Dorimant of The Man of Mode defines the rake-hero.  Cunning, self-righteous, and manipulative, he is the puppeteer controlling the other characters and the plot.  Man of Mode's power hierarchy is based on wit, of which Dorimant has the most.

Willmore is the bumbling anti-hero of The Rover who is greatly disempowered under Behn's feminist critique of the rake.

The reopening of English playhouses sparked the creation of a new comedic genre that ushered in the era’s appreciation for bawdy.  Drama often attempts to capture onstage the current social transitions and movements of the time; in this way, the Restoration comedies portrayed the evolving sexual openness of the time that replaced the era of Cromwell’s protectorate, which was distinguished by its relative emphasis on morality and Puritan ideals.  English playwrights of the Restoration formed the character of the rake to encapsulate this sexual openness into one character.  John Traugott’s comments on the rake capture the sentiments that many Restoration-era play-goers likely felt as they watched the rake interact onstage: “He would seem to have conquered life.  What a hero!  Play, charm, will: what does it all add up to but perfect freedom?” (383).  While lovers of the rake celebrated the stage’s portrayal of “lewdness” over “love,” moral crusaders rebuked the very same transition.

Dorimant is a dangerous character to Restoration society because of the absolute power he exerts.  Simply put, Dorimant is so powerful simply because his intellect is so much greater than the other characters, with the exception of Harriet.  See Addison's comments on the dangers of the rake character to society, as well as Beetham's on the rake as a social cancer.

To the contrary, Behn sought to shift this power hierarchy that is so ingrained in Etherege's work.  Behn’s shift in the power hierarchy of Restoration comedy was indeed by design.  Burke notes that by the late 1670’s, Charles II had experienced several political failures and his reputation as a libertine was casting a shadow on the “myth of the noble cavalier” (120).  Far from what Etherege conveyed in Dorimant, the rake’s reputation was in trouble, and Behn sought to transform the male-dominated power scenario in The Rover, at least without ruffling too many feathers in her audience.  Whereas Etherege’s rake triumphs because of his intelligence, breeding, and wit, Behn’s rakes triumph by luck.  Behn formed what Burke refers to as a “feminist critique” of the rake, specifically by giving greater power to Angellica and Hellena in their coercion against Willmore: “the theatre spectators… get to laugh at the cavalier as he moves around the stage pursued by the two angry women” (Burke 121).  Part of the humor in The Rover is in watching Willmore, the bumbling fool driven only by his sexual appetite, quiver as he must answer to both of the women in his love triangle.

The Rover's plot centers on Hellena's reversal of normal gender power structures

PRIMARY SOURCES:

"Hints for a Young Married Woman" - Joseph Addison

Addison argues that contrary to popular belief at the time, a reformed rake does not make a good husband.  In fact, there can be no such thing as a reformed rake because by the time a rake "reforms" and chooses marriage over his carousing ways, the damage of libertinism has irrevocably taken its toll on his character.

"Head of a Young Heir" - Edward Beetham

Rakes and libertines in general were seen as a social cancer by many contemporary moral commentators.  In this lecture, Beetham describes how the possession of a substantial inheritance can turn even a modest young man into an unrestrained sexual pest, wreaking havoc on society.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Burke, Helen M. "The Cavalier myth in The Rover." The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn. Ed. Derek Hughes and Janet Todd. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004. 118-134.

• Most notably, Burke argues that Behn offers a "feminist critique" of the rake-hero character in Willmore by portraying him as bumbling and foolish.  Furthermore, male-female power roles are swapped as a result of masquerade, which Burke refers to as a "carnivalesque inversion."  Behn's early disdain for the dominant rake figure would become the norm by the eighteenth century.

Traugott, John. "The Rake's Progress from Court to Comedy: A Study in Comic Form.” Studies in English Literature 6 (1966):  381-407.

• Traugott takes stock of the rake figure in many Restoration dramas, but most notably in The Man of Mode.  He argues that the play's hierarchy is based on wit, with Dorimant at the top and thus supremely controlling the plot and characters.

Hume, Robert D. The Rakish Stage: Studies in English Drama, 1660-1800. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1983.

• Hume offers an excellent typology of the rake figure, specifically with regard to Dorimant and the "vicious rake" genre, which includes Horner.

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