The Rover Ending

Who doesn’t love a happy end? The great celebration, komos, at the end of a movie never ceases to make me happy. Whether it’s the princess finding her true love, like in The Little Mermaid, or it’s the reconciliation of the family, like The Parent Trap, happy endings are one of the best ways to end a story. At the end of The Rover, we see the characters coming together and divide themselves off into the pairings they want to be in. Florinda marries Belvile, Helena agrees to marry Willmore, and Pedro, Hellena and Florinda’s brother, accepts the fact that his sisters completely went against their father’s wishes for the sake of happiness (Behn 720-722; act 5). Then all the other characters begin to celebrate and everything seems to be just fine. However, what if the ending seems a bit rushed? A couple of events before this sort of memory wipe of all the other past
In fact, him saving her from being raped is how they first met. Later on when they set up to meet each other. Florinda appears scantily clad and waiting for her precious Belvile to come and fool around with her (Behn 704-705; 3.5) Unfortunately it is not Belvile that comes out to see Florinda. Instead, a drunken Willmore, a pirate, comes out and believes that Florinda is a prostitute and attempts to convince her to have sex with him (ibid). Since he is in a drunken state, his anger starts to slowly boil and he becomes more forceful with Florinda, turning consensual sex into an attempted rape. Florinda is saved by Belvile coming in and claiming Florinda as his, making Florinda his property. The ownership of Florinda is respected by Willmore and he backs off. However, if Belvile never claimed her, then there is a large chance that Florinda could have been raped. The same ownership of Florinda is respected later in the play when Florinda shows up at the wrong place at the wrong time, Blunt’s chamber (713-715;