Womens Role in William Congreves The Way of the World - Movie Review Example

Women’s Role in Congreve’s “The Way of the World” 2006 William Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700) depicts a society transforming from feudalism to capitalism. The women are most typically portrayed as representative of the clash of cultures. Lady Wishfort, a wealthy spinster, is the last remnant of a feudal society, in which the family name and control of wealth matters the most. Millamart, her niece, is at the cross-roads between the two cultures, unable to let go of the luxurious life that feudalism provided yet prone to be manipulative to get what she wants. Mrs. Fainall, Lady Wishfort’s daughter, portrays the degenerated side of feudalism, plotting and scheming against her husband whom she had married not out of love but on compulsion. Mrs. Marwood represents the emerging capitalist culture that adopts corrupt practices for materialistic purposes. Written at a time when the Restoration comic drama was out of vogue, Congreve’s play is a satire on the materialistic world and the hypocrisy of the leisurely class of England (Kaplan, 1997). In most Restoration drama, the upper class society is portrayed through a number of deceitful characters through the first part while at the end, all characters but one turns out to draw the sympathy of the audience with one remaining the sole villain (Van Voris, 1958). In this play, however, all the characters are deceitful, each manipulating the other’s greed for money and power. They portray the greed and manipulative tendencies prevalent in the transforming society. However, at the end, Fainall appears the most deceitful and nasty while the others more or less achieve what they had wanted. The play revolves around the marriage of Millamart, the niece of a wealthy spinster, who has been promised a large inheritance in dowry if she married with Lady Wishfort’s (her aunt) consent. Millamart is a strong and extremely intelligent woman and knows how to get her way. Mirabell is one of the suitors and plans to overcome the aunt’s disapproval by hook or crook. In the process, he uses all the women around him in his deceitful ploy. In The Way of the World, women control the wealth and hence the society. Men plot and scheme to grab the wealth and women hold their hands in the deceits. Women are not the representative of love and compassion, as typical in Victorian literature, but rather of crude greed. The play was written at a time when industrialization was changing the feudal patterns of the society and it was no longer possible for the men to live just in leisure. The upper classes were increasingly turning against each other and going to the courts over disputes. Much of these disputes were related to matters of property belonging to their wives. The women were being increasingly used as pawns in men’s greedy pursuits of money and power. The leitmotifs of the play are contracts – including prenuptial contracts – between men and women regarding duties of men and women and their relationships. The complicated plot of The Way of the World, involving a mesh of characters, all of whom are highly witty yet prone to play dubious intrigues on each other, may be considered as the precursor of a world of greed and duplicity that we see in the present times. Love and passion play a secondary role in the play. While romantic notions of feminine virtue ruled the world of arts, The Way of the World was a cruel but perhaps a realistic portrayal of upper-class men and women for whom money mean more than love and morals were something that could be easily sacrificed for earthly pleasures. In the play, the women do not think twice while betraying their husbands or having adulterous relationships. Calgreve uses this satire to describe the promiscuous behavior of upper-class people, particularly women, in Europe during the onset of industrial revolution. Mirabell professes to love Millamant genuinely, despite Lady Wishfort’s disapproval. Yet, he does not want to let go of the dowry that would come with Millamant if she marries with her aunt’s blessing. Lady Wishfort, however, wants Millamant to marry her nephew, Sir Witwoud. So, Mirabell plots a ploy that would turn Lady Wishfort’s favors on her. He arranges for his manservant, Waitwell, who has recently married Lady Wishfort’s maidservant Foible without her knowledge, to woo Lady Wishfort in the disguise of Sir Rowland, his uncle. Mirabell himself has spread the rumor that Sir Rowland hates him and wishes to deprive Mirabell of his father’s inheritance by having a male child of his own and Lady Wishfort falls for this story. Lady Wishfort’s daughter, who has received part of her inheritance after her widowhood, is now married to Fainall, who on the other hand has an affair with Mrs. Marwood. Mrs. Fainall, who earlier had an affair with Mirabell and married Fainall fearing that she was pregnant, is disgusted with her husband’s infidelity and joins the plot with Mirabell but Mrs. Marwood overhears her talk with Foible. She tries to influence Lady Wishfort to get Millamant to marry Sir Witwoud so that her entire inheritance goes to Mrs. Fainall that would then be cornered by Mr. Fainall who would eventually leave his wife and marry her. Fainall, however, blackmails Lady Wishfort by telling her that his wife is having an affair with Mirabell and he would not go to court against her on adultery if Lady Wishfort gave her share of the inheritance to him. Even though Mrs. Fainall professes her innocence, Mrs. Marwood convinces Lady Wishfort that it would bring the family disrepute if Fainall really went to court. Lady Wishfort finally agrees to allow Mirabell to marry Millamant and also give her the dowry for saving her from disgrace. To cap it all, Mirabell reveals that Mrs. Fainall had entered into a contract with him handing him all her possessions before she married Fainall. Thus, Mirabell finally manages to marry Millamart along with her dowry, Lady Wishfort gives in to the ploy and Fainall’s villainry is revealed. Through the stream of events, marriage is portrayed as a material contract driven by sheer greed rather than a relationship based on love and trust. Usually, heroes and heroines are depicted in classical literature as virtuous while the villains play the role of deceit and unfaithful. In The Way of the World, it is difficult to brand any character as a hero or a villain since all of them are equally hypocritical and false. To begin with, Mirabell and Millamant draw up a pre-nuptial agreement even before they sort out the matter with Lady Wishfort. The heroine, Millamart, has double standards when she judges her suitors and calculates their worth. Millamant matches Mirabell in wit and the battle of the sexes hot up. She is as vain and snobbish as a woman of her society can be. Millamant is the wittiest of all the women in the play and whenever she comes on stage, Congreve seems to have given his best to coin the cockiest of dialogues (Cambridge History of English and American Literature). Millamant is prone to a high-handed behavior yet, she, in her own way, loves Mirabell as well as she admits to her friend, Mrs. Fainall. Even though Millamant loves Mirabell, she is not above the greed and material lust that the newly capitalist society has such an attraction for. Besides, Millamant is too proud to allow Mirabell to stand up to her. Going beyond the complicated plot of intrigues played by the characters, particularly the women, it is clear that Congreve was trying to portray a society than simply some villainous characters (Van Voris, 1958). The comic element of duplicities of the characters is nothing but a ploy used by the writer to portray his insights into the society. As Van Voris (1958) says, Congreve was a “late baroque playwright, classical in his elaboration of Ciceronian rhetoric and Terence-like intricacy”. The aristocratic characters are not linear but extremely complex. Perhaps the most complex character is Millamant, whose hand in marriage is the core issue of the play. Millamant refuses to acknowledge her love for Mirabell till the very end. Meredith (1877) found in Millamant the “perfect portrait of a coquette, both in her resistance to Mirabel and the manner of her surrender, and also in her tongue”. In the play, even the most criminal part is played by a woman. Mrs. Marwood is an epitome of a criminal mind that leaves no stone unturned to achieve her purpose. Fainall trusts her little even as he has an affair with her. He quite blatantly tells Mrs. Marwood that it was his ploy to use Millamart’s advances to his wife and blackmail him so that he had more money to enjoy in the company of his new lover, Mrs. Marwood. At the end, when she desperately tries to convince Lady Wishfort that Fainall should not be allowed to go to court against his wife, Mrs. Marwood describes how the court would appear to her. She describes vividly how Lady Wishfort would be ushered in and the judges would proceed with her family scandals in all the legal jargon and make naughty interrogations as well as how it would be the talk of the town and could even crop up in the Commons. Mrs. Marwood knows that Lady Wishfort is extremely sensitive about her social position and would try to protect her family’s reputation at any cost. The popular notion of the legal world undoubtedly scares her and marks her decisions (Loftis, 1996). Lady Wishfort is the most tragic of all the women characters in The Way of the World. She is ageing and single, desperate to find a life partner but unwilling to let go of her social status. She detests Mirabell, presumably because of he did not marry her daughter, and is intrigued at the appearance of Sir Rowland (ostensibly Mirabell’s uncle) not for any great love but simply to spite Mirabell and disinherit him of his property. At the end, however, she has to give in to accept Mirabell as Millamant’s husband in order to avert her and her daughter being dragged to court by Fainall. The men in the play understand Lady Wishfort’s weaknesses and use it to blackmail her. According to Holland (1959), Lady Wishfort characterizes the rift between emotions and family relations. While her emotions remain hidden, all the other men and women exploit her apparent concern over the family name for their own purpose. The discrepancy in behavior, which is so typical of a society in transformation, is obvious in Lady Wishcroft’s attitude towards her family and her emotions regarding greed, spite and revenge. The character of Mrs. Fainall has the most twist in the play. At the beginning, it seems she is collaborating with Mirabell perhaps out of her past loyalty towards him or because of her intense hatred for husband who is utterly disloyal to her. What turns the table completely at the table is her “gift of deed” to Mirabell that is revealed only at the last. By this “gift”, she had signed her entire property to Mirabell before she married Fainall. This deed, a sign of the capitalistic society that was turning all human relationships into materialistic, was an effective enough tool for Mirabell to blackmail her. The eighteenth century material society was undergoing a makeover with property relations and exchange overtaking feudal lifestyles. It was no longer possible for the likes of Fainall to sit happily on their wives’ properties when there was all likelihood of legal provisions being used against them. Gender power equations extended beyond the sexual realm to the material world as Mirabell could overpower Mrs. Fainall with his sexual charm as well a legal contract she drew out in her moment of weakness. Fainall represented an age of patronage when landed property was handed down by generations and the institutions of marriage and family were sure enough to gain trust and faithfulness. In the changing society of the eighteenth century, the traditional values and morals were crumbling and greed was becoming the ruling factor of all relationships. The symbolic element of gifts in the age of patronage was giving way to material contracts (Klekar, 2005). In the process, women are the victims of the intrigues based on gender power. Fainall had married Lady Wishfort’s daughter for her money and wants to prevent Millamant’s marriage to Mirabell at any cost so that his wife inherits the entire property. He even wants to leave Mrs Fainall once he comes into her property and marry Mrs. Marwood instead. Mirabell also plans to marry Millamant more for her dowry rather than for love. He has in fact drawn up a pre-nuptial contract with her like he did with Mrs Fainall before walking out of marrying her. Thus women in The Way of the World depict a changing society. Lady Wishfort appears tragic in holding on to the dying feudal character while Mrs. Marwood is the other extreme of a materialistic world in attempting to exploit the Lady. Mrs. Fainall is the epitome of the promiscuity of feudalism, in engaging in adultery yet not ready to bear the repercussions. Millamart is an interesting combination of both cultures, leisurely as a feudal and complexly motivated as one could be in capitalism. Works Cited The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). Volume VIII. The Age of Dryden. http://www.bartleby.com/218/0606.html Loftis, John E., Congreve's Way of the World and Popular Criminal Literature, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 36, No. 3, Restoration and Eighteenth Century (Summer, 1996), pp. 561-578 Van Voris, William, Congreve's Gilded Carousel, Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 10, No. 3, 10th Anniversary Issue (Oct., 1958), pp. 211-217 Holland, Norman, The First Modern Comedies, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1959 Klekar, Cynthia, Fictions of the Gift: Generosity, Obligation, and Economy in Eighteenth Century England, PH.D Thesis submitted to Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University, 2005, retrieved from http://kitkat.wvu.edu:8080/files/4260/Klekar_Cynthia_dissertation.pdf Meredith, George, An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit, The New Quarterly Magazine, April 1877, retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1219/1219-h/1219-h.htm Kaplan, Deborah, "Learning 'to Speak the English Language': The Way of the World on the Twentieth-Century American Stage", Theatre Journal - Volume 49, Number 3, October 1997, pp. 301-321 Read More