Dan Poindexter
ENG 579
09/19/08
“There’s No Sinner like
a Young Saint:” The Metaphoric Subversion of Religion in Behn’s The Rover
It
was not an uncommon thing for English Restoration playwrights to vaguely
satirize religion; however, the popular trend of the age was to tread lightly
around the subject, for the obvious reason that
The first, and most obvious, juxtaposition of religion and eros in the play is presented in the form of a young Spanish maid and Catholic nun-in-training, Hellena. The far from subtle or metaphoric irony presented by Hellena’s character is that she, a girl sentenced to a life of celibacy, is by far the most amorous female role of the play, more explicitly eager to experience the ways of romantic love than the other females. Hellena’s paradoxical situation – that her heightened amorous desires, which are seemingly destined to remain unfulfilled, are professedly the result of her (thus far) sexual repression – is exhibited at the play’s outset in a conversation she has with her sister Florinda:
FLORINDA: “…I have told thee more than thou
understand’st [of love] already.”
HELLENA: “The more’s my grief. I would fain know as much
as you, which makes me so inquisitive….” (591)
Behn prefaces the entire play with this obvious irony, which, relative to the plot, is rather marginal. Though the idea of a lusty nun seems exceptionally sacrilegious, it is a situation that could only occur within the sphere of Catholicism. Through this denominationally exclusive situation, Behn creates a defense within the confines of the Protestant English theatre, allowing herself due commentary on Christianity, while retaining an anti-Catholic safety net. This blatant irony, laid bare at the play’s outset, is decidedly less subtle than the witty sacrilege soon to come from the play’s English characters, who have yet to make their way onstage. Regardless of subtlety, however, what is established in the opening scene is a sense that the appeal of erotic love may trump that of religion for the play’s youth culture – a commonality, it will soon be seen, among characters of any denomination.
Hellena, being also the play’s leading female wit, soon opens the floor for metaphoric sacrilege through her own utterance, saying, “I’ll have a saint of my own to pray to / shortly, if I like any that dares venture on me.” (594) This metaphor, comparing potential male lovers to iconic religious figures contains only a small degree of blasphemy, and while still exclusively Catholic, provides a transition from the play’s initial boldfaced situational irony to more subversive metaphor, a trend that is continued and embellished by the play’s wily rake, the exiled English sea captain, Willmore.
Indeed, Willmore picks up the sacrilege right where Hellena leaves off, telling her in their first encounter, “There’s no sinner like a young saint.” (598) This witty irony strengthens the link between youth and the superior appeal of erotic love, while simultaneously introducing Willmore as the new mouthpiece for clever sacrilege. Though this irreverent statement is still catholicized by a reference to sainthood, the denominational barrier seems to begin crumbling here, mainly because the speaker is an Englishman. From this point forward, the religious rhetoric of the play becomes more intricate and subversive, while subtly moving to encompass a broader, more non-denominational sense of Christianity.
Willmore’s next metaphor springs forth as he attempts to seduce the courtesan Angelica, whose services he lacks the (monetary) currency to purchase. When Angelica, on the brink of being persuaded by Willmore’s silver tongue, reminds him of her “price,”
He replies:
Oh, why dost thou draw me from an awful worship,
By showing thou art no divinity?
Conceal the fiend, and show me all the angel!
Keep me but ignorant, and I’ll be devout
And pay my vows forever at this shrine. (609)
With this jumble of generic Christian imagery, Willmore heightens the level of blasphemy present in the metaphor, likening the object of his amorous intent to a deity – or at the least something worthy of worship. He also possibly suggests, in a very implicit manner, that worshipping anything, deity or otherwise, requires some level of ignorance. Soon Angelica yields to him, and he continues the metaphor, this time incorporating a not-so-subtle sexual innuendo:
…Come, let’s withdraw! Where I’ll renew my
vows – and breath ‘em with such ardor thou shalt
not doubt my zeal. (609)
At this point, the pattern of juxtaposition has developed into a metaphor that is less exclusive, more sophisticated, and more obviously sexual. It is also much more subversive: Willmore utilizes the implicit purity of religious images to achieve a very carnal goal – a strategy which he will utilize again for similar, if not much darker, purposes.
After a night of hard drinking, Willmore sets upon Hellena’s sister Florinda, whom he promptly attempts to rape. Employing a rather dizzying logic, Willmore makes religion the crux of an argument to convince Florinda to allow him to rape her:
…Indeed, should I make love to you, and to you vow fidelity – and swear
and lie till you believed and yielded – that were to make it willful fornication, the crying sin of the nation. Thou art obliged in conscience to deny me nothing. Now – come be kind without any more idle prating. (618)
This ridiculous bit of verbal trickery is the most subversive juxtaposition of Christianity and sex within the play. This is Willmore in his element: base, yet still complex and witty, holding nothing sacred in his pursuit of sexual fulfillment. The absurdity of his argument, however, reveals a fissure between religion and romantic love that before may not have been as obvious.
Perhaps his most telling metaphor, however, is completely devoid of any Christian references. In an odd inversion of the play’s established patterns, Willmore professes to his friends what seems to be a surprisingly genuine love for Hellena:
Dost not see the little wanton god there all gay and smiling? Have I not an air about my face and eyes that distinguish me from the crowd of common lovers? By Heaven, Cupid’s quiver has not half so many darts as her eyes! (611)
Here though, in his nobler (and less sexual) professions, his images are explicitly pagan, even referencing Cupid, the figurehead of erotic love. This inverse metaphor serves to highlight by contrast the juxtapositions of love and religion in the play, simultaneously suggesting that romantic love and organized religion may simply not be compatible.
At the play’s close, Willmore and Helena have decided to marry one another. Behn, having strayed from the shelter of her initial anti-Catholic safeguard, brings the focus back to Helena, the now very much lapsed nun-in-training, who asserts that her inheritance will be “better laid out in love than in religion, and turn / to as good an account.” (643)
Doubtless, Behn does not completely escape
any associations with anti-Christian sentiment, but veils her true colors well,
perhaps well enough to keep them hidden from those narrow-minded audience
members who might take offense to her opinions – at least well enough to
provide herself some kind of out. At any
rate, the starkly self-contradictory juxtapositions Behn places in the mouths
of Hellena and Willmore, the play’s most theatrical (and deceptive) characters,
serve to elucidate her views on the incompatibility of religion and love. Ultimately, since religion and love are necessarily
separate, there must be a choice made between the two. When
Works Cited
Behn, Aphra. “The Rover, or The
Banished Cavaliers.” The
Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century Drama. Ed. J. Douglas Canfield.