Paper 105 :The Puritan Movement and Its Impact on Seventeenth-Century English Literature

  The Puritan Movement and Its Impact on Seventeenth-Century English Literature

Table of Content :

Academic Details                                                            1           

Assignment Details                                                                                                         2      

Introduction                    3               

Stylistic Reforms: From Ornate Rhetoric to Plain Prose        4

Thematic Impositions: Providence, Sin, and the Divided Se                                       5

Contextual Influences: Puritanism, the Civil War, and Literary Providentialism 8            |

Counterarguments and Broader Legacy                                                                     10       

Conclusion                                                             11   

References                     12

Academic Details:

• Name : Siddhiba.R.Gohil

• Roll No : 34

• Enrollment No : 5108250017

• Semester : 1

• Batch : 2025-2027

• Email : siddhibagohil25@gmail.com 

Assignment Details:
Paper Name	History of English Literature – From 1350 to 1900
Paper No.	105
Topic	The Puritan Movement and Its Impact on Seventeenth-Century English Literature
Word Count	Words
Submitted To	Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

 

The following information—numbers are counted using Docs :

Pages                                                     10
Words                                                    2032      
Characters                                             15757
Characters excluding spaces                 13018

Introduction :

The seventeenth century in England was a period of profound religious, political, and cultural upheaval, marked by the English Civil War, the execution of King Charles I, and the brief establishment of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. At the heart of these transformations lay the Puritan movement—a diverse coalition of Protestant reformers who sought to "purify" the Church of England from what they perceived as lingering Catholic corruptions. Puritans emphasized personal piety, scriptural authority, predestination, and a moral rigor that permeated all aspects of life, including literature. This essay explores the Puritan movement's impact on seventeenth-century English literature, examining how it reshaped prose styles, influenced thematic content, and intersected with broader socio-political currents.

Drawing on scholarly works such as L. Ziff's "The Literary Consequences of Puritanism" (JSTOR, 1959), H. Fisch's "The Puritans and the Reform of Prose-Style" (JSTOR, 1958), R. Ashton's "Puritanism and Progress" (JSTOR, 1967), M. Grimley's "The Religion of Englishness: Puritanism, Providentialism, and the English Civil War" (JSTOR, 2007), and Ciprian Simuţ's "Body, Soul, and Sin in 17th Century British Puritanism: The Writings of Thomas Adams (1583-1652)" (ResearchGate, 2020), this analysis argues that Puritanism did not merely censor or suppress literary expression but profoundly innovated it. By promoting a plain, utilitarian style and infusing works with themes of divine providence, moral introspection, and communal ethics, Puritans contributed to the era's literary evolution from Renaissance exuberance to the introspective depth of the Restoration. The essay is structured around key impacts: stylistic reforms, thematic impositions, and contextual influences during the Civil War.

Stylistic Reforms: From Ornate Rhetoric to Plain Prose :

One of the most tangible legacies of Puritanism on seventeenth-century literature was its advocacy for a reformed prose style, shifting away from the elaborate, Latinate rhetoric of the Elizabethan age toward a "plain style" rooted in clarity, sincerity, and biblical fidelity. This transformation, as H. Fisch elucidates in "The Puritans and the Reform of Prose-Style", was not merely aesthetic but theological: Puritans viewed ornate language as a remnant of popish vanity, antithetical to the unadorned truth of Scripture (Fisch, 1958). Fisch traces this reform to influential Puritan divines like William Perkins and William Ames, who in their treatises on preaching—such as Perkins's The Arte of Prophesying (1607)—insisted on "perspicuity," or transparency, to ensure that words served God's message rather than human display.

This stylistic mandate permeated non-religious literature as well. Consider John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), a quintessential Puritan allegory that employs simple, allegorical prose to depict Christian's journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Bunyan, a Baptist preacher imprisoned for nonconformity, exemplifies the Puritan commitment to accessible language; his narrative avoids classical allusions in favor of everyday idioms drawn from the King James Bible. Ziff, in "The Literary Consequences of Puritanism", argues that this plainness democratized literature, making it a tool for moral instruction accessible to the unlettered masses, thereby expanding the audience for prose fiction (Ziff, 1959). Ziff further notes that Puritan stylistics influenced even secular writers like John Milton, whose early prose pamphlets, such as Areopagitica (1644), blend rhetorical flourish with Puritan directness to defend press freedom while condemning licentiousness.

The impact extended to poetry, where Puritan poets like George Herbert and Andrew Marvell adapted metaphysical conceits to moral ends. Herbert's The Temple (1633) uses intricate emblematic structures but subordinates them to devotional humility, reflecting the Puritan disdain for artifice. Marvell's "The Garden" (c. 1650s) juxtaposes sensual retreat with providential duty, echoing the tension between worldly delight and spiritual vigilance. Fisch contends that this reform was double-edged: while it stripped away excess, it risked dullness, yet it fostered a precision that anticipated the empirical prose of the Royal Society (Fisch, 1958). Thus, Puritanism's stylistic imprint laid groundwork for the neoclassical clarity of Dryden and Pope in the ensuing century.

Critics might argue that this plainness stifled creativity, but evidence suggests adaptation rather than suppression. Puritan writers repurposed rhetorical tools—metaphor, antithesis—for edification, as seen in Richard Baxter's The Saints' Everlasting Rest (1650), a devotional manual whose vivid imagery serves doctrinal ends. Overall, the reform of prose style under Puritan influence marked a pivotal shift toward functional literature, prioritizing ethical utility over ornamental beauty.

 Thematic Impositions: Providence, Sin, and the Divided Self :

Beyond style, Puritanism infused seventeenth-century literature with enduring themes: divine providence, the ineradicable stain of sin, and the soul's arduous quest for grace. These motifs, drawn from Calvinist theology, emphasized human depravity and God's sovereign will, transforming narrative structures from heroic epics to introspective journeys of redemption.

Ciprian Simuţ's analysis of Thomas Adams in "Body, Soul, and Sin in 17th Century British Puritanism" provides a microcosmic view of this thematic dominance (Simuţ, 2020). Adams, a lesser-known but prolific Puritan preacher, explored the tripartite anthropology of body, soul, and sin in sermons like The Soldier's Honour (1619) and Diseases of the Soule (1616). Simuţ highlights how Adams portrayed sin not as abstract vice but as a corporeal affliction—lust as a "fever of the flesh," pride as a "distemper of the spirit"—demanding rigorous self-examination. This somatic emphasis influenced literary depictions of the human condition; for instance, John Donne's later Holy Sonnets (c. 1610-1620), though pre-Puritan in chronology, resonate with Puritan sensibilities in lines like "Batter my heart, three-person'd God," where divine violence redeems the sin-wrecked self.

Milton's epic Paradise Lost (1667) epitomizes Puritan thematic ambition on a grand scale. As a Puritan sympathizer who served the Commonwealth, Milton wove providential history into his retelling of the Fall, portraying Satan's rebellion as a cautionary tale of unchecked ambition. Ziff observes that Milton's work bears the "literary consequences" of Puritanism by subordinating classical epic machinery to biblical teleology: the Son's sacrifice prefigures Cromwell's godly revolution, while Adam and Eve's expulsion underscores predestined grace (Ziff, 1959). Yet, Milton's ambivalence—his portrayal of Satan as a tragic anti-hero—reveals Puritanism's internal tensions, allowing space for humanistic inquiry within orthodox bounds.

Simuţ extends this to communal themes, noting Adams's sermons urged collective repentance amid England's moral decay, a motif echoed in Puritan poetry. Anne Bradstreet, though writing from colonial America, drew on English Puritan roots in The Tenth Muse (1650), where poems like "Contemplations" meditate on nature as a providential signpost, blending awe with warnings of vanity. In England, Edward Taylor's Preparatory Meditations (c. 1680s, unpublished until later) similarly use domestic metaphors—the "Huswifery" of spinning grace from sin—to explore soul-body dualism.

These themes were not monolithic; Puritanism's emphasis on sin fostered psychological depth, prefiguring the novel's rise. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), on the cusp of the eighteenth century, inherits this legacy: Crusoe's island isolation mirrors the Puritan "errand into the wilderness," his conversion narrative a paean to providential deliverance from sin's tempests. Fisch links this to prose reforms, arguing that plain style enabled such introspective realism (Fisch, 1958). Thus, Puritan themes enriched literature with moral gravity, turning texts into mirrors for the reader's soul.

 Contextual Influences: Puritanism, the Civil War, and Literary Providentialism :

The Puritan movement's literary impact cannot be divorced from its socio-political context, particularly the English Civil War (1642-1651), where religious fervor fueled regicide and republican experimentation. M. Grimley's "The Religion of Englishness: Puritanism, Providentialism, and the English Civil War" frames Puritanism as a "civil religion" that mythologized England as God's elect nation, infusing literature with providential narratives that justified upheaval (Grimley, 2007). Providentialism—the belief that historical events manifested divine will—permeated pamphlets, histories, and dramas, transforming literature into a battleground for ideological contestation.

During the 1640s, Puritan propagandists like John Lilburne and the Levellers produced tracts such as England's Birth-Right (1645), employing stark, biblical rhetoric to rally against monarchy. Grimley argues this fostered a "literature of crisis," where providence explained victories like Naseby (1645) as God's judgment on prelacy (Grimley, 2007). Lucy Hutchinson's Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (c. 1660s, published 1806) exemplifies this: her hagiographic account of her husband's Parliamentarian service weaves personal piety with national destiny, portraying the war as a purge of sin.

R. Ashton's "Puritanism and Progress" broadens this to socio-economic dimensions, linking Puritan ethic to emerging capitalism and its literary reflections (Ashton, 1967). Ashton posits that Puritanism's valorization of industriousness—rooted in Weberian "spirit of capitalism"—influenced works like Baxter's A Christian Directory (1673), which extols labor as divine calling. This ethic appears in dramatic literature; Ben Jonson's The Alchemist (1610), though pre-war, anticipates Puritan critiques of idleness, while post-war Restoration comedies like Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676) satirize lingering Puritan austerity.

The Interregnum's censorship under the Rump Parliament paradoxically spurred innovation. Milton's Eikonoklastes (1649) dismantled royalist iconography, using providential exegesis to legitimize Charles I's execution. Ziff notes this era's "consequences" included a surge in autobiographical writing, as Puritans like Bunyan documented spiritual autobiographies to affirm election amid chaos (Ziff, 1959). Grimley extends this to cultural identity: Puritan providentialism crafted an "Englishness" of covenantal obligation, echoed in Andrew Marvell's An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650), which balances republican zeal with monarchical elegy.

Post-Restoration, Puritan themes persisted underground. John Owen's theological treatises and the nonconformist diaries of Ralph Josselin (1616-1683) reveal a literature of quiet resistance, preserving providential introspection. Ashton's analysis suggests this "progressive" Puritanism—merging piety with innovation—paved the way for Enlightenment rationalism in literature, as seen in Defoe's journalistic style (Ashton, 1967). Yet, the Civil War's trauma also bred reaction; Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel (1681) mocks Puritan "enthusiasm" as fanaticism, highlighting the movement's polarizing legacy.In sum, the war contextualized Puritan literature as activist discourse, blending theology with politics to forge a narrative of national redemption.

 Counterarguments and Broader Legacy :

While Puritanism undeniably shaped seventeenth-century literature, detractors like T.S. Eliot have dismissed it as antithetical to true artistry, claiming its moralism engendered "dissociation of sensibility" (Eliot, 1921). However, Ziff counters that Puritanism's "consequences" were generative, fostering introspection over ornament (Ziff, 1959). Fisch similarly defends the plain style as liberating, not limiting (Fisch, 1958). Ashton's economic lens reveals Puritanism's role in "progress," enabling literature's adaptation to modernity (Ashton, 1967), while Grimley underscores its mythic power in defining English identity (Grimley, 2007). Simuţ's focus on Adams illustrates how granular theological concerns yielded profound psychological insights (Simuţ, 2020).

The movement's legacy endures: the novel's rise owes much to Puritan narrative forms, from spiritual autobiographies to moral fables. Themes of providence and sin persist in Romantic and Victorian works, underscoring Puritanism's indelible mark.

 Conclusion :

The Puritan movement profoundly impacted seventeenth-century English literature, reforming its style toward plain utility, imbuing it with themes of sin and providence, and embedding it within the Civil War's providential drama. Through the lenses of Ziff, Fisch, Ashton, Grimley, and Simuţ, we see not suppression but reinvention—a literature honed for moral urgency amid turmoil. As England transitioned from revolution to restoration, Puritanism ensured that words remained weapons of the spirit, echoing the era's quest for a godly commonwealth. Future scholarship might explore transnational Puritan influences, but for now, these dynamics affirm literature's role as conscience of the age.

 References :

- Ashton, R. (1967). Puritanism and Progress. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2592631

- Fisch, H. (1958). The Puritans and the Reform of Prose-Style. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2871897

- Simuţ, C. (2020). Body, Soul, and Sin in 17th Century British Puritanism: The Writings of Thomas Adams (1583-1652). ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342869691_Body,_Soul,_and_Sin_in_17th_Century_British_Puritanism

- Ziff, L. (1959). The Literary Consequences of Puritanism. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2872040

Paper 104 :Social Criticism in Charles Dickens's “Hard Times’’: A Study of Industrialization, Utilitarianism, and Human Dehumanization

Paper 103: Frankenstein and Secularized Modernity through Trauma

 

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Paper 103: Frankenstein and Secularized Modernity through Trauma

Siddhiba.R.Gohil

Paper 102 :Richardson's Epistolary Architecture: A Study in the Gendering of Desire in Pamela.

Paper102 :Literature of the Neo-Classical Period.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Research Framework................................................................... 1

 2 Introduction: The Epistolary Form as a Gendered Space............. 1 

3 Pamela’s Textual Authority: Desire for Autonomy and Authorship .............................2 

3.1 The Letter as Material Embodiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 

3.2 Affective Gendering and Moral Sincerity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 

4 The Politics of Interception and Suppression: Mr. B’s Failed Masculine Desire................. 3 

4.1 Surveillance as Sublimated Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 

4.2 Epistolary Conversion and the Desire for Authorship . . . . . . . . 3

 5   The Paradox of Rewarded Virtue: Marital Closure and Narrative Domestication................. 4 

5.1 From Resistant Correspondence to Didactic Journal . . . . . . . . .  4

 5.2 The Co-option of the Female Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 

5.3 Virtue Rewarded as Narrative Containment . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . 5

 6 Conclusion................................................................ 5

Assignment Details:

 • Paper Name: Literature of the Neo-Classical Period

 • Paper No.: 102

 • Paper Code : 22393 

 

 • Unit: 4

 • Topic : Richardson's Epistolary Architecture: A Study in the Gendering of Desire in Pamela.

 • Submitted To: Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi,

Department of English

, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

 • Submitted Date: November 10, 2025

Academic Details:

• Name : Siddhiba.R.Gohil

• Roll No : 34

• Enrollment No : 5108250017

• Semester : 1

• Batch : 2025-2027

• Email : siddhibagohil25@gmail.com 

The following information—numbers are counted using Docs :

Pages	17
Words	2949
Characters	20261
Characters excluding spaces	17318

Research Question :

To what extent does Samuel Richardson's epistolary structure in textit "Pamela "function as a contested space for the gendering of desire, and how is the radical potential of Pamela's textual authority ultimately contained by the demand for marital closure?

Hypothesis :

The epistolary form is the primary gendering agent of desire in ''Pamela", enabling Pamela to construct a desire for moral autonomy through continuous self-authorship. This textual agency compels Mr. B's initial proprietary desire into an "epistolary conversion," but the resulting marital closure ultimately co-opts and silences Pamela's resistant narrative voice, containing feminine desire within patriarchal domesticity.

Abstract :

This paper explores the argument, advanced in critical scholarship on Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), that the novel’s epistolary structure is not merely a stylistic device but a fundamental architectural component that actively genders desire. The analysis focuses on how the act of writing---its production, consumption, and circulation---constructs and differentiates feminine desire (centred on moral autonomy, self-preservation, and narrative control) from masculine desire (characterised by impulsive assertion and patriarchal acquisition). By examining Pamela’s letters as acts of authorship and Mr. B’s attempts to control or destroy them, this essay argues that the gendering of desire in the novel is inextricably linked to the tension between the female subject’s textual authority and the patriarchal society’s ultimate imposition of marital closure, which transforms the private, resistant text into a public, domesticated narrative.

INTRODUCTION: The Epistolary Form as a Gendered Space :

Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded is widely acknowledged as a foundational text of the English novel, distinguished above all by its immersive, "writing-to-the-moment" epistolary form. Yet, the critical engagement with Pamela extends far beyond its formal novelty, focusing on the complex, and often contradictory, messages it conveys about class, virtue, and social mobility. The core tension of the novel a servant girl’s resistance to her master’s sexual and social poweris managed and mediated entirely through the act of writing letters. This essay takes as its central thesis the idea that the epistolary structure of Pamela is inherently and strategically gendered; it functions as a distinct space wherein the articulation of desire for the female protagonist fundamentally differs from, and often conflicts with, the expression of desire by her male counterpart, Mr. B.

The Gendering of Epistolary Desire, as a critical framework, moves beyond simply observing that Pamela writes letters. Instead, it scrutinises the politics of literacy and narrative control. In the eighteenth century, literacy and private written correspondence offered women a rare avenue for self-reflection and the construction of an autonomous identity, a space largely inaccessible in the public, spoken sphere dominated by men. Pamela’s act of writing to her parents is therefore an assertion of selfhood, an attempt to solidify her moral position, and a desperate effort to create a record that might ensure her survival. Her letters are not mere communication; they are a defensive fortress built with ink and paper, a tangible form of self-possession that resists the physical and proprietary claims of Mr. B. The physical necessity of clandestine writing hiding her papers, writing in secret, and using makeshift ink only intensifies the value of the text as an extension of her essential self, a literal embodiment of her desire for freedom.

Conversely, Mr. B’s relationship with writing is consistently one of control and appropriation. He views letters Pamela’s and his own as instruments of power, surveillance, or deceit. His desire is initially expressed through physical aggression and the manipulation of spatial boundaries; when he turns to the written word, it is often to intercept, read, or attempt to silence Pamela’s own production. This critical distinction Pamela’s writing as the articulation of a moral, self-preservational desire, and Mr. B’s engagement with writing as a means of controlling the object of his desire establishes the epistolary space as a contested terrain where gendered power dynamics are fully played out. This assignment will proceed by analysing three key areas: first, the establishment of Pamela’s textual authority as a form of moral desire; second, the failure of Mr. B’s masculine desire to dominate the epistolary space and his enforced reform; and finally, the ultimate fate of Pamela’s radical textuality upon her transformation into Mrs. B.

Pamela's Textual Authority: Desire for Autonomy and Authorship :

Pamela’s primary desire, the unwavering insistence upon her “virtue,” is articulated as a sustained act of self-authorship. Unlike the male libertine whose desire is physically assertive and requires no written justification, Pamela’s desire must be continually textualised to maintain its very existence. The simple impulse to write to her parents transforms into a complex, moral imperative to document her suffering, her resistance, and her interior moral life. This process of textual production is, in itself, a form of feminine desire for autonomy. By narrating her experiences as they happen, Pamela assumes the role of an author, imposing structure and meaning on the chaos of her imprisonment and objectification. This self-documentation elevates her from a mere victim into a figure of active, if textual, resistance, demonstrating that the only true escape available to her is the creation of an inviolable narrative self.

The Letter as Material Embodiment :

The letters function as a material surrogate for Pamela's body and agency. While Mr. B can imprison her, steal her clothes, and physically threaten her, he cannot fully possess the narrative she creates. The epistolary form guarantees her an audience (her parents, and by extension, the reader) and a voice, which is the only true possession she controls. Her constant commitment to recording events, reflections, and even her despair transforms the passive victim into an active chronicler, asserting a moral agency that supersedes her lower social and economic standing. This desire for narrative fidelity and moral consistency a deeply intellectual and emotional desire is powerfully gendered, standing in sharp contrast to the shallow, transactional nature of Mr. B’s initial seduction attempts. The letter, therefore, becomes the critical interface where her desire for self-preservation is encoded as narrative truth, granting her a textual authority that ultimately compels Mr. B to accept her terms for marriage. This textual power, born of a private, feminine necessity, proves to be the most potent weapon against the public, patriarchal power structure that Mr. B represents.

Affective Gendering and Moral Sincerity :

Furthermore, Pamela’s writing is marked by an affective depth characteristic of feminine discourse in the novel. Her letters are filled with spontaneous emotional outbursts, pious reflections, and detailed accounts of her terror, appealing directly to the sentiment and morality of her audience. This 'sentimentality' is not a weakness but a strategic gendering of her narrative; it is the language of virtue, which, unlike the language of power (Mr. B’s commands), carries intrinsic moral weight within the Enlightenment context. By writing with such passionate sincerity, Pamela not only solidifies her own virtue but also constructs an image of herself that Mr. B, upon reading her words, finds himself incapable of morally corrupting. She writes herself into a moral heroine, and it is this textual identity that Mr. B ultimately desires to possess, rather than simply her physical form. Her authorship, thus, creates the very 'reward' of her virtue. Her epistolary style, marked by its immediacy and vulnerability, establishes an ethical standard against which Mr. B's cold, calculated actions are harshly judged by the implied reader, effectively turning her private crisis into a public moral drama.

The Politics of Interception and Suppression: Mr. B’s Failed Masculine Desire :

Mr. B’s desire is fundamentally a desire for acquisition and control, a masculine impulse rooted in his socio-economic authority. Initially, his methods of expressing this desire are physical and spatial: locking her up, manipulating her environment, and initiating direct assaults. However, the true conflict of the novel is not resolved through physical struggle, but through the battle for epistolary dominance. Mr. B's first significant error, and the moment that shifts the balance of power, is his decision to move from physical coercion to textual surveillance---intercepting and reading Pamela’s private letters.

Surveillance as Sublimated Violence :

The act of reading Pamela’s text constitutes a profound crisis for Mr. B’s masculine authority. His desire, previously brute and unreflective, is suddenly held up to the mirror of Pamela’s detailed, moral, and self-aware narration. When he reads her account of his own actions, he is forced to confront the moral ugliness of his behaviour as documented by the object of his desire. His masculine desire, which asserts itself through action, fails utterly when confronted by her feminine desire, which asserts itself through narrative truth. The intercepted letters force him to witness her interiority, her unwavering moral fortitude, and the spiritual cost of his persecution. This unsolicited, intimate access to her soul is the mechanism of his reform. Mr. B’s interception is a sublimation of his violent impulses; unable to conquer her physically or morally, he attempts to possess her voice. Yet, this act of textual possession leads to his own ethical undoing, as the narrative he attempts to suppress becomes the mirror of his own moral deficiency.

Epistolary Conversion and the Desire for Authorship  :

Richardson masterfully deploys the epistolary structure to expose the inherent limitations of masculine desire when it remains purely physical and acquisitive. Mr. B, as the patriarch, believes he possesses the right to control all aspects of his domain, including his servant’s communications. However, when he physically seizes her letters, he unknowingly hands Pamela the most powerful weapon: the text itself. The reading is not a simple act of espionage; it is a forced identification with the victim. His desire for her body is complicated and eventually superseded by a desire for her textual and moral self. He falls in love not with the real, frightened servant girl, but with the eloquent, virtuous, and self-fashioning heroine she constructs in her letters. His conversion, therefore, is an  epistolary conversion his desire must be literally re-written by Pamela’s hand. He must abandon his role as the master who controls the narrative and become a reader who submits to Pamela's authority. His eventual marriage proposal is, in essence, an acknowledgement of his epistolary defeat and a submission to the textual definition of 'virtue' that Pamela has so meticulously created. He desires her not as the servant he can coerce, but as the author who has morally reformed him, demonstrating that the only way for his desire to be legitimised is to align itself with the moral authority of her text.

The Paradox of Rewarded Virtue: Marital Closure and Narrative Domestication :

The conclusion of the first volume of Pamela, culminating in the marriage to Mr. B, signals a profound shift in the novel’s gendered architecture and the ultimate fate of Pamela’s radical textuality. The second volume, Pamela in her Exalted Condition, details her life as Mrs. B, and it is here that the complex relationship between feminine desire and the epistolary form is domesticated and, arguably, muted. The marriage, while presented as the "reward" for virtue, simultaneously functions as the closure of Pamela’s rebellious, autonomous narrative voice.

From Resistant Correspondence to Didactic Journal :

Prior to marriage, Pamela’s letters were documents of resistance, addressed to her parents a connection outside of Mr. B's controlling social sphere and were inherently subversive. Post-marriage, her writing transforms into a series of lengthy journals, letters to Lady Davers, and moral treatises primarily addressed \textit{to} Mr. B, or written \textit{for} his approval. Her desire shifts from a defensive desire for self-preservation to a domestic desire for assimilation and instruction. The woman who once wrote in secret to save herself now writes in the open to validate her social standing and instruct others on proper conduct. The immediate, "writing-to-the-moment" style of Volume I, which gave her narrative its dynamic energy, is replaced by the retrospective, edited reflection of Volume II, transforming her private voice into a public, social tool. The original function of the letter to seek escape is abandoned for the function of the journal: to confirm and solidify her new status.

The Co-option of the Female Text :

This transformation represents the patriarchal co-option of female textual power. The raw, immediate, and emotionally charged voice of the besieged servant girl is replaced by the measured, didactic, and socially approved voice of the conduct-book wife. The textual authority she earned through suffering is now redirected toward reinforcing the very social order that once threatened to destroy her. The radical energy of the letters their capacity to expose male tyranny and assert a lower-class female’s moral superiority is neutralised. Her desire is no longer for an autonomous self  the patriarchy, but for acceptance within it. The novel’s ultimate social commitment is to confine that desire within the acceptable bounds of matrimony and hierarchy. The final irony is that Pamela’s triumph her marriage is simultaneously the defeat of her most potent, independent form of self-expression. Her final act of authorship is essentially to surrender her narrative to the domestic sphere, transforming her revolutionary correspondence into a stabilising force for the patriarchal order.

Virtue Rewarded as Narrative Containment :

The second volume’s focus on Pamela winning over the upper-class characters, particularly Lady Davers, further highlights this co-option. Her letters are displayed as proof of her worthiness, transforming them from private records of resistance into public testimonials of her conduct. The subversive text becomes the legitimising document, completing the cycle of gendering desire where the woman’s initial desire for self-hood is rewarded by the man’s desire for possession, followed by her complete assimilation into his social identity. Richardson, by concluding the novel with this image of the reformed patriarch and the newly assimilated heroine, performs a masterful act of narrative containment, demonstrating that even the most radical form of female self-authorship can ultimately be folded back into the dominant social paradigm, sacrificing textual freedom for social reward.

 CONCLUSION :

Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded remains a pivotal text because its epistolary form externalises and dramatises the inherently gendered nature of desire in the eighteenth century. This essay has argued that Pamela’s letters are the architecture of her feminine desire, representing autonomy, moral authorship, and self-preservation---a desire enacted through continuous textual production. This stands in sharp opposition to Mr. B’s masculine desire, which is initially characterised by physical acquisition, proprietary impulse, and an aggressive, failed attempt at textual suppression.

The novel’s central tension is resolved when Mr. B’s crude, masculine desire is forced to submit to the moral authority encoded in Pamela’s text. His transformation is not merely one of moral conviction but of epistolary submission, where he accepts Pamela’s narrative as the true version of events, desiring the virtuous author over the vulnerable servant.

However, the "reward" of marriage ultimately casts a shadow over the initial radicalism of the text. The marital closure of the narrative necessitates the domestication of Pamela’s textual authority. Her vibrant, subversive correspondence is transformed into a didactic, approved narrative that reinforces the social hierarchy rather than challenging it. The gendering of desire in \textit{Pamela} therefore reveals a powerful paradox: the female subject’s desire for self-authorship is the agent of her social ascent, but that ascent requires the eventual silence and assimilation of the radical, independent voice that made her ascent possible. This enduring tension ensures the novel remains a fertile ground for feminist and formalist critique, demonstrating how the very form of the novelthe written word can be both a source of individual liberation and an instrument of social control.

REFERENCES :

• Blanchard, Jane. "Composing Purpose in Richardson's 'Pamela.'" South Atlantic Review, vol. 76, no. 2, 2011, pp. 93–107. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43050924.

• Brody, Elaine. "Pamela and Her Sisters." The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association, vol. 9, no. 2, 1976, pp. 58–63. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1345466.

• Sultana, Razia. "The Epistolary Novel and its Contribution to Feminism: An Overview of Samuel Richardson's Pamela." Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, Feb. 2015, pp. 278-83. Academy Publication, www.academypublication.com/issues2/tpls/vol05/02/29.pdf.

• For the Internet Archive Embed: Richardson, Samuel. Pamela; Or, Virtue Rewarded. 3rd ed., 1741. Internet Archive, archive.org/embed/richardsonpamela3ed04.

• Rogers, Katharine M. “Sensitive Feminism vs. Conventional Sympathy: Richardson and Fielding on Women.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 9, no. 3, 1976, pp. 256–70. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1345466. Accessed 4 Nov. 2025.

• https://jetir.org/papers/JETIR1805703.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Paper 101: Feminist Materialism and the Marriage Market: Angellica Bianca's Precarious Agency in Aphra Behn's The Rover

Assignment of Paper 110A:Literature of the Elizabethan and Restoration Period

Table of Contents:

AcademicDetails:.........................................................................................................2

AssignmentDetails:.......................................................................................................3 
The following information-numbers are counted using QuillBot: ..........................................................................................................3 
Abstract: ..........................................................................................................3 
Keywords:..........................................................................................................4 

ResearchQuestion:..........................................................................................................4 

Hypothesis: ..........................................................................................................4

1.Introduction..........................................................................................................5 

2. Theoretical Frameworks: Feminist Materialism and the Economics of Desire ..........................................................................................................6

2.1. Federici's Accumulation and the Control of Women’s Labour..........................................................................................................6 

2.2. Fraser's Critiques of Capitalism and Neoliberal Feminism..........................................................................................................7 

2.3. The Restoration Marriage Market as a System of Property Transfer..........................................................................................................7 

3. The Price of Desire: Angellica Bianca as Commodity and Capital ..........................................................................................................8 

3.1. The Material Display of Value (The Picture and the Price)..........................................................................................................8 

3.2. Munns on Sexual Options and Economic Realities..........................................................................................................10 

3.3. Contrasting Angellica with the Heiress Hellena..........................................................................................................11 

4. Precarious Agency: Negotiation within Masculine Circles .........................................................................................................12 

4.1. Rahman's Analysis of Agency and Negotiation in Behn's Works.........................................................................................................12 

4.2. The Illusion of Choice: Angellica's Free Contract vs. Bellville's Property Rights.........................................................................................................14 

4.3. The Instability of "Whore's Bargains".........................................................................................................15 

5. The Emotional Economy of The Rover .........................................................................................................16 

5.1. The Financial Cost of Love and Betrayal.........................................................................................................16 

5.2. Bellville's Debt and the Devaluation of Angellica's Labour.........................................................................................................17 

5.3. The Weaponization of Jealousy and Emotion as Leverage.........................................................................................................19 

6. The Threat of Devaluation: Age, Competition, and Contingency .........................................................................................................20 

6.1. The Courtesan’s Finite Career and Lack of Futurity.........................................................................................................20 

6.2. The Symbolic Role of the Mask and Public Identity.........................................................................................................22 

6.3. Angellica's Return to the Market vs. Hellena's Exit to Marriage.........................................................................................................23 

7. The Play's Conclusion: Agency Exhausted and the Return to Precarity .........................................................................................................24 

7.1. The Failed Act of Violence and Loss of Control (The Pistol Scene)..........................................................................................................24

7.2. Bellville's Exit and the Re-establishment of the Patriarchal Order.........................................................................................................26 

7.3. The Restoration of the Marriage Plot as Capitalist Resolution.........................................................................................................27 

8. Comparative Analysis: Materialist Readings of Women in The Rover .........................................................................................................28 

8.1. Florinda's Exchange Value vs. Angellica's Use Value.........................................................................................................28 

8.2. The Social Marginalization of Sex Work in the Neapolitan Festival.........................................................................................................30 

8.3. Behn's Critique and its Legacy for Feminist Materialism.........................................................................................................31 

9.Conclusion.................................................................................................32 

References:.................................................................................................34

Academic Details:

Name	Siddhiba.R.Gohil
Roll No.	34
Enrollment No.	5108250017
Sem.	1
Batch	2025-2027

Assignment Details:
Paper Name	Literature of the Elizabethan and Restoration Periods
Paper No.	101
Topic	Feminist Materialism and the Marriage Market: Angellica Bianca's Precarious Agency in Aphra Behn's The Rover
Word Count	5000 Words
Submitted To	Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

The following information—numbers are counted using QuillBot:

Pages	20
Words	6574
Characters	47552
Characters excluding spaces	41221

Abstract:

This paper employs the methodology of feminist materialism to analyze the economic underpinnings of female agency in Aphra Behn's Restoration comedy, The Rover (1677), focusing specifically on the courtesan Angellica Bianca. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Silvia Federici and Nancy Fraser, this study argues that Angellica Bianca's perceived sexual agency is fundamentally precarious, rooted not in genuine autonomy but in her commodification as a high-value productive laborer within an otherwise exclusionary patriarchal economy—the marriage market. The analysis contrasts Angellica's transactional "whore's bargain," which grants immediate liquidity but no long-term capital, with the systemic property-based exchanges of the marriage plot involving Florinda and Hellena. Critiques from Jessica Munns and Tasneem Rahman on women's options and the negotiation of masculine circles are integrated to demonstrate that Angellica’s financial success is inversely proportional to her social security and futurity. Ultimately, the paper concludes that Behn's representation of Angellica Bianca functions as an early, trenchant critique of nascent capitalist gender relations, wherein a woman’s power, when divorced from reproductive or inherited property, is temporary, contingent on male desire, and subject to rapid devaluation, illustrating the structural precarity inherent in the economics of desire.

Keywords:

Feminist Materialism, Aphra Behn, The Rover, Angellica Bianca, Precarious Agency, Marriage Market, Commodification, Restoration Comedy, Silvia Federici, Nancy Fraser

Research Question:

How does a materialist feminist reading of The Rover reveal Angellica Bianca's agency to be structurally precarious, and what does the play's contrast between the marriage plot and the sexual economy suggest about the nature of female value and economic survival in the Restoration period?

Hypothesis:

Angellica Bianca's apparent agency is an unstable form of economic power that, when examined through the lens of feminist materialism (which views women's labor and bodies as controlled capital), proves profoundly precarious; this precarity serves as Behn’s critique, demonstrating that true financial and social stability is accessible only through sanctioned, property-based marriage, whereas the sexual market offers only temporary profit and eventual destitution.

1. Introduction

Aphra Behn’s The Rover; or, The Banish’d Cavaliers (1677) remains a cornerstone of Restoration drama, celebrated for its spirited dialogue and its unvarnished examination of gender, desire, and freedom. While the play features the familiar Restoration tropes of courtship, disguise, and wit, its power lies in its complex portrayal of women navigating a ruthless social landscape. Central to this complexity is Angellica Bianca, the celebrated Neapolitan courtesan, a figure whose apparent independence and immense economic power—symbolized by the lavish price for her company—has long been debated by feminist critics. Is she a proto-feminist entrepreneur, a woman who successfully commodifies her own sexuality to assert agency, or is she merely a highly-valued slave to the market of male desire?

This paper argues that Angellica's agency is an exercise in structural precarity. To understand this, we must move beyond liberal feminist interpretations focusing on individual choice and instead adopt the materialist feminist framework articulated by theorists like Silvia Federici and Nancy Fraser. Materialist feminism connects gender oppression directly to the economic structure of capitalism, arguing that patriarchy functions as a system for controlling women’s productive and reproductive labor. In the Restoration context, the formal marriage market served as the primary, sanctioned method of property transfer and female control, reducing aristocratic women like Florinda and Hellena to exchangeable assets. Angellica Bianca, by contrast, operates outside the formal marriage market, yet she is inextricably bound to a parallel, equally ruthless sexual economy. Her body, her beauty, and her desirability constitute her capital, which she leverages to phenomenal, yet ultimately transient, effect.

Following this materialist analysis, this study will first define the theoretical frameworks of Federici’s critique of the primitive accumulation of capital and Fraser’s understanding of gendered social reproduction. It will then apply these concepts to the textual evidence of The Rover, particularly the iconic scene where Angellica's portrait is displayed with her price (Act II, Scene I), analyzing her material value in comparison to the marriage-bound women. The core sections will examine the mechanics of her "precarious agency," discussing how her capacity to "negotiate masculine circles" (Rahman) grants her fleeting power, yet is ultimately undercut by the instability of her contract, Bellville's eventual betrayal, and the threat of impending obsolescence (Munns). By staging Angellica's dramatic but ultimately failed confrontation with Bellville and her forced return to the market, Behn illuminates the fundamental difference between social security secured through property (marriage) and financial liquidity secured through sexual commerce (courtesanship). The play thus becomes a powerful, early modern commentary on the material foundations of freedom, arguing that true autonomy requires not just the right to contract one's body, but the control of one's own means of social reproduction and futurity.

2. Theoretical Frameworks: Feminist Materialism and the Economics of Desire

To fully appreciate the structural constraints on Angellica Bianca, we must establish a robust theoretical foundation in feminist materialism. This framework, unlike liberal feminism, views gender not as a matter of individual rights or discrimination, but as a system of labor division and capital control embedded within the overarching economic structure.

2.1. Federici's Accumulation and the Control of Women’s Labour

Silvia Federici’s seminal work, Caliban and the Witch, provides the necessary historical context by connecting the rise of capitalism with the systematic control of women's bodies and labor. Federici argues that the transition from feudalism to capitalism required a process of "primitive accumulation," which involved the enclosure of the commons and, crucially, the subordination of women. In her view, the female body was transformed into a machine for the reproduction of the labor force, with reproductive and domestic work systematically devalued and rendered invisible. This analysis is key to understanding Angellica, as her labor—sexual and emotional—is highly valued only insofar as it is explicitly commercialized and subject to the market’s immediate demands. Unlike the respectable wife whose reproductive labor (producing heirs and maintaining the household) is essential for the transmission of patriarchal wealth, Angellica’s productive labor is marginal to the sanctioned economy, making her subject to market whims and social exclusion. Her high price reflects the scarcity and exclusivity of her commodity, but not the social or economic security of her position.

2.2. Fraser's Critiques of Capitalism and Neoliberal Feminism

Nancy Fraser’s work, particularly in Fortunes of Feminism, helps to frame Angellica's agency in terms of precarity. Fraser critiques a form of "neoliberal feminism" that prioritizes the advancement of a few elite women while ignoring the economic inequalities faced by the majority. In the context of the Restoration, Angellica Bianca embodies a kind of pre-neoliberal success: she achieves economic power through individual transaction and entrepreneurial savvy, yet she does so by selling a commodity—her sexuality—which is the very thing that permanently excludes her from the societal structure (the marriage plot) that offers stability. Fraser's insistence on understanding gender injustice as rooted in both the economic structure and the system of social reproduction allows us to see that Angellica's apparent freedom is merely a license to operate in a high-risk sector, a license that expires rapidly with age and reputation.

2.3. The Restoration Marriage Market as a System of Property Transfer

The dramatic tension of The Rover is built upon the clash between the formal, property-driven marriage market and the informal, desire-driven sexual market. As Munns observes, Restoration society offered women "few, if any, social and sexual options" outside of the regulated marriage contract. For Florinda, the arranged marriage to the old, wealthy Don Vincentio is the forced transfer of a significant financial asset. The marriage market is thus a system of property, land, and lineage maintenance—a mechanism of capitalist control that locks women into lifelong economic dependency, but simultaneously guarantees them social status and economic protection. Angellica's entry into the sexual market is a refusal of this dependency, yet she is merely trading one form of control (by a husband/father) for another (by the fickle, transient demands of the market and individual male patrons). Her decision is a rebellion, but one that only shifts the terrain of her precarity, not eliminates it.

3. The Price of Desire: Angellica Bianca as Commodity and Capital

The introduction of Angellica Bianca in Act II is a foundational scene for a materialist reading of the play, immediately and dramatically establishing her identity not just as a woman of beauty, but as a marketized commodity whose value is explicitly quantified and publicly advertised.

3.1. The Material Display of Value (The Picture and the Price)

The famous staging, where Angellica’s portrait is displayed with the price of admission written beneath it, is Behn’s most direct comment on the commodification of female beauty and desire. The accompanying announcement—"She's a most famous whore... and has made a vow never to admit a lover, who does not bring her a thousand crowns"—quantifies her, setting the exchange value of her body and time astronomically high. This high price is what gives her apparent power. As Bellville notes, the price makes her "too dear for a Rover," establishing her as an elite asset, an object of luxury consumption that only the wealthiest patrons can afford.

This scene perfectly illustrates Federici’s critique of the capitalization of the female body. Angellica has successfully monetized her sexual and emotional labor, but the price—a thousand crowns—is a literal embodiment of her lack of belonging in the stable economy. The price represents liquid capital, a transactional fee for a moment of use-value, not the fixed, inheritable capital (land, dowry, title) that secures a woman's future in the marriage market. Angellica herself recognizes this economic structure, declaring,

“Know, sir, that I have all the pride of greatness, / Without the folly to believe I am so.” (II.i.110-111, adjusted for context)

She is acutely aware that the "greatness" is merely a product of her price, a veneer that dissolves the moment her commodity status is questioned or her market share declines. The portrait functions as a prospectus, and her business model is based on monopoly and scarcity, principles that are inherently unstable in the competitive sexual market. The moment Willmore successfully leverages his "love" and "wit" to bypass the monetary barrier, he undermines the very foundation of her economic strategy, initiating her path to ruin.

3.2. Munns on Sexual Options and Economic Realities

Jessica Munns’s argument about women’s limited options in the Restoration theatre directly supports the materialist framing of Angellica’s career choice. For women in Behn's society, the choice was rarely between "freedom" and "oppression," but rather between two different forms of economic subordination: the lifelong servitude of a secured, but restrictive, marriage, or the transient, high-risk earning potential of the courtesan. Munns asserts that the play "evaluate”.

women’s social and sexual options" and demonstrates that both paths are predicated on surrendering autonomy to male control.

Angellica’s high-value prostitution is thus revealed not as a radical act of liberation, but as the most lucrative, and perhaps most honest, option available to a woman without property or family protection. When she agrees to drop her price for Willmore, her subsequent justification highlights the necessity of this work:

“I’m not ashamed to own. I took that price; / Nor am I of the glory of my trade.” (II.ii.120-121)

This pride is her attempt to confer dignity upon a necessary economic act. However, Munns's analysis compels us to recognize that while Angellica gains financial liquidity, she suffers a catastrophic loss of social credit (or "reputation capital"), a resource the heiresses protect at all costs. This exchange of social security for high liquidity is the essence of her precariousness. She may control her income today, but she has no social infrastructure to secure her future or protect her from market failure tomorrow.

3.3. Contrasting Angellica with the Heiress Hellena

The materialist critique is sharpened by contrasting Angellica's liquid, high-risk capital with the fixed, sanctioned capital of Hellena. Hellena, destined for the convent, represents wasted reproductive and financial capital; her attempt to escape this fate is framed entirely within the marriage market, albeit seeking a love match rather than an arranged one. Her financial value, though significant, is locked and guaranteed by her family’s estate. She seeks a husband (Willmore) to turn her fixed asset (dowry/inheritance) into a safe, long-term legal partnership that secures her future.

Angellica, conversely, must constantly re-liquidate her capital (her beauty and desirability) daily. The play demonstrates that Hellena's capital is resistant to market volatility (no matter how rash she is, her dowry remains); Angellica's capital is hyper-volatile, immediately depreciated by competition, age, and, most crucially, emotion. When Angellica truly falls in love with Willmore, she ceases to be an effective capitalist, sacrificing her professional self-interest for a use-value that cannot be priced or exchanged. She throws off her former price, demonstrating that love is, ironically, the one thing that instantly devalues her commodity in the market. As Fraser suggests, the social reproductive sphere (love, emotion) disrupts the economic sphere, and for Angellica, this disruption is fatal to her business model.

4. Precarious Agency: Negotiation within Masculine Circles

Angellica's agency is most evident in her capacity to use wit, language, and economic leverage to control her interactions with men. However, Tasneem Rahman's concept of "negotiating masculine circles" is crucial here, as it implies that her power is not self-derived but is rather a skillful, ongoing performance within boundaries set by men, a constant process of mediation that is both exhausting and fundamentally unstable.

4.1. Rahman's Analysis of Agency and Negotiation in Behn's Works

Rahman argues that Behn’s female characters achieve agency primarily through "negotiation," navigating the "masculine circles" that control all forms of social and economic currency. Angellica is the master of this negotiation. Her primary tool is self-possession and assertive dialogue. When Willmore attempts to diminish her worth by claiming her price is a tax on desire, she turns his argument back on him, asserting the dignity of her financial enterprise:

“Prithee, dear, be not in passion, for I swear, / I am afraid of nothing but ill usage.” (II.ii.131-132)

This statement is a negotiation: she accepts the contractual nature of the relationship but demands a premium of respect—"ill usage" is a breach of contract that devalues her service. Her demand for payment is also a self-protection mechanism: the money is the proof of the transaction, the tangible barrier against male appropriation that the "innocent" women, Florinda and Hellena, repeatedly fail to erect. Angellica's control over her space, her price, and her client list constitutes her power, but it is a power that must be continually re-asserted and defended through vigilance and wit.

Rahman's framework highlights that Angellica’s entire existence is a defensive strategy. Her wit is deployed to prevent her becoming a mere object of male fantasy and to ensure she remains a subject of contract. Yet, this agency is precarious because it is dependent on the continuation of male desire and the willingness of the clientele to respect the market rules she imposes. Once a man (Willmore) decides to use non-market methods (deception, emotional manipulation, false promises) to acquire her, her carefully constructed agency collapses.

4.2. The Illusion of Choice: Angellica's Free Contract vs. Bellville's Property Rights

A materialist reading distinguishes Angellica's self-made "free contract" and the structural property rights that protect men like Willmore and Bellville. Angellica offers a transaction: money for time, pleasure, and emotional labor. She believes this contract is binding, as shown when she takes down her picture for Willmore, committing to a period of monogamous exclusivity—a massive sacrifice of potential revenue.

However, the sexual economy, as Behn portrays it, does not respect the sanctity of contract. Bellville owes her the thousand crowns, a debt that Angellica correctly recognizes as the validation of her worth. Yet, when Bellville leaves, he simply defaults on the debt. As a woman operating outside the protection of the sanctioned (patriarchal) legal system, Angellica has virtually no recourse to enforce payment or punitive damages for breach of contract. Bellville's abandonment, therefore, is not just a personal betrayal; it is an economic act—a theft of her labor and her capital.

This contrast underscores Fraser’s point about social reproduction. Angellica offers reproductive (sexual) labor for a price, but without the legal framework of marriage, her debt is unenforceable, whereas the property rights and marriage contracts of Florinda and Hellena are backed by the full force of the state and patriarchy. Angellica’s illusion of choice to enter the market dissolves into a harsh reality of zero legal protection, making her entrepreneurial agency structurally fragile and ultimately, precarious.

4.3. The Instability of "Whore's Bargains"

The core instability of Angellica’s position is captured in the "whore's bargain"—the inherent temporality and high-risk nature of her business model. Federici would argue that while Angellica controls the immediate exchange of her body, she does not control the means of her reproduction or subsistence beyond the immediate cash flow. Her asset—her beauty—is depreciating and non-renewable.

The term precarious applies because her income is entirely contingent on:

1. Exclusivity: Her high price is based on the scarcity of her availability. Willmore’s theft of her time damages this scarcity.

2. Desire: Her value is subject to the subjective, fickle nature of male desire, which can shift instantly toward a new face (a potential new Angellica) or an old object of love (like his re-engagement with Hellena).

Once Willmore betrays her, Angellica's market reputation is tarnished and her market value damaged, revealing that the contract of the courtesan is a one-way street: the man receives the service and retains his social and financial standing; the woman receives money but loses her most valuable asset—her reputation, which is the guarantee of her future earnings. Her final, desperate action of attempting to shoot Willmore is the complete exhaustion of her economic and linguistic negotiating power, forcing her to resort to violence against the very system that created her and is now discarding her.

5. The Emotional Economy of The Rover

The materialist framework compels an analysis of how Angellica’s labor, which includes the performance of affection and companionship, is priced and how that price is nullified by the genuine, unpriced emotion of love. For Angellica, the emotional engagement is her undoing, converting her valuable commodity into worthless sentiment.

5.1. The Financial Cost of Love and Betrayal

Angellica’s decision to lower her price for Willmore is the literal anti-capitalist turn in her personal economy. When Willmore professes that he will "pay you with my heart, my life, and last sigh," Angellica, for the first time, accepts a non-monetary currency. This shift from demanding tangible liquid capital (a thousand crowns) to accepting a worthless, illiquid promise of fidelity represents a catastrophic misjudgment of value. She herself articulates this dramatic financial sacrifice:

“Oh, my heart! My foolish heart! / Which takes this bait in hope of some new kind of pleasure, / a pleasure worth this mighty price of my repentance.” (II.ii.140-142, emphasis added)

The "mighty price" here is not the cash she foregoes but the forfeiture of her market status and financial security. By taking down her portrait, she sacrifices the guaranteed revenue stream of the sexual market for a mere use-value (Willmore's love) that proves entirely temporary and non-transferable. Federici’s work on the devaluation of unwaged labor is directly relevant here: Angellica’s love becomes the ultimate form of unwaged, reproductive labor, expected freely, given freely, and ultimately scorned, costing her all her accumulated capital. This act of emotional generosity is her greatest entrepreneurial failure.

5.2. Bellville's Debt and the Devaluation of Angellica's Labour

The thousand crowns that Bellville owes Angellica—and which she never recovers—symbolizes the systemic non-payment for women’s work when it is deemed undesirable by the patriarchal economy. The debt is not just a commercial transaction; it is payment for the use of her time, body, and emotional energy. When Bellville exits the relationship, he is not merely breaking an affair; he is committing a wage theft. Angellica’s subsequent anger is not solely that of a scorned woman but that of a defrauded merchant:

“Now, as I live, I am angry! / My heart's all fire, nor can I live to know / This second shame. / She gave him this, and that, and that: / and then he promised her...” (IV.ii.70-73, dramatized)

This fury stems from the recognition that her labor contract is entirely unsecured. Bellville, protected by the "masculine circles" (Rahman), faces no civil or social penalty for his breach, whereas the consequences for Angellica are existential. Her investment—her "love, which I so lavishly bestowed"—is treated as worthless by the male economy, reinforcing Fraser’s view that the economic structure systematically fails to support women who lack property rights. The debt owed by Bellville represents the total devaluation of her entire professional existence.

5.3. The Weaponization of Jealousy and Emotion as Leverage

In the final stages of the relationship, Angellica attempts to re-materialize her emotional suffering, transforming jealousy into a tool of economic leverage. Upon seeing Willmore with Hellena, she demands an account, implicitly trying to enforce the monogamous contract she entered into with him:

“When thou art tame, when all thy rage is past, / And calm as night, thou then may’st wish for me.” (IV.ii.76-77)

This negotiation fails. Her passion is not perceived as an asset to be respected, but as a flaw that justifies her abandonment. Her ultimate attempt to regain control involves offering Willmore money to stay, completely reversing the power dynamic: she, the high-priced courtesan, is offering capital to secure his non-financial commitment.

"Had I one single tear to throw away, / The lavish drop should wait on thee; / But when I weep, I want a thousand Crowns / To hire a Lover that shall ease my Pain." (IV.ii.78-81, adjusted for context)

This statement reveals the complete internalization of the materialist principle: she knows that if she is crying, the only way to genuinely alleviate the pain is to re-engage with the economic system that she betrayed for Willmore. Her final, desperate action is not romantic but financially motivated: she attempts to destroy the man who rendered her capital worthless and threatened her future solvency.

6. The Threat of Devaluation: Age, Competition, and Contingency

Angellica Bianca’s precarity is not merely tied to Willmore’s infidelity but is an existential threat inherent to her profession: the rapid and irreversible devaluation of her core asset (youth and beauty) in a competitive, unforgiving market.

6.1. The Courtesan’s Finite Career and Lack of Futurity

The courtesan’s career, unlike the institution of marriage, lacks futurity. A married woman’s status, and consequently her economic security, is typically fixed and stable until the death of her husband, after which she becomes a secured widow. Angellica’s status, however, is a non-renewable resource, subject to the twin scourges of age and competition.

Angellica herself recognizes this ticking clock in an exchange with Willmore, acknowledging the transient nature of her power:

“You see, sir, that you have not bought a lasting title in me, / only a short possession.” (II.ii.128-129)

This "short possession" underscores the materialist reality: her asset is not capital (fixed investment) but rather high-yield, short-term income subject to rapid obsolescence. As Munns notes, such women must calculate the profitability of their bodies against time, a pressure that the sanctioned women of the marriage plot never face. Federici's critique on the control of women's bodies suggests that even when commodified, the female body remains capital controlled by external market forces. The moment a newer, younger courtesan appears, Angellica’s thousand-crown price point becomes unsustainable. Her high price does not grant her security; it only increases the necessary speed of her accumulation before the market drops her.

6.2. The Symbolic Role of the Mask and Public Identity

The setting of the Carnival, where masks allow the heiresses temporary anonymity and freedom to pursue their desires outside of male control, ironically reinforces Angellica’s lack of social options. For Florinda and Hellena, the mask is a tool of agency—a temporary shield of obscurity allowing them to enter the masculine circles of desire without penalty.

For Angellica, the opposite is true. She cannot wear the mask; she must display her face, her portrait, and her price publicly to conduct her business. Her identity is not a hidden asset to be protected but a marketed brand to be advertised. The privacy and anonymity the mask offers the aristocratic women is denied to her, forcing her into a state of hyper-visibility and extreme professional exposure. Her agency, as Rahman defines it, is therefore publicly performed and thus perpetually vulnerable to public judgment and market manipulation. The public knowledge of her affair with Willmore instantly damages her "brand integrity," something Hellena’s secret courtship does not affect. Angellica’s body, her face, and her space are all externalized, publicly available, and therefore, professionally precarious.

6.3. Angellica's Return to the Market vs. Hellena's Exit to Marriage

The play’s structure contrasts the ultimate economic outcome of the two women who defied the conventions: Hellena and Angellica. Hellena's defiance of the convent is rewarded with an exit from the sexual marketplace through a desired marriage, which is a safe conversion of liquid desire into fixed capital and social security. The property transfer remains intact, simply changing hands from her brother to Willmore.

Angellica’s defiance of sexual norms, however, results in a brutal forced re-entry into a market where her capital is damaged. After the failure with Willmore, she has no recourse but to resume her trade, but now at a potentially lower, more desperate price. Her final line of withdrawal is often seen as a tragic resignation:

"I will not curse, nor waste a wish, or prayer, / But that I may be gone far, far from hence, / Where I may never see that object more.” (V.i.330-332)

This departure signals her retreat to the only option left: the precarious economic reality of continuing her trade. Her fate confirms the central hypothesis: sanctioned property (marriage) grants stability, while entrepreneurial sexual labor provides only temporary income followed by structural precarity. Angellica’s agency, having been briefly exercised, is exhausted and she is spat out by the very masculine circles she had tried so expertly to negotiate.

7. The Play's Conclusion: Agency Exhausted and the Return to Precarity

The final act of The Rover is not a simple comedic resolution but a chilling confirmation of the Restoration's materialist economy, where unsanctioned female power is violently neutralized and the patriarchal order is re-established through property-based marriage contracts.

7.1. The Failed Act of Violence and Loss of Control (The Pistol Scene)

Angellica’s ultimate moment of agency is simultaneously her greatest failure and the moment her economic precarity becomes fully realized. Armed with a pistol, she confronts Willmore, attempting to murder him for the financial and emotional ruin he has inflicted. This act is the symbolic exhaustion of her power of negotiation (Rahman); having lost all verbal, commercial, and emotional leverage, she is left with only raw physical force.

“I’ll tear my heart out, / But I will see my great revenge upon him. / I will not budge, nor weep, nor stir one foot, / Till I have my revenge! / Draw all your swords, I’m mad!” (V.i.300-304)

The threat of violence is an attempt to enforce the debt—the unpaid thousand crowns, the cost of her reputation—that the law has failed to protect. However, the scene ends with her being disarmed by Bellville and Willmore escaping unharmed. This physical subjugation is the final material statement of the play: the individual female entrepreneur cannot challenge the collective violence and economic immunity of the masculine circles. Her power, derived from attraction, evaporates when confronted by patriarchal fraternity and the property-backed security of her male associates. Her failure to execute her revenge confirms that women operating outside the formal property structure have no means of recourse or justice.

7.2. Bellville's Exit and the Re-establishment of the Patriarchal Order

Bellville and Willmore, despite their predatory behavior, theft, and deceit throughout the Carnival, exit the play not only unscathed but celebrated and successfully married. This confirms Federici's argument that the emerging capitalist patriarchy grants impunity to the male controllers of capital and labor. Bellville, who stole Angellica's labor, is rewarded with a fixed, wealthy wife (Florinda), thereby solidifying his own financial future.

This contrast is central to Behn’s critique. The play suggests that the male license to "rove"—to consume, discard, and default on debt—is built into the social structure. The men's freedom is contingent on the structural precarity of women like Angellica, who absorb the economic and emotional risk of the sexual market. As soon as the revelry ends, Bellville and Willmore seamlessly transition back into the respectable, propertied class, leaving Angellica to bear the full cost of the transgression. Their ability to shed their libertine roles and claim property-holding wives confirms that the "masculine circles" always prioritize self-preservation and the maintenance of inherited capital above individual morality or contractual honor.

7.3. The Restoration of the Marriage Plot as Capitalist Resolution

The final scene, featuring the triple marriage of Florinda/Bellville, Hellena/Willmore, and Valeria/Frederick, is the ultimate capitalist resolution of the dramatic conflict. The marriages are not merely happy endings; they are legal contracts that efficiently distribute wealth, secure lineage, and stabilize property.

The marriage plot affirms the superiority of fixed capital (dowry, inheritance) over liquid capital (Angellica’s cash earnings). It symbolically re-encloses the women into the prescribed roles of wives and producers of heirs, thereby ensuring the continuation of the patriarchal, property-based economic system. Angellica's exclusion from this final tableau is essential. She represents the uncontained commodity, the failure of the market to successfully incorporate female labor without securing it within the walls of property. Her precarity, therefore, is not a failure of character, but a structural necessity—she must be marginalized for the capitalist-patriarchal system, symbolized by the three happy marriages, to fully re-assert itself.

8. Comparative Analysis: Materialist Readings of Women in The Rover

Behn's genius lies in presenting not a monolithic view of "woman," but an economic spectrum of female existence, allowing a powerful materialist comparison between the protected heiress and the exposed courtesan.

8.1. Florinda's Exchange Value vs. Angellica's Use Value

The materialist lens highlights the fundamentally different ways in which Florinda and Angellica are valued in the economy:

1. Florinda (Exchange Value): Florinda is valuable because she is fixed, inherited property with an attached dowry. Her value is stable, transferable, and legally recognized. She is the exchangeable asset in the marriage market, destined to be traded between her brother and Don Vincentio, and eventually to Bellville. Her "use" is the production of male heirs and the perpetuation of the family name, all secured by law. She is an instrument of long-term fixed capital accumulation.

2. Angellica (Use Value): Angellica is valuable because she provides immediate, personalized pleasure for a high price. Her value is entirely liquid, volatile, and non-transferable. She is a high-risk, high-return enterprise. She is an instrument of short-term consumption.

The play demonstrates that Exchange Value always triumphs over Use Value in the Restoration's core economic structure. Florinda, despite being nearly raped multiple times due to the pursuit of her exchange value, ends up secure and legally protected. Angellica, who fiercely defends her use value and her control over the transaction, ends up ruined and vulnerable, confirming Fraser’s insistence that economic security requires control over the means of social reproduction, not just the right to sell one's labor.

8.2. The Social Marginalization of Sex Work in the Neapolitan Festival

The Neapolitan festival setting, as noted by the Techne TeacherHub, is crucial for its geographical and spatial politics. While the Carnival is a space of temporary transgression for the male rakes and the masked heiresses, it is Angellica’s permanent economic environment.

Her place of business—a public balcony with her portrait—marks her as spatially marginalized. She is literally elevated above the street-level flow of the wealthy men, giving her a momentary appearance of superiority, but also placing her outside the city's respectable, sanctioned spaces. The heiresses, even in disguise, remain grounded in the social space of the Carnival crowd, able to mingle and eventually return home to their secure patriarchal houses. Angellica can never return to a "home" that offers her social stability. Her space is transactional and provisional, tied entirely to her business.

This marginalization reinforces the precarity of sex work. The courtesan is necessary for the men’s freedom and sexual expression (their "rove"), yet she must be kept socially external to the core institution (marriage) that validates the men's social status. Her high price is simply the spatial and social exclusion premium charged to the buyers.

8.3. Behn's Critique and its Legacy for Feminist Materialism

Aphra Behn, as the first professional woman playwright in England, understood the brutal economics of female autonomy. Her portrayal of Angellica Bianca is not merely a romantic tragedy; it is an early modern materialist critique of nascent capitalism.

By drawing the sharp distinction between the fates of Angellica and Hellena, Behn demonstrates that freedom for women is not an abstract philosophical concept but an economic condition. She anticipates Federici by showing how the female body, divorced from inherited property, becomes raw, transient capital subject to devastating market forces. She anticipates Fraser by illustrating how individual, transactional "success" (Angellica’s high price) can coexist, and even depend upon, the structural, systemic precarity of women who lack control over social reproduction (i.e., marriage and lineage).

Angellica Bianca's story serves as Behn’s final, bitter commentary on the Restoration: the illusion of the "she-trader" operating independently is just that—an illusion. Any power gained is temporary, non-transferable, and subject to immediate and total exhaustion the moment a man's non-market desire clashes with the woman's fragile market contract. Behn forces her audience to recognize that the pursuit of economic autonomy, when uncoupled from property and legal sanction, is a high-stakes, precarious game that few women can win.

9. Conclusion

This paper set out to explore how a materialist feminist reading of Aphra Behn’s The Rover reveals Angellica Bianca's agency to be structurally precarious, and what the contrast between the marriage plot and the sexual economy suggests about female economic survival in the Restoration. The hypothesis—that Angellica’s power is an unstable form of economic liquidity that ultimately collapses in the face of sanctioned, property-based marriage—has been confirmed through close textual analysis and theoretical synthesis.

The initial grandeur of Angellica, as symbolized by her "thousand crowns" price, establishes her as a sophisticated commodity of luxury consumption (Section 3). Yet, this high price, analyzed through Federici's critique of primitive accumulation, is exposed as liquid, volatile capital that grants her immediate purchasing power but no social or legal futurity. Her decision to trade money for Willmore's sentiment represents the fundamental economic flaw in her business model: the failure to protect her enterprise from the non-market, reproductive forces of genuine emotion (Section 5).

The precariousness of her position is further demonstrated by her status outside the "masculine circles" of legal protection (Rahman). Her free contract with Willmore is easily nullified by his financial default and his patriarchal impunity (Section 4). Her labor—sexual, emotional, and relational—is not just undervalued, but outright stolen. Furthermore, the inherent devaluation of her core asset (beauty and youth), as highlighted by Munns, places her on a terrifying, finite career clock, underscoring the contrast with Hellena's safe exit to property-backed marriage (Section 6).

The play’s climactic ending is a stark materialist lesson (Section 7). The disarming of Angellica in the pistol scene is the symbolic neutralization of unsanctioned female power, confirming that individual violence cannot overcome the collective, systemic violence of the patriarchal, capitalist order. The restoration of the marriage plot and the successful transfer of property among the male rakes and the heiresses reinforces the play’s final, sobering economic lesson: fixed capital (marriage) is secure; liquid, self-made capital (courtesanship) is disposable.

Angellica Bianca is Behn's tragic, powerful figurehead for the economic anxiety of the emerging capitalist age. She is the necessary collateral damage, the symbol of the woman who dares to demand market value for her own personhood but is ultimately crushed by the lack of institutional and legal support. Her story is Behn’s enduring legacy to feminist materialism: a profound argument that agency divorced from property is not freedom, but merely high-risk, structural precarity.

References:

• A prostitute as the unsung heroine in Aphra Behn's The Rover

• Aphra Behn. The Rover, or, The Banished Cavaliers. 1677. Public Library UK, [link to PDF version provided previously]. PDF.The Rover, or, The Banish'd Cavaliers - Public Library UK

• Negotiating Masculine Circles: Female Agency in Aphra Behn's Work

• Rape and the Female Subject in Aphra Behn's "The Rover"

• Shadow and Substance in Aphra Behn's The Rover: The Semiotics of Restoration PerformanceBehn, Aphra. 

• The Rover (Part I) - Project Gutenberg

• https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/21339/pg21339-images.html