Caroline Kulak 1

Comedy of Manners Final Paper

Separating Woman: Critical Examination of Female Comedic Typing

In an effort to avoid any hackneyed generalization as introduction, this paper will

proceed directly to its purpose: the examination of what are arguably western fiction’s

most notable feminine archetypes within the context of theatrical comedy. The dichotomy

at hand is that of innocence and experience, 1 purity and stain, in other words, of Ingénue

and Adventuress. A pair of rivals inescapable in western culture, present in works from

Shakespeare’s Cymbeline to Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me”, the ingénue and the

adventuress together present the true essence of the western woman, in whom both

chastity and promiscuity, virtue and vice are realized. In the realm of fiction, these

qualities are fantastically separated from their real-life mélange, leaving behind the two

aforementioned types. The history of comedy is a tale of the reunion of ingénue and

adventuress in a single woman, with modern works seeking to resolve the ancient

separation and categorization of multifarious expressions of female sexuality.

From whence come the ingénue and adventuress? Like a majority of common

theatrical tropes, their insistence in artistic media is by virtue of their existence at the very

beginning of the dramatic project in ancient Greece. Historians divide Greek Comedy

into three chronologically defined discrete periods: Old, Middle, and New Comedy. Old

Comedy, produced between 486 and 400 B.C.E. is characterized as “brash and bawdy”,

New Comedy on the other hand is “focused on family affairs (parent-child conflicts,

adultery, and jealousy), [featuring] stock characters . . . and simple plots”; the not-often-

discussed Middle Comedy is a transitional amalgamation of the two.2

1
Reference to William Blake entirely intended.
2
Romanska, Magda, and Alan Ackerman, eds. “Antiquity and the Middle Ages.” In Reader in Comedy,
17–32. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017.
 Caroline Kulak 2
Comedy of Manners Final Paper

The adventuress is the product of the Old Comedy period, during which plays “[put]

particular stress on the heroine, who may hold the key to the successful conclusion of the

plot, and who may be disguised as a boy”.3 The ‘heroine’ described is a progenitor of the

adventuress. Both heroine and adventuress are females of power as indicated by the

heroine’s ‘key’ role, a function that persists in the equally non-passive and involved

adventuress. The heroine prototype does however lack certain defining characteristics of

the fully developed adventuress, namely the latter’s (assumed or explicit) various sexual

partners. That said, the aforementioned ‘disguised as a boy’ plot device may subtly

indicate the heroine as having a more masculine-typed “aggressive and promiscuous”

expression of sexuality.4

By contrast, the ingénue is the invention of New Comedy, which “stresses [a] young

man’s efforts to overcome obstacles . . . to his winning of the young woman of his

choice”.5 In this familiar plot structure, woman is a prize to be won, fulfilling the

feminine-typed role of helplessness and foil to the expression of masculinity that is her

suitor’s quest. This is the incipient example of the ingénue, though the intense emphasis

on her virtue that marked so many comedies of the renaissance and baroque époques had

yet to develop.

The cultural environ of these emergent types in Ancient Greece instated the

expectation of “constraints . . . viewed as necessary for an ideal female sex role”.6 In the

3
Cavell, Stanley. “Introduction: Words for a Conversation.” In Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood
Comedy of Remarriage. Harvard University Press, 1981.
4
Apte, Mahadev L. “Sexual Inequality in Humor.” In Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach,
67–81. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985.
5
Cavell, Stanley. “Introduction: Words for a Conversation.” In Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood
Comedy of Remarriage. Harvard University Press, 1981.
6
Apte, Mahadev L. “Sexual Inequality in Humor.” In Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach,
67–81. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985.
 Caroline Kulak 3
Comedy of Manners Final Paper

Athenian society in which comedy developed, women were already classed as a second

tier populace, barred from participating not just in the creation of a dramatic work but

also from political life and other modes of a citizen’s self actualization (e.g. philosophical

debate in the agora). Thus it follows entirely logically that these values carried over into

the creation of comic types. Anthropologist Mahadev Apte argues “prevalent cultural

values . . . [which] emphasize male superiority and dominance together with female

passivity . . . create role models for women in keeping with such values and attitudes”.7

In an effort to reproduce the gender hierarchy of “male dominance” and “female

passivity” in the domain of reality, the male authors of Athenian comedy included it in

their works of fiction. This effort involved the writing of female “role models” who

endorse the constraint of female docility. Hence derives the ingénue, in keeping with the

trend of female representations that “emphasize modesty, virtue, and passivity”.8

To what does the western comedic tradition owe more specific aspects of the

ingénue and adventuress? For instance, why is the ingénue perennially associated with

youth while the adventuress is often (though not always) older? The answer again lies in

cultural construction of gender. Ethnographies from around the world indicate that in the

vast majority of cultures (including western) subject adolescent girls to “the convention

that young women should be modest in their behavior and speech in public”.9 It is this

“convention” of modesty, a veiling and rejection of one’s fledgling sexuality

characteristic of the ingénue type that relates her with youth. In opposition to the ingénue,

the adventuress, notable for her sexual experience, is written of at least somewhat more

advanced age due to the time seen as required to accumulate this experience. The greater
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
 Caroline Kulak 4
Comedy of Manners Final Paper

age of the adventuress also indicates a sexual expiry. She is closer to menopause, at

which point women are “considered to be sexless”.10 Paradoxically, this proximity to the

age of sexlessness allows the adventuress to be a more sexual being, since her sexuality is

not seen as being of as much value (and thus as worthy of scrutiny and restriction) as that

of the younger ingénue.

In order to enhance exploration of the types investigated, this paper will proceed

into a dual case study of ingénue and adventuress in full dramatic context. Moliere’s

L’Ecole des Femmes (transl. The School for Wives) provides fertile ground for the

scrutiny of the ingénue while Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband contributes a

quintessential specimen of the adventuress.

The subject of Moliere’s L’Ecole des Femmes is synthetically created innocence.

The plot revolves around the machinations of Arnolphe, an aging French gentleman who

aspires to create a wife of “virtuous and modest ignorance” by raising an otherwise poor

girl as his sheltered ward until she reaches marriageable age.11 Young gallant Horace,

who woos the innocent Agnés in chivalrous fashion, threatens Arnolphe’s plans. In

reflection on her interaction with Horace, Agnés contemplates, “how strange the joy one

feels from all this [Horace’s chivalry]; up to this time I was ignorant of such things”.12 In

classic example of ingénue-ry, Agnés demonstrates her ignorance of sexual matters.

Though unusual due to its controlled origin at the hands of Arnolphe, this is the result

aforementioned constraint of modesty. Here Agnes communicates an as yet unmentioned

essential aspect of the ingénue type: romanticism. In contrast to the hardened worldview

10
Ibid.
11
Molière. “The School for Wives.” In The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and Other Plays, translated by Maya
Slater, Reissue edition., 1–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
12
Ibid.
 Caroline Kulak 5
Comedy of Manners Final Paper

of the adventuress, the ingénue has a naïveté allowing her to see “joy” and sentiment in a

coupling.

Moliere continues to establish Agnés within the type of ingénue as Arnolphe

instructs Agnés: “if you stain your honor, it will become as black as coal. You will seem

hideous to all, and one day you will become the devil's own property, and boil in hell to

all eternity”.13 This directive makes explicit the societal expectation that enforces the

ingénue type, adding a religious aspect that developed in Renaissance comedy. The

ingénue and its depiction of female pre-marital innocence received a new proponent in

the form of the church. Though Molière criticizes the religious institution in his work,

notably in Tartuffe, he writes Arnolphe as one of its advocates to express the character’s

endorsement of the sexual mores that produce the ingénue. As Arnolphe further ‘schools’

Agnés, he orders her to read a maxim stating, “amongst [a woman’s] furniture, however

she dislikes it, there must be neither writing−desk, ink, paper, nor pens . . . everything

written in the house should be written by the husband”.14 This maxim starkly expresses

the disempowerment that accompanies a fulfillment of an ingénue role. Though this

maxim specifically refers to the conduct of a good wife, it does apply to the ingénue as

Arnolphe seeks to maintain Agnés’ “virtuous and modest ignorance” beyond

maidenhood.

In the final act of the play, Agnés rebels against the expectations of eternal

ingénue-dom as Arnolphe’s wife, asking, “Do you think I flatter myself so far as not to

know in my own mind that I am an ignoramus? I am ashamed of myself . . . I do not wish

13
Ibid
14
Ibid
 Caroline Kulak 6
Comedy of Manners Final Paper

to pass any longer for a fool”.15 Here Agnés modifies Arnolphe’s idealized concept of

“virtuous and modest ignorance” to cast it in a negative light. She begins to throw off the

role of the ingénue, expressing a desire for self-improvement and rebellion against the

previously mentioned “passivity” that demarcates the ingénue. However, this rebellion

against type only goes so far. Agnés’ plot-concluding marriage with Horace conveniently

keeps her from any attempt to mitigate her sexual ignorance outside the bounds of what is

acceptable under patriarchy, namely heterosex between married persons. Thus the status

quo is reinstated and the type of ingénue remains intact, though not without a glimmer of

the subversion of that accompanies many of its more modern appearances.

The adventuress of An Ideal Husband is announced via stage direction in

thoroughly typed manner; playwright Oscar Wilde writes that she “makes great demands

on one’s curiosity”.16 She is Mrs. Cheveley, a Vienna socialite returned to London to

blackmail and endanger the reputation of the titular husband, thus protecting her

monetary interest in the fictional “Argentine Canal Scheme”. She is quick in proving no

ingénue, explicitly declaring “I want to talk business” in Act I.17 This demanding request

is typical of the adventuress, who like her predecessor the heroine is self-empowered to

advance the plot (i.e. to ‘talk business’). She similarly wastes no time in conveying a

sexual past. When the husband Robert Chiltern inquires of a mutual friend, “ did you

know Baron Arnheim well?” Cheveley answers, “Intimately”, earlier having quipped

“the baron taught me [fairness] . . . amongst other things” .18 Besides these one liners

being an exemplary demonstration of Wilde’s quick wit, they manage to communicate a

15
Ibid.
16
Wilde, Oscar. “An Ideal Husband.” In Plays of Oscar Wilde, 1 edition., 219–343. Vintage, 2010.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
 Caroline Kulak 7
Comedy of Manners Final Paper

mysterious and sensual past for Mrs. Cheveley, namely by way of what is left unsaid. She

continues to convey her sexuality in the manner throughout the play, remarking in Act II

“I have never read a blue book. I prefer books . . . in yellow covers”. To understand this

joke requires knowledge of the Victorian definition of a ‘blue’ or “yellow” book. The

blue book refers to an “annually revised publication listing notable persons . . . those

listed are considered leaders of the English-speaking world in the arts and sciences,

business, government, and the professions”.19 By contrast “the yellow dust jacket

denoted either risqué French fiction or popular novels”.20 By consuming this “yellow

book” content, Mrs. Cheverly further transgresses from the societal expectation for

women, as exemplified by the ingénue, by realizing both sexuality and self-edification

(via literacy and book choice) in one stroke.

Though she exudes its essence throughout the play, Mrs. Cheveley’s fulfillment

of the adventuress type reaches an apogee in Act III as she asserts, “romance should

never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement”.21

Here is the reverse of Agnés’ “joy” at the gallantry of Horace: an emotional devaluing of

coupledom and disbelief in the sentimentality of love. As Cheveley uses relationships

like that with the deceased Baron Arnheim for (presumably monetary settlement) she

gives body to the typing of the adventuress as cavalier toward sexual union. This feature

of the adventuress emphasizes the patriarchal nature of the type as it frames a

promiscuously sexual woman as cold and unfeeling, thus weakening her appeal and the

appeal of a sexually promiscuous lifestyle. As Cheveley is foiled in her blackmail at the

19
“The Blue Book.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., August 10, 2009.
20
Ledger, Sally. “Wilde Women and The Yellow Book: The Sexual Politics of Aestheticism and
Decadence.” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 50, no. 1 (January 22, 2007): 5–26.
21
Wilde, Oscar. “An Ideal Husband.” In Plays of Oscar Wilde, 1 edition., 219–343. Vintage, 2010.
 Caroline Kulak 8
Comedy of Manners Final Paper

play’s conclusion, she returns to Vienna in a social exile, not unlike the consistent

experience of exile that a non-fictional woman of multiple sex partners experiences under

western patriarchy.

In the 20th century playwrights began to challenge the rigidity of the ingénue and

adventuress types. Almost 75 years after the publication of Wilde’s final work The

Importance of Being Earnest there premiered a similarly absurd farce from another

homosexual male comedic playwright. That play was Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw, a

situation comedy that builds on Wilde’s suggestion of constructed identity in plays like

earnest and extends it to his ingénue and adventuress. The piece at first appears to by the

rules of the types but goes on to subvert them, evidencing of the modern continuation,

subversion, and interplay of these two types.

The incident that sets the plot moving is the attempt of psychiatrist Dr. Prentice to

seduce his new secretary, the young and innocent Geraldine Barclay. As she submits to

his outlandish suggestions, including almost painfully lecherous suggestion that she

disrobe, Geraldine responds in typical ingénue manner declaring “I’ve never undressed in

front of a man before”, assuring Prentice, “I’ll be delighted to help you in any way I can

doctor”.22 This language mirrors that of Agnés who says to Arnolphe “Oh how greatly I

am obliged to you”. Unlike Agnés, Geraldine’s character develops to reveal that she

understood the sexual nature of she and the doctor’s interaction, as Agnés never could.

When interrogated about the circumstance she reveals that she’d earlier denied what

occurred because “wives are angry if they find their husbands have undressed and

22
Orton, Joe. “What the Butler Saw.” In The Complete Plays of Joe Orton, 1st Grove Weidenfeld
evergreen ed edition., 363–448. New York: Grove Press, 1994.
 Caroline Kulak 9
Comedy of Manners Final Paper

seduced a girl”.23 Here Geraldine knowingly deceives out of concern for another

woman’s feelings, a notion disallowed by patriarchy, which endorses only competition

between women to win male sexual attention. Geraldine’s lie is the first evidence of

subversion of the ingénue type, since the ingénue traditionally is a character of such

moral standard that she could not lie in this manner.

In Act Two, a second psychologist, Dr. Rance, makes the supposition that

Geraldine “may be a nymphomaniac”.24 Though there was no concrete proof to suggest

this were true, the accusation is evidence of an emergent variability of sexual identity. A

woman is no longer thought to be innately pure ingénue or promiscuous adventuress, but

the true nature of identity as constructed is revealed. In Prentice and Rance’s disparate

perceptions of Geraldine, ranging from ultimate purity (a vision constructed in part by

Geraldine herself) to the apex of promiscuous roles that is the nymphomaniac, there

comes the subtextual message that even the male patriarchal eye is unsure of how to

sexually categorize women within it’s own system. Despite the above expressed

unconscious masculine of support of fluidity of female identity, there remains a male fear

that freedom from socio-sexual constraint ‘may disrupt social order, hence [male] desire

to control women’s sexuality”.25 This fear is the ultimate driver behind the persistence of

the ingénue/adventuress divide into the modern day. As men continue to dominate the

world of comedy, both digital and corporeal, the critical theorist’s course is to examine

the presence and role of these patriarchal types in new media. Knowledge is the only way

to unseat these deeply held types, as old as the tradition of comedy itself. That said, as

23
Ibid.
24
Ibid.
25
Apte, Mahadev L. “Sexual Inequality in Humor.” In Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological
Approach, 67–81. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985.
 Caroline Kulak 10
Comedy of Manners Final Paper

comedy advances, the ingénue and adventuress continue to be deconstructed, reflecting

the more complex reality of the actual un-typed woman.

Bibliography

Apte, Mahadev L. “Sexual Inequality in Humor.” In Humor and Laughter: An

Anthropological Approach, 67–81. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press,
1985.

Cavell, Stanley. “Introduction: Words for a Conversation.” In Pursuits of Happiness: The

Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage, 1–44. Harvard University Press, 1981.

Ledger, Sally. “Wilde Women and The Yellow Book: The Sexual Politics of
Aestheticism and Decadence.” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 50,
no. 1 (January 22, 2007): 5–26.

Molière. “The School for Wives.” In The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and Other Plays,
translated by Maya Slater, Reissue edition., 1–72. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008.

Orton, Joe. “What the Butler Saw.” In The Complete Plays of Joe Orton, 1st Grove
Weidenfeld evergreen ed edition., 363–448. New York: Grove Press, 1994.

Romanska, Magda, and Alan Ackerman, eds. “Antiquity and the Middle Ages.” In
Reader in Comedy, 17–32. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017.

“The Blue Book.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., August 10,
2009.

Wilde, Oscar. “An Ideal Husband.” In Plays of Oscar Wilde, 1 edition., 219–343.
Vintage, 2010.