feminist figures in English drama. She exposes the moral and economic contradictions of her society, a society that demands chastity from women but commodifies them nonetheless.
4. Aphra Behn’s Subversion of the Libertine Ideal :
Willmore, as the “rover,” personifies the Restoration libertine—a man of wit, appetite, and mobility. Yet Behn undermines this archetype through her portrayal of Angellica’s suffering. The libertine ideal, celebrated in male-authored comedies, is here turned inward and interrogated from a woman’s perspective. Behn’s gendered reversal reveals that what men call “freedom” is often another word for female dispossession.
By giving Angellica eloquent and impassioned speeches, Behn transforms her from an object of desire into a subject of moral reflection. She speaks not only for herself but for all women caught in systems of exchange and deception. In doing so, she appropriates the language of rational argument and moral philosophy, domains traditionally reserved for men.
Behn thus stages a radical act of female authorship within the play itself. Angellica’s words mirror Behn’s own defiance as a professional woman writer who must negotiate between art, commerce, and morality. Both women occupy liminal spaces—Behn between art and prostitution, Angellica between love and transaction—yet both speak their truths despite condemnation.
5. Critical Context and Feminist Reappraisal :
Modern critics such as Feminist scholars Janet Todd, Elaine Hobby, and Jacqueline Pearson have re-evaluated The Rover as a text that simultaneously reflects and critiques the gender politics of its time. Todd argues that Behn’s treatment of Angellica “anticipates later feminist discussions of sexual economics” (Todd 51), while Hobby notes that Behn “constructs her heroines not as victims but as agents negotiating within a male market” (Hobby 103).
Angellica Bianca, therefore, functions as a double symbol—both a victim of and a commentator on the patriarchal order. Through her, Behn articulates an early feminist consciousness: the recognition that economic structures shape moral discourse, and that women’s supposed virtue is often a function of male control.
Her speech acts are performative in the Butlerian sense: they constitute identity through language. By speaking openly about desire, money, and betrayal, Angellica enacts the very “right to speak” that Virginia Woolf would later celebrate. She becomes the theatrical embodiment of Woolf’s argument that female expression is itself a political act.
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2) “All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” Virginia Woolf said so in ‘A Room of One’s Own’. Do you agree with this statement? Justify your answer with reference to your reading of the play ‘The Rover’.
Aphra Behn’s Legacy and Virginia Woolf’s Feminist Inheritance
1.Virginia Woolf and the Rediscovery of Aphra Behn :
When Virginia Woolf published A Room of One’s Own in 1929, the name Aphra Behn had largely vanished from canonical literary history. Restoration comedy was dismissed as frivolous, and women playwrights were marginalized in academic syllabi. Woolf’s declaration that “all women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn” (Woolf 74) thus functions as both elegy and manifesto: an insistence that women writers must remember their intellectual ancestress. For Woolf, Behn symbolizes not simply the first professional woman writer but the moment when the female voice entered the public sphere of print and commerce.
Woolf’s central argument—that a woman needs “money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (Woolf 6)—directly echoes the economic struggle dramatized in The Rover. Behn had no inherited wealth or institutional support; like Angellica Bianca, she converted her talent into a means of survival. In the act of selling her writing, she risked the same moral condemnation that society attached to women who sold their bodies. Yet, as Woolf recognizes, Behn’s decision to earn through authorship transformed necessity into independence.
2.Authorship as a Feminist Act :
Behn’s position as a paid playwright was revolutionary. In Restoration London, the theatre was a site of both entertainment and moral anxiety. Women could appear as actresses and courtesans, but authorship required entry into the marketplace of ideas, a domain reserved for men. Behn’s ability to navigate this world made her, in Woolf’s terms, the woman who “earned [others] the right to speak.”
By publishing under her own name, Behn challenged two intertwined taboos: the prohibition against female sexuality and the prohibition against female speech. The early modern ideology of “modesty” equated silence with virtue. To speak in public was to court shame; to sell one’s words was to risk being equated with a prostitute. Behn confronted this stigma head-on, transforming writing itself into a metaphorical form of female self-possession.
In The Rover, this authorship is mirrored by Angellica’s verbal assertiveness. When she delivers her long speeches defending her profession, she effectively authors her own narrative, rewriting herself from object to subject. Her linguistic fluency is Behn’s assertion that women not only can but must control the discourses that define them.
Woolf’s admiration of Behn, therefore, rests less on literary perfection than on political precedent. “It was she who earned them the right to speak,” Woolf insists, because Behn’s entry into the literary economy shattered the conceptual link between female virtue and silence. Every later woman who wrote—Austen, the Brontës, George Eliot—stood upon the commercial and moral ground Behn had cleared.
3. Continuities of Economic Feminism :
Both Behn and Woolf understand that creative freedom depends upon economic independence. For Angellica, financial control initially grants dignity; for Behn, the sale of her plays secures survival; for Woolf, income from an inheritance ensures artistic autonomy. The triad reveals a historical continuum: from survival to profession to freedom.
Behn’s Restoration world denied women the legal ownership of property; a wife’s goods became her husband’s upon marriage. Consequently, women’s bodies and fortunes were subject to the same patriarchal exchange. By dramatizing this in The Rover, Behn lays bare the intersection of gender and capital that later feminist theory—particularly Marxist and materialist feminism—would articulate.
Woolf inherits this critique but relocates it to the intellectual sphere. In her essay, the “five hundred a year” that allows a woman to think and write is not merely money; it is symbolic capital ensuring autonomy from male patronage. Behn’s struggle to live by her pen exemplifies Woolf’s thesis decades before its articulation.
Thus, Behn’s The Rover becomes the dramatic analogue to Woolf’s prose argument: both texts expose the way economic dependence silences women, and both envision speech and authorship as acts of liberation.
4.The Language of Female Desire :
A further link between Behn and Woolf lies in their treatment of desire as discourse. Angellica Bianca’s speeches reframe female sexuality from shame to self-definition. Her eloquence transforms erotic desire into language, challenging the patriarchal dichotomy between “chaste silence” and “promiscuous speech.” Similarly, Woolf urges women to write the “truth of their own experience” (Woolf 76), including the bodily and emotional realities censored by male literary tradition.
In both writers, voice becomes synonymous with existence. Angellica’s tragedy arises when her love for Willmore silences her; she exchanges the economic language of negotiation for the sentimental language of affection, and the result is betrayal. Behn thus warns that women’s speech must be grounded in autonomy rather than dependency. Woolf, centuries later, makes the same argument: the woman writer must possess both space and sustenance to prevent her voice from being co-opted.
5.From Stage to Page: The Feminist Genealogy :
By situating Behn at the beginning of women’s literary history, Woolf constructs a genealogy of feminist authorship. The line runs from Behn’s theatrical heroines to the novelistic interiority of Austen and beyond. Behn’s insistence on women’s wit and intelligence paved the way for representations of complex female consciousness.
Moreover, Woolf’s modernist aesthetics—her concern with multiplicity, voice, and subjectivity—can be traced back to Behn’s polyphonic stage, where female characters speak from diverse social positions: the nun-in-disguise (Hellena), the virtuous gentlewoman (Florinda), and the courtesan (Angellica). Each negotiates the structures of desire and commerce differently, forming an early chorus of women’s perspectives.
Woolf transforms this multiplicity into a metaphorical call for collective remembrance. The “flowers” on Behn’s tomb are not mere homage; they are the continuation of dialogue. Every act of female writing becomes an offering, an acknowledgment of shared struggle against erasure.
6. Critical Reassessments :
Twentieth- and twenty-first-century scholarship has validated Woolf’s intuition. Critics such as Elaine Hobby, Janet Todd, and Jacqueline Pearson have demonstrated that Behn’s plays encode sophisticated reflections on gendered economics and social mobility. Todd remarks that The Rover “subverts the libertine comedy by forcing the audience to see the female cost of male pleasure” (Todd 58). Hobby emphasizes Behn’s “radical manipulation of genre conventions to express female experience” (Hobby 115).
Feminist critics influenced by Woolf read Behn not as an anomaly but as the origin of a continuous feminist discourse. The rediscovery of Behn in the 1970s and 1980s coincided with the rise of feminist literary criticism, confirming Woolf’s prediction that acknowledgment of foremothers was essential for women’s cultural identity.
7. The Dialectic of Respectability and Shame :
A central thread connecting Angellica’s story and Behn’s career is the dialectic between respectability and shame. Society’s willingness to brand economically active women as immoral forced both characters—fictional and historical—to navigate the liminal space between virtue and survival.
Behn’s male contemporaries, including Dryden and Wycherley, celebrated libertine excess without personal risk. Behn, however, was attacked for indecency simply for writing about the same themes. This double standard mirrors the treatment of Angellica, who is condemned for acting upon the same sexual freedom men enjoy.
Woolf identifies this double bind as the major obstacle to women’s creativity: the fear of social censure. Her call to “kill the Angel in the House” (Woolf 102) echoes Behn’s destruction of the angelic ideal in The Rover. Angellica’s fall from idealized beauty to wounded subject dramatizes the necessity of rejecting imposed virtue in order to claim authentic selfhood.
8.The Ethics of Speech :
If silence is virtue in patriarchal ideology, speech is rebellion. Behn’s play is structured around acts of female utterance—Florinda’s protests against forced marriage, Hellena’s witty banter, Angellica’s passionate monologues. Each moment of female speech is an ethical assertion of being.
Behn’s decision to grant women rhetorical mastery destabilizes the genre of comedy itself. Instead of serving as comic relief, her heroines produce serious moral insight. Their eloquence transforms the stage into a forum for social critique.
Woolf, inheriting this insight, builds her essay around a similar conviction: that speech—particularly truthful speech—is the foundation of women’s freedom. When she praises Behn, she celebrates not merely the content of her plays but the audacity of having spoken at all.
Conclusion: Flowers for Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn’s The Rover exposes the economic structures that reduce women to commodities, yet it also dramatizes their capacity for resistance through wit, intellect, and voice. Angellica Bianca’s comparison of marriage and prostitution unmasks the moral hypocrisy of a patriarchal society that sanctifies one form of exchange while condemning another. Behn herself, through the professional act of writing, lived out the same paradox—transforming what society deemed shameful commerce into artistic independence.
References :
Behn, Aphra. The Rover; or, The Banished Cavaliers. 1677. Edited by Janet Todd, Penguin Classics, 1996.
Burgum, Edwin Berry. “The Neoclassical Period in English Literature: A Psychological Definition.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 52, no. 2, 1944, pp. 247–65. JSTOR,https://www.jstor.org/stable/27537507
Hobby, Elaine. Aphra Behn’s The Rover and Other Plays. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Peters, M. A. “Satire, Swift and the Deconstruction of the Public Intellectual.” Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 51, no. 13, 2019, pp. 1299–1307.
Pearson, Jacqueline. The Daughters of Pandora: Women Writers and the Literary Marketplace in the 17th Century. Harvester Press, 1986.
Todd, Janet. The Sign of Angellica: Women, Writing and Fiction, 1660–1800. Columbia University Press, 1989.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. 1929. Edited by Susan Gubar, Harcourt Brace, 2005.
Spencer, Jane. The Rise of the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen. Blackwell, 1986.
Backscheider, Paula R. Aphra Behn: Biography. Ohio University Press, 2000.
Gallagher, Catherine. “Who Was That Masked Woman? The Prostitute and the Playwright in the Comedies of Aphra Behn.” Women’s Studies, vol. 15, no. 1–3, 1988, pp. 23–41.
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