Women’s War Drama in England in the Seventeenth Century By Bre ...

Taking advantage of the moral relativity suggested by Hobbes, many playwrights in this period, as Chernaik stresses, wrote plays that reflected “the view, ultimately derivable from Hobbes, that man is a power-seeking animal and that life in society is defined by ruthless, unending competition”.²⁸ Sometimes, as Chernaik points out, libertinism seemed closer to Epicureanism. There are rakes and rovers in Restoration comedy; Behn’s Willmore is a rover, yet there is no real malice in him. As Chernaik argues, “It is entirely characteristic of each to mistake a virtuous woman for a whore, since to them all women are alike and no opportunity should be neglected”.²⁹ When Hobbes wrote, “There being no Obligation on any man, which ariseth not from some Act of his own; for all men equally, are by Nature Free”, he seemed to exonerate man from responsibility for his actions.³⁰ Behn would also have agreed with his political views, and she developed and adapted his theories on moral relativity by extolling the rakish Cavalier in plays such as The Rover and The City Heiress.

Summary of Chapters

Chapter 1 provides a textual and contextual introduction to the plays and then moves on to look at the events that had an influence on the lives and the writing of the dramatists. It argues that the war had a huge impact on Margaret Cavendish and her two stepdaughters (Jane Cavendish and Elizabeth Brackley), as well as on Katherine Philips and Aphra Behn. Often when the Civil War is spoken of, the big battles are commemorated, but historians such as Claire Tylee point out that the important work done “behind the lines” is usually ignored and “the focus is on male experience at the battlefront”.³¹ The Cavendish sisters were left in dangerous and volatile circumstances, and the female community that they forged was unique. Unfortunately, their experiences are not privileged or valued in history, sociology, or literary criticism. Nina Auerbach has observed that “Initiation into a band of brothers is a traditional privilege symbolized by uniforms, rituals, and fiercely held loyalties…but sisterhood…looks often like a blank exclusion”.³² As a result, women’s war testimonies tend to be disregarded and overlooked. This study goes “behind the lines” and highlights the sort of battles that were being fought on the domestic front.