The Ravishing Restoration: Aphra Behn, Violence, and Comedy

Aphra Behn used theatre as a forum to highlight complex social issues, particularly those regarding gender roles, sugarcoated within the genre of comedy.  Inequality for women, forced marriage, the sexual double standard, and the perils of female powerlessness are themes to which Behn returns repeatedly.  She kept her audiences captivated with clever plots and witty dialogue, beautiful poetry and sophisticated intellectual arguments, inventive use of staging and risqué romantic scenarios.  It was from this platform that Behn drew attention to violence and injustice against women.

Nine of Aphra Behn's plays include scenes of sexual coercion, equating to almost half of her dramatic work, indicating her preoccupation with seduction, domination and victimization, and the artistic representation of ravishment.  Simultaneously, she appears both a feminist in her compassion for the powerless and oppressed, and anti-feminist in her seemingly cavalier return to the status quo.  Most importantly, Behn is unique in the means by which she portrays attempted rape in her comedies, and how her treatment differs from her contemporaries.   The Ravishing Restoration delves deeply into how and why Behn utilizes sexual violence in her plays, and critiques the critical impact that her scenes have in shaping and defining the comedy of intrigue genre.   It assesses how her creations are unique, complex, visual dynamics performances, and would be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of theatre, seventeenth-century English literature, and women's studies.
 
 
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