Wives, Widows, and Writings in Restoration Comedy PDF

Wives, Widows, and Writings in Restoration Comedy
Author(s): Jon Lance Bacon

Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 , Summer, 1991, Vol. 31, No. 3,
Restoration and Eighteenth Century (Summer, 1991), pp. 427-443
Published by: Rice University
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/450855
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SEl,31(1991)
ISSN 0039-3657
Wives, Widows, and Writings

in Restoration Comedy
JON LANCE BACON
When Harcourt likens mistresses to books in The Country Wife

(1675), William Wycherley employs a common motif of Restoration
comedy: the motif of woman as text. The comparison here is fairly
innocuous, suggesting an experience of potential benefit to the
male "reader" who wants social polish. Harcourt tells Horner, "if
you pore upon them too much, they doze you, and make you unfit
for Company; but if us'd discreetly, you are the fitter for conver-
sation by'em" (I.i.197-99).l Later in the play, however, the motif
indicates a power struggle within marriage. Pinchwife expresses his
belief that "our Wifes," like the "writings" drawn up by usurers,
are "never safe, but in our Closets under Lock and Key" (V.ii.77-78).
Pinchwife's statement is the more typical example of the motif, in
that it links the issue of legal authority-the husband's theoretical
control over his wife-with the question of authorship. The
association of women with writings in Restoration comedy betrays
a contemporary anxiety regarding feminine self-assertion. If women
are books, that is, they are books which may write themselves. The
form taken by male anxiety, in terms of dramatic action, depends
on the legal status of the female characters. To the extent that they
lack legal power, women exert personal power as texts which
demand and often defeat male exegesis.2 Those women who do
possess legal power-embodied, in The Plain-Dealer (1677), by the
Widow Blackacre's written documents-have no identity imposed
on them, so they need not resort to such a strategy of resistance.
This inverse relation between the mystification practiced by wives
and the self-determination enjoyed by widows figures in many
plays of the genre but most prominently in Wycherley's two major
works.
A century after The Plain-Dealer appeared, the woman-as-text
motif remained a component of English stage comedy. The
Jon Lance Bacon, a graduate student at Vanderbilt IUniversity, is completing

a dissertation on Flannery O'Connor.

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428 RESTORATION WIVES AND WIDOWS
malapropisms of The Rivals (1775) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

testify to the persistence of the motif; these errors in diction
frequently create associations between women and language and
occasionally equate women with problematic texts. Mrs. Malaprop
hopes that Sir Anthony Absolute will represent her niece to his son
"as an object not altogether illegible," as something to be
deciphered, in other words (I.ii.341-43).3 Mrs. Malaprop's errors
turn women, including herself, into objects of interpretation: "I'm
quite analysed, for my part!" (IV.ii.289-90). By calling her tongue
"oracular" (III.iii.86), Mrs. Malaprop recalls the obscure messages
of classical deities; her own messages to Sir Lucius O'Trigger,
written under a pseudonym, constitute a "mystery" (V.iii.251). Her
statement that Lydia is "as headstrong as an allegory on the banks
of Nile" (III.iii.238-39) connects the problem of interpretation
with feminine self-assertion, considered a problem by Sir Anthony
as well as Mrs. Malaprop. He calls Lydia's refusal to marry the
man selected for her "the natural consequence of teaching girls to
read" (I.ii.256-57). Literacy, Sir Anthony argues, puts an end to
female submissiveness. Books proved to be "injury sufficient" to
his late wife, and he intends that any successor of hers will be
almost completely illiterate: "were I to choose another help-mate,"
he says, "the extent of her erudition should consist in her knowing
her simple letters, without their mischievous combinations"
(I.ii.276-80). With just enough knowledge to embroider her
husband's initials (I.ii.282-83), such a wife would be merely an
instrument for confirming her husband's identity.
Sir Anthony's view resembles that of Sparkish, the fop in The
Country Wife who believes "a little reading, or learning" makes a
woman "troublesome" (III.ii.230-31). But Sheridan's lighthearted
treatment of female literacy and self-assertion in 1775 lacks the
tension of the seventeenth-century debate over women's status-a
debate which produced not only misogynistic lines of dialogue,
spoken by foolish characters on stage, but also alarmist essays,
written in earnest by Oxford dons. In "The Womans Right Proved
False," part of a manuscript miscellany compiled sometime
between 1674 and 1685, Robert Whitehall expresses fears about a
continuum of personal and legal power where ambitious women
are concerned. Responding to another writer's call for "a greater
equality between Husbands and Wives then is allowed and
practised in England,"4 Whitehall contends that the empowerment
of women within marriage would lead them to arrogate political
and even theological authority to themselves:
That many Women are more than ready to snatch at ye Reins

of Government, and surrogate a Power allowed neither by ye

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JON LANCE BACON 429
Laws of God or Nature, is so certain, that to prove it would be

to suspect the Sun shines at Noon day; to whome Should an
Inch be//given they would presently take more than an Ell,
whose Brains being intoxicated with proud desire and ambi-
tion after Rule, were they admitted to co-equal sway in a
Domestick Kingdome, would presently begin to aspire at
Absolute monarchy, then to challenge an equall Autority in
State, to make Laws, bear Offices, vote as Members in
Parliament, and afterwards presume to sit in Moses his Chair
pretending they have power to TEACH as well as RULE.
The result, Whitehall warns, will be "Confusion," a disruption of

the natural order of things.5
His position was neither extraordinary nor unacceptable in the
intellectual circles of the period, according to Margaret J.M. Ezell:
his disapproval of a theoretical equality within marriage has its
basis in perceived links "between arguments for greater personal
freedom and those of the radical sects during the Civil War. Both
are seen as anarchic forces." 6 For many of those writing in the half
century after the execution of Charles I, the traditional analogy
between husband/wife and sovereign/subject relations had come
to suggest the possibility of rebellion in the domestic as well as the
political sphere.7 James Drake's commendatory verses to An Essay
in Defence of the Female Sex (1696) portray its feminist author as a
political revolutionary:
Our Sex have long thro' Usurpation reign'd,

and by their Tyranny their Rule maintain'd.
Till wanton grown with Arbitrary Sway
Depos'd by you They practice to obey,
Proudly submitting, when such Graces meet,
Beauty by Nature, and by Conquest Wit.8
Although political revolution furnishes the precedent for her

challenge to male "Tyranny," the essayist herself reverses the
gender roles assigned by Drake: comparing men, rather than
women, to "the Rebels in our last Civil Wars," she points out "the
weakness and illegallity of their Title to a Power they still exercise
so arbitrarily, and are so fond of."9 The husband who governs his
wife "as an absolute Lord and Master, with an Arbitrary and
Tyrannical Sway," is the object of criticism in Mary Astell's
Reflections upon Marriage, first published in 1700. In the preface
to the third edition (1706), Astell accuses men of hypocrisy for
practicing "that Arbitrary Dominion in their Families, which they
abhor and exclaim against in the State." 10

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Despite her adoption of the analogy between the two spheres,

domestic and political, Astell focuses exclusively on the former.
Other writers, focusing instead on the traditional distinction
between "female" and "male" activity, protest the confinement of
women to the domestic sphere. The reason for such confinement,
argues the anonymous woman who wrote commendatory verses to
the posthumous Poems (1669) of Katherine Philips, is male
anxiety over female abilities: "jealous men debar / Our sex from
books in peace, from arms in war . . . because our parts will soon
demand / Tribunals for our persons, and command."'1 In The
Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1655), Margaret Cavendish,
Duchess of Newcastle, objects to the fact that women "are kept like
birds in cages to hop up and down in our houses" and "are never
imployed either in civil nor marshall affaires."'12 Margery Pinch-
wife's complaint in The Country Wife about being "a poor lonely,
sullen Bird in a cage" (III.i.3-4) takes on a clearly political
dimension when placed in the context of the debate over women's
Status.
During the early modern period in England, a wife was both
personally and legally subject to her husband. Any property the
wife brought to the marriage became his.'3 The wife herself, in
effect, became property-as Peachum remarks in The Beggar's
Opera (1728) by John Gay (I.iv.86-88)."4 Ezell, however, identifies a
gap between the theory and practice of domestic patriarchalism.
Directing attention to the forms of manuscript exchange through
which seventeenth-century women participated in intellectual
discussion, Ezell challenges the standard model of domestic
patriarchalism-specifically, the idea that the husband's control
over his wife's activities extended to her mind.'5 The Relapse
(1696) by John Vanbrugh offers literary evidence of women's
interest in contemporary intellectual issues: Berinthia, "tho' a
Woman," reads works of modern philosophy (II.i.435-36).16
Berinthia, of course, is no longer a wife, but her married cousin
shares her keenness for intellectual pursuits; Amanda thinks books
"the best Entertainment in the World" (II.i. 180-81). The essayist to
whom Whitehall responds was a married woman-the artist Mary
More-and the particular discussion she joins involves female
roles which, contrary to the standard historical model, were not
well-defined. While excluded from public institutions, Ezell con-
cludes, the patriarch's wife could and did wield considerable
power on a private level. 7
Female characters in the comedies of the period are often
outspoken with regard to the sources of personal power and the
means by which women retain it. "One's Cruelty is one's Power,"

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JON LANCE BACON 431
declares Millamant, the heroine of William Congreve's last play,

The Way of the World (II.i.385-86), produced in 1700.18 Four years
later, in a play which marks the transition to the sentimental
comedy of the eighteenth century, Colley Gibber would soften but
still acknowledge the hard fact of a struggle for authority on the
personal level. Lady Betty Modish of The Careless Husband says
that "Beauty certainly is the Source of Power, as Power in all
Creatures is the heighth of Happiness" (II.i.31-32).'9 For Lady
Betty, "the Thought of parting with one's Power is insupportable"
(V.i.74-75); more than Millamant, however, she conceives of this
power as the ability to manipulate her lover's emotions. Millamant
wishes primarily to preserve her own liberty and an identity
separate from her husband's. In 1700 it could not be a legal
identity, affording her control of property; marriage took that
possibility away from the single woman.20 Congreve, recognizing
the extent to which Millamant's legal status will "dwindle" once
she marries (IV.i.226-27), gives her courtship the form of a legal
document. In the "proviso" scene from The Way of the World,
Millamant requires a guarantee that Mirabell will not interfere
with her written correspondence, her avenue of intellectual
exchange: she demands liberty "to write and receive Letters,
without Interrogatories or wry Faces on your part" (IV.i.212-14).
She will, if Mirabell keeps his promise, maintain a separate
identity through writing.2'
Similarly, Robert Whitehall makes the self-fulfillment of a wife
conditional on the good nature of her husband. He closes his essay
with advice for wives on the subject of personal power: instead of
aspiring after "equall Autority with their Husbands," they should
learn to win their husbands' affection, "which is easily engrossed
by an oblidging carriage and unfeigned kindness (unless their Fate
be to be wedded to churlish Nabals) and when once they have made
themselves Empresses of their Husbands hearts, they may easily
obtain what power, they can in reason desire, and may command
as they please."22 In sentimentalizing the power struggle between
spouses, Whitehall inadvertently endorses a strategy of dissimula-
tion; kindness can hardly be "unfeigned" if its goal is power. Such
is the mode of feminine self-assertion which predominates in
Restoration comedy: a woman, especially a wife, will misrepresent
herself or mystify her true character.
Eliza in The Plain-Dealer, like Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals,
turns women into objects of interpretation: "all wise observers
understand us now adayes, as they do Dreams, Almanacks, and
Dutch Gazets, by the contrary" (II.i.91-93).23 The key to under-
standing a woman, Eliza tells Olivia, is to assume the opposite of

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what her speech indicates. But interpretation may not always be so

easy. In The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter (1676), George
Etherege undercuts the confidence of Dorimant's statement, "I
fathom all the depths of Womankind" (III.iii.362), with Harriet's
humbling reminder, "Men are seldome in the right when they
guess at a womans mind" (V.ii.53-54).24 Dorimant postulates "an
inbred falshood in Women" (V.i.145), a criticism which even a
romantic heroine, such as Dorinda in The Beaux' Stratagem
(1707), will accept: "I'm a woman; colors, concealments may hide
a thousand faults in me," Dorinda tells Aimwell in George
Farquhar's work (V.iv.17-19).25 In general, though, Restoration
comedy presents womanly falsehood and concealment as a social
response to domestic patriarchalism rather than as a natural
inclination. In The Beggar's Opera, which revives the worldview
of the genre, Peachum says that "a Husband hath the absolute
Power over all a Wife's Secrets but her own" (I.iv.81-82). Peachum's
observation about the wife's status as "property" occurs in the
same speech, suggesting that her secrecy is her means of estab-
lishing some measure of self-possession.
The man who would marry should be able to read-
notwithstanding Petulant's speech to the contrary, in The Way of
the World (III.i.428-33). In her conversation with Petulant and
Witwoud, Millamant wonders "at the Impudence of any Illiterate
Man, to offer to make Love" (III.i.422-24). In addition to basic
literacy, the ability to discover hidden meanings is essential to the
would-be husband of Restoration comedy: the figurative language
which turns a female character into a text sometimes turns her into
a sacred text, replete with mysteries. In The Relapse, Berinthia
tells Amanda that Worthy, Amanda's admirer, "us'd you like a
Text" and "took you all to pieces, but spoke so learnedly upon
every Point, one might see the Spirit of the Church was in him"
(IV.ii.48-50). Amanda here becomes Scripture; Worthy assumes the
role of chaplain. Later in the play, Lord Foppington specifies one
function of a chaplain as textual exegesis, or the "Unfolding of
Mysteries" (IV.vi.79-80). When it acquires these religious connota-
tions, the motif of woman-as-text transforms personal into divine
power. Indeed, Loveless refers to woman as his "Deity" in The
Relapse (III.ii.79). Dorimant, as the "Oracle" of this deity in The
Man of Mode (V.ii.401-402), must deal with ambiguities; the
psychological authority of a woman, like the omnipotence of God,
is inseparable from mystery. As Scrub remarks in The Beaux'
Stratagem, "where there's a priest and a woman, there's always a
mystery and a riddle" (IV.i.415-17).
In The Country Wife, Margery poses riddles with her writing.
Horner, who receives her first letter by way of Pinchwife, calls the

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JON LANCE BACON 433
delivery "a riddle I have not yet solv'd" (V.ii.26). Pinchwife,

having discovered her second letter, orders Margery to "unriddle"
(V.i.12-13). Beyond the level of plot, the literal act of writing
manifests her self-assertion. Denied a separate legal identity,
Margery enters into a private contest to decide whether she or her
husband will be the author of her personality. Pinchwife would
define her character by using her as a writing surface. "Write as I
bid you," he tells Margery, "or I will write Whore with this
Penknife in your Face" (IV.ii.92-93). In The Beggar's Opera, Mrs.
Peachum sings about a similar if less violent imposition of
identity: "A Wife's like a Guinea in Gold, / Stampt with the Nam
of her Spouse; / Now here, now there; is bought, or is sold; / And is
current in every House" (I.v. 11-14). The wife in the song becomes
legal currency, but the joke is that "current" implies '"unfaithful."
Forced to take an identity from her husband, the wife rebels by
subverting the meaning of that identity. Such is Margery's response
to her situation. Her ability to compensate somewhat for a
dwindled legal status derives from her willingness to rewrite the
message which Pinchwife dictates to her, a message which
attributes to Margery feelings she does not have.
In a century when few women were able to sign their own
names,26 writing had an obvious relevance to feminine identity. A
woman's signature carried considerable significance in terms of
political self-assertion. Several times during the Interregnum,
groups of women petitioned Parliament; one petition, submitted
in 1653, bore as many as 6,000 signatures.27 In Restoration comedy,
only fops are foolish enough to devalue writing. Sparkish scorns it
in The Country Wife (III.ii.93), and Sir Fopling Flutter considers
writing "a Mechanick part of Witt" (IV.i.245-46).
Margery Pinchwife admits that she cannot write well. Pinchwife,
who would like to determine his wife's identity completely, wishes
she "cou'd not at all" (IV.ii.63-64). The reason for his distrust
becomes clear during the first letter-writing scene, in which
dictatorship and resistance take the forms of dictation and revision.
Pinchwife would like to think of Margery as a writing instrument,
but she is more an editor-preferring "Dear Sir" to "Sir" (IV.ii.89-
90), deleting "nauseous" and "loath'd" from the reference to
Homer's kisses and embraces. As she tells Pinchwife, "I can't abide
to write such filthy words" (IV.ii. 105-106). By threatening her with
his penknife, he stops her revision only temporarily. After Pinch-
wife exits, Margery writes a different letter; after he re-enters, she
substitutes this for the letter he has dictated. In effect, she replaces
his meaning with hers. Wycherley emphasizes the subversiveness
of her act of writing by having Margery apply her husband's seal-

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the stamp of his identity-to a letter which expresses her true

emotions and thus affirms her own identity.
Pinchwife holds that a wife is "the most dangerous" of "secret
enemies" (IV.ii.200-201). The manner of his portrayal indicates
Wycherley's approval of Margery's subversiveness.28 Wycherley
makes a fool out of Pinchwife by having Pinchwife unwittingly
confirm the meaning which has displaced his own. Pinchwife
informs Horner that he is delivering a love letter from Margery:
"Now I think I have deserv'd your infinite friendship, and
kindness, and have shewed my self sufficiently an obliging kind
friend and husband, am I not so, to bring a Letter from my Wife to
her Gallant?" (IV.iii.283-86). Moreover, Pinchwife confirms
Margery's independence as a writer: "I'le assure you 'twas volun-
tarily writ, I had no hand in't you may believe me" (IV.iii.325-26).
In the second letter-writing scene, Pinchwife assumes the role of
editor. He forces Margery to finish her letter and thereby compels
her to deny her identity. Threatened again with physical injury,
Margery signs Alithea's name rather than her own. Nevertheless,
Margery's second letter verifies her success as an author of riddles.29
Assisted by Lucy, another such "Author" (V.iv.244-45), Margery
learns how to effect mystification. In mistaking the significance of
the letter he delivers to Horner, Pinchwife fails at interpretation.
After he reads Margery's second letter, he fails once more; he
believes Margery when she assigns authorship to Alithea. At the
conclusion of the play, Margery's unequivocal confession of her
love for Horner requires no interpretation, yet Pinchwife chooses
to accept the bogus explanation offered by Lucy, who calls the
confession "the usual innocent revenge on a Husbands jealousie"
(V.iv.403-405). Pinchwife makes a conscious decision to participate
in the mystification of his wife's behavior. He does not really
believe Alithea when she defends Margery's innocence, but he
knows he must in order to maintain his own self-conception; he
does not want to think of himself as a cuckold. "For my own sake
fain I wou'd all believe," Pinchwife says. "Cuckolds like Lovers
shou'd themselves deceive" (V.iv.410-11). Ultimately, it is Margery's
writing-or rewriting-which enables her to put him in this
position. Although he retains legal authority, she gains psycho-
logical power.
The inverse relation posited by Restoration comedy, between
mystification and self-determination, is evident in a work of
Restoration tragedy, John Dryden's All for Love (1678). Here,
instead of a wife who deceives in order to compensate for her lack
of legal identity, Dryden presents Cleopatra, a woman accustomed
to political power who cannot long sustain an act of personal

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JON LANCE BACON 435
deception. Because her love is true, Cleopatra says, she "can

neither hide it where it is, / Nor show it where it is not" (IV.89-
91).30 For the ten years of their union, Cleopatra has been Antony's
equal; she owes her psychological power over him to the free
expression of her emotions, to self-expression without regard for
the consequences. In Restoration comedy, the type of female
character whose position in society allows for a comparable
independence, if not Cleopatra's public authority, is the widow.
Berinthia of The Relapse exults in her status as a young widow,
calling it "a delicious thing," because of the freedom it permits: "I
care not what any body thinks" (II.i.530-31). But the independence
of the widow extended beyond the realm of social mores. Feminist
historians have pointed out the legal advantages of what Peachum
terms the "comfortable Estate of Widow-hood" in The Beggar's
Opera (I.x.23-25). Under English common law, the widow could
own property, make contracts, and therefore engage in trade; as
femme sole, the widow had a legal identity which was not merged
with that of a man.31 "Even if she was poor," writes Barbara J.
Todd, "she was her own woman and could run her life as she saw
fit."32
The Widow Blackacre of The Plain-Dealer surpasses Berinthia
in understanding the advantages gained from their widowed
status. Furthermore, as Todd observes, the Widow Blackacre
actively protects her legal independence and property rights; her
resistance to remarriage distinguishes Wycherley's character from
the theatrical stereotype of the early modern widow who "sought a
husband at any cost."33 Wycherley's Widow is the reverse of his
Country Wife: the Widow's privileged position frees her from the
necessity of misrepresenting herself. Only when she is robbed of
the writings which certify her position does she resort to deception.
With the exception of Todd, those who have written on The
Plain-Dealer have judged the Widow Blackacre harshly. For many,
the character described as a "petulant, litigious widow" in the list
of "The Persons" (lines 26-27) is merely the vehicle for Wycherley's
attack on the legal profession.34 From this perspective, which links
the satire on law with the criticism of Restoration society as a
whole, the gender of the Widow is irrelevant, and her motives
prove wholly indefensible. Katharine M. Rogers, who suggests
that Wycherley modeled the female character on his father, speaks
of her "misdirected energy."35 According to Derek Hughes, "the
Widow typifies a society in which the forms of social existence are
cultivated for the most anarchic motives."36 Robert Markley
reaches a similar conclusion regarding the Widow, whose language
"reveals that the law inevitably corrupts language to ignoble and

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mercenary ends."37 What these critics overlook are the reasons for
her legal maneuvering that derive from her status as a woman.38
Her "energy" is directed toward self-preservation; her motives are
"anarchic," her ends "ignoble," only from the viewpoint of
someone like Robert Whitehall, writing in defense of domestic
patriarchalism. The Widow is not a figure representative of
Restoration society, but a figure at odds with that society, whose
patriarchal conventions were designed to deny her autonomy.
In a legal as well as a personal sense, the Widow enjoys self-
possession. She combines self-knowledge with practical knowledge:
she calls herself "a Relict and Executrix of known plentiful Assits
and Parts, who understand my self and the Law" (II.i.922-24).
Despite objections, she instructs her male lawyers: "I am no
common Woman," she tells one of them, "but a Woman conversant
in the Laws of the Land, as well as your self, tho' I have no
Bar-gown" (III.i.206-208). Her legal knowledge is sound,39 and her
pride in such knowledge demonstrates an awareness of its social
value. Women without legal expertise, "your lazy, good-for-
nothing Flirts, who cannot read Law-French" (I.i.429-30), earn her
contempt because they cannot protect their rights.
From the Widow's initial entrance with her writings in hand to
her fury over the theft of "my Child and my Writings" (IV.i.293-
94), Wycherley stresses the importance of these documents to her
identity. Figuratively, they become her offspring; after the theft,
Jerry Blackacre jokes that his mother is "as furious, now she has
lost her Writings, as a Bitch when she has lost her Puppies"
(III.i.468-70). In ridiculing his mother's attachment to these
writings, Jerry joins Freeman and Manly in their condemnation of
the Widow-whom Manly calls a "Volume of shrivel'd blur'd
Parchments and Law" (III.i.445). Her judges, however, are un-
reliable: Freeman covets her estate, and Manly is a misogynist for
the most part. Both Freeman and Manly are prejudiced against the
feminine self-assertion which the playwright approves in The
Country Wife.
Before she first appears, Freeman characterizes the Widow
Blackacre as "that Litigious She-Pettyfogger, who is at Law and
difference with all the World." But, he adds, "I wish I cou'd make
her agree with me in the Church: they say she has Fifteen hundred
pounds a Year Jointure, and the care of her Son, that is, the
destruction of his Estate" (I.i.393-97). Jerry later complains that
his mother denies him the "wherewithall to be a Man of my self
with" (III.i.344-46). Still, the assistance Freeman gives Jerry is
ambiguous. Freeman's statement, "I'll not see any hopeful young
Gentleman abus'd," prompts a cynical aside from the bookseller's

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JON LANCE BACON 437
apprentice: "By any but your self" (III.i.368-70). The Widow

displays a more genuine concern for her son's inheritance. Accusing
her would-be husband of financial irresponsibility, she says "my
Minor's Case, more than my own," leads her to refuse Freeman: "I
must do him justice now on you" (II.i.878-79). She has just rejected
Major Oldfox, in even harsher terms, for his mercenary interest-
while Jerry has urged her on, saying, "Hey, brave Mother! use all
Suitors thus, for my sake" (II.i.845). Jerry suggests that Oldfox
would "have taken care of my Estate, that half of't shou'd never
come to me" (II.i.861-63). Although the Widow withholds spending
money from her son, she does so to preserve his inheritance; and
Jerry recognizes this fact before Freeman encourages him to rebel.
Jerry warns his mother against men like Freeman and Oldfox,
"the unconscionable Woers of Widows, who undertake briskly
their Matrimonial business for their money" (III.i.257-59). The
Widow correctly interprets Freeman's motive. "I know your love to
a Widow, is covetousness of her Jointure," she tells him, then
foretells his neglect of her should he take "possession" of her
(II.i.928-33). The libertine of Restoration comedy-the "Complyer
with the Age," as Freeman is described in "The Persons" (line
8)-usually cheats someone. The libertine does so, however, in the
cause of freedom.40 In helping Margery to achieve some degree of
personal freedom, Horner cuckolds Pinchwife; but he does not
take Pinchwife's freedom away. Freeman, on the other hand,
would imprison one person-the Widow-to free another-Jerry
Blackacre. After he has her arrested, Freeman gives the Widow a
choice between jail and "the Bonds of Matrimony" (V.ii.452-53).
For her, marriage amounts to nothing more than "a removal from
one Prison to another" (V.ii.454-55). To a woman, she declares,
matrimony is "worse than Excommunication, in depriving her of
the benefit of the Law: and I wou'd rather be depriv'd of life"
(V.ii.459-61). If Freeman is devoted to the freedom of men, the
Widow Blackacre is equally committed to the freedom of women.
Manly objects to her because "she has no pleasure, but in vexing
others," because she carries self-assertion to an extreme (I.i.405).
"Dam these impertinent, vexatious people of Business, of all
Sexes; they are still troubling the World with the tedious recitals of
their Law-Suits," Manly exclaims (I.i.432-34). The Widow, a self-
proclaimed "Woman of Business" (I.i.427), is a match for him
verbally; structuring her reply so that it parallels Manly's denunci-
ation, she says, "And a pox of all vexatious, impertinent Lovers;
they are still perplexing the World with the tedious Narrations of
their Love-Suits, and Discourses of their Mistresses" (I.i.437-39).
What Manly ignores are the threats against which the Widow

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Blackacre and other widows must protect themselves by legal

means. Before marrying Fainall, her second husband, Arabella of
The Way of the World deeded her "whole Estate real" in trust to
Mirabell (V.i.550-52); had she not done so, she would now have to
depend entirely on Fainall's discretion for her maintenance. In
The Plain-Dealer, the Widow Blackacre is pursued by "lovers"
whose discretion is no less doubtful. Freeman would marry the
Widow to give "my Creditors, not her, due Benevolence" (III.i.447-
48). To her suitors, the Widow Blackacre says, "a Widow is a meer
gap," the gap in a hedge "where another has gone over before"
(V.ii.414-16); they have no regard for her as a person.
Worse still, her suitors force the widow to adopt illegal methods
of preserving her independence. Critics who have judged the
Widow harshly have failed to mention that she breaks the law only
after Freeman instigates the theft of her writinqs-everything, she
says, which concerns "my Estate, my Jointure, my Husband's
Deed of Gift, my Evidences for all my Suits now depending!"
(III.i.434-36). When she commissions forgeries of the stolen docu-
ments, the Widow excuses her action by explaining her situation:
"Well, these, and many other shifts, poor Widows are put to
sometimes; for every body wou'd be riding a Widow, as they say,
and breaking into her Jointure" (V.ii.412-14). Her situation
resembles that of Lady Cheatly, the title character in A True
Widow (1679) by Thomas Shadwell. Lady Cheatly claims to have
started her career as a criminal, an embezzler who issues bonds
written with disappearing ink, after "my Husband was cheated of
his Estate by my Brother, and other Rascals." For this reason, she
tells her steward, "'tis fit I should take Letters of Reprisal"
(III.289-90).41 Though her fortune is gone, she convinces her
victims that she is "a rare Woman at Business" (II. 178). She
pretends to be what the Widow Blackacre is, a woman who enjoys
financial independence as certified by legal documents, "the
Writings, that concern my Estate" (V.350-51).
However extreme it may be, the Widow's intention to "be in
Law as long as I live" (III.i.242-43) is part of her character, and she
has to go against it. She must, in effect, deny her identity. In
addition to breaking the law, she sacrifices her reputation by
claiming that her son is illegitimate. She observes, "'tis often the
poor prest Widows case, to give up her Honour to save her
Jointure; and seem to be a light Woman, rather than marry"
(IV.i.358-60). Just before her arrest, the Widow experiences her
ultimate humiliation, a bitterly ironic peripeteia. The woman
whose writings certified her legal independence cannot save herself
now from a recital of works written by one of her male pursuers:

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JON LANCE BACON 439
Oldfox orders her bound and gagged, then threatens to "ravish"

her with his "well-pen'd Acrostics" (V.ii.426-27). Only the arrival
of another pursuer, Freeman, saves the Widow from verbal "Rape"
(V.ii.424).
An irony greater than that of her peripeteia informs the same
scene: Wycherley diminishes sympathy for his female character,
whose bondage is as literal as Margery Pinchwife's confinement in
a locked room. Several aspects of the Widow's characterization
bring about this diminution: she deals with unscrupulous lawyers;
the merits of her lawsuits are unclear; she can be abrasive and
domineering, like the typical barrier figure of Restoration comedy.
The complexity of her portrait-a barrier figure committed to
personal and legal independence-points to an ambivalence on the
part of the dramatist. Whereas he sanctions women's resistance to
"their Politick Lords and Rulers" in The Country Wife (IV.iv.38),
Wycherley in The Plain-Dealer shares Whitehall's misgivings
about women with legal power. The extremism of Pinchwife's rule
justifies Margery's resistance, and a general aversion to all forms of
extreme behavior partly accounts for Wycherley's ambiguous
treatment of the Widow-but only partly. Despite his awareness of
the practical realities of marriage and widowhood, Wycherley does
not break completely with patriarchal values.
This conventionalism is clear from his judgment of the dramatist
Aphra Behn, herself a widow, whose contemporary reputation
exemplified the problem Anne Finch laments in "The Introduc-
tion" (c. 1689):
Alas! a woman that attempts the pen,

Such an intruder on the rights of men,
Such a presumptuous Creature, is esteem'd,
The fault, can by no vertue be redeem'd.42
In a poem addressed to Behn as "the Sappho of the Age,"

Wycherley gives voice to the widespread resentment occasioned by
her successful intrusion in the 1670s, by her growing popularity as
a playwright.43 Wycherley identifies her literary output, "a Play,"
with venereal disease, "a Love-Distemper." When the conventional
"Subject" of literary "Wit" becomes its "Cause," she becomes a
competitor and a source of ill will: "Barren Wits," Wycherley
sneers, "envy your Head's Off-springs."44
Like her male rivals, Behn employs the woman-as-text motif.
But the text in question, in her prologue to The Lucky Chance
(1686), is the kind produced by the woman herself: a play. The first
two lines compare the boredom elicited by "old Plays" to that

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caused by "a Mistress many years enjoy'd."45 The following lines

extend the analogy, relating it explicitly to the issue of feminine
liberty. The male desire for "Variety" (line 3), in mistresses as in
plays, has benefited widows; having learned to take advantage of
the "freedoms" afforded them by the infidelity of their late
husbands (lines 5-14), these "old and tough" women now enjoy a
limitless supply of "dull Fools," men they can dominate easily
(lines 22-26). According to the prologue, power over foolish men
belongs not only to widows, but also to the female playwright. In
fact, only the higher standards of dramatic art distinguish the
playwright from the widows:
Vain amorous Coxcombs every where are found,

Fops for all uses, but the Stage abound.
Though you shou'd change them oftener than your Fashions,
There still wou'd be enough for your Occasions:
But ours are not so easily supplied,
All that cou'd e'er quit cost, we have already tried.
(lines 15-20)
In her adaptation of the motif, Behn simultaneously affirms her

social power as a widow and her imaginative power as a writer.
Denouncing an earlier comedy by Behn in his verse satire, The
Play-House (1685), the future playwright Robert Gould singles
out a widowed character, Lady Galliard, for special criticism: in
The City-Heiress (1682), "the Lewd Widow comes, with brazen
Face, / Just reeking from a Stallion's rank Embrace/ T'acquaint
the Audience with her Filthy Case."46 Sexual promiscuity, Gould
implies, is not Lady Galliard's only sin. She also transgresses by
making herself a public figure-by doing what her creator had
done.47 It has long been a critical truism that the male playwrights
of the Restoration formed the vanguard of enlightened thought on
the issue of women's social status, using the stage to valorize the
feminist desire for self-assertion.48 Their sympathy for independent
women had a limit, however, and this limit coincided with the
traditional boundary between domestic and public activity. The
tyrannized wife who seeks personal independence gains general
approval in Restoration comedy. The widow who enters the public
realm, by bringing legal actions or by writing and publishing
plays, becomes an object of ridicule. The widow, more than the
wife, threatens to usurp the power that men, in the words of the
1696 Defence, "are so fond of."

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JON LANCE BACON 441
NOTES
'All quotations from The Country Wife are from The Plays of William
Wycherley, ed. Arthur Friedman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979),
pp. 245-354.
2Two recent essays have examined the issues of signification and interpreta-
tion raised by Wycherley's play. See Deborah C. Payne, "Reading the Signs in
The Country Wife," SEL 26, 3 (Summer 1986): 403-19; and Michael Neill,
"Horned Beasts and China Oranges: Reading the Signs in The Country
Wife," ECLife n.s. 12 (May 1988): 3-17. In discussing the topos of textuality
(p. 405), Payne makes no specific reference to gender. Neill discusses the idea
of the female body as a blank slate "awaiting masculine inscription" (p. 10),
but he relates this idea to the matter of sexual fulfillment (p. 11), rather than
the legal and social question of feminine identity.
3All quotations from The Rivals are from British Dramatists from Dryden
to Sheridan, ed. George H. Nettleton, Arthur E. Case, and George Winchester
Stone, Jr., 2nd edn. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1969), pp.
791-830.
4Mary More, "The Womans Right," in Margaret J.M. Ezell, The Patriarch's
Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family (Chapel Hill and
London: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1987), p. 193.
5Robert Whitehall, "The Womans Right Proved False," in The Patriarch's
Wife, p. 208.
6Ezell, pp. 128-29, 160.
7Susan Staves, Players' Scepters: Fictions of Authority in the Restoration
(Lincoln and London: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1979), pp. 111-18. See also the
introduction to The First English Feminist: Reflections Upon Marriage and
Other Writings by Mary Astell, ed. Bridget Hill (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1986), pp. 41-43.
8James Drake, "To the Most Ingenious Mrs.--- or [sic] her Admirable
Defence of Her Sex," in An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (London:
Source Book Press, 1970), p. 21.
9An Essay in Defence, pp. 39, 40.
'0Mary Astell, Reflections upon Marriage, 3rd edn., The First English
Feminist, pp. 76, 132. Staves (p. 113) quotes the passage from the preface.
""To the Excellent Orinda," quoted in Angeline Goreau, Reconstructing
Aphra: A Social Biography of Aphra Behn (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,
1980), p. 157.
'2Quoted in Patricia Crawford, "Women's Published Writings 1600-1700,"
in Women in English Society 1500-1800, ed. Mary Prior (London: Methuen,
1985), p. 228.
'3Barbara J. Todd, "The Remarrying Widow: A Stereotype Reconsidered,"
in Women in English Society, p. 55; and Ezell, p. 2. See also Staves, p. 112.
'4All quotations from The Beggar's Opera are from John Gay, Dramatic
Works, ed. John Fuller, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 2: 1-65.
'5Ezell, pp. 4, 100, 162.
"All quotations from The Relapse or Virtue in Danger are from The
Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, ed. Bonamy Dobree and Geoffrey
Webb, 4 vols. (Bloomsbury: Nonesuch, 1927), 1: 9-101.
'7Ezell, pp. 127, 161, 163.
"All quotations from The Way of the World are from The Complete Plays
of William Congreve, ed. Herbert Davis (Chicago and London: Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 389-478.

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'9All quotations from The Careless Husband are from Colley Gibber: Three
Sentimental Comedies, ed. Maureen Sullivan (New Haven and London: Yale
Univ. Press, 1973), pp. 85-173.
20Mary Prior, "Women and the Urban Economy: Oxford 1500-1800," in
Women in English Society, pp. 102-103. See also Goreau, pp. 82-83.
21For a different interpretation of their agreement, see Robert Markley,
Two-Edg'd Weapons: Style and Ideology in the Comedies of Etherege,
Wycherley, and Congreve (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 244-47.
22Whitehall, p. 225.
23A11 quotations from The Plain-Dealer are from The Plays of William
Wycherley, pp. 365-509.
24A11 quotations from The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter are from
The Dramatic Works of Sir George Etherege, ed. H.F.B. Brett-Smith, 2 vols.
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1927), 2: 181-288.
25All quotations from The Beaux' Stratagem are from British Dramatists,
pp. 351-86.
26David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in
Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980), p. 145.
27Crawford, pp. 223-24.
28Focusing on Horner's role in The Country Wife, Helen M. Burke also
concludes that Wycherley endorses Margery's subversiveness. See "Wycherley's
'Tendentious Joke': The Discourse of Alterity in The Country Wife," ECent
29, 3 (Fall 1988): 227-41.
29Payne discusses Margery less as a writer than as a reader of "cultural
codes" (p. 407).
30Quotations from All for Love; or, the World well Lost are from John
Dryden: Four Tragedies, ed. L.A. Beaurline and Fredson Bowers (Chicago and
London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 190-280.
31Prior, pp. 102-103.
32Todd, p. 55.
33Todd, pp. 54-55.
34See Rose A. Zimbardo, Wycherley's Drama: A Link in the Development of
English Satire (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1965), p. 135;
Katharine M. Rogers, William Wycherley (New York: Twayne, 1972),
pp. 90-91, 97; and B. Eugene McCarthy, William Wycherley: A Biography
(Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1979), p. 84.
35Rogers, William Wycherley, p. 91.
36Derek Hughes, "The Plain-Dealer: A Reappraisal," MLQ 43, 4 (December
1982): 335-36.
3Markley, pp. 190-91.
38Hughes notes that "one of the Widow's ruling ambitions is to remain out
of 'Covert Baron'-the 'dominion' of a husband (V.ii.457-58, 464)," but he
does not develop the point (p. 325).
39The editors of British Dramatists (p. 210) corroborate the Widow's boasts.
40For an extended discussion of the values espoused by the libertine, see
Dale Underwood, Etherege and the Seventeenth-Century Comedy of Manners
(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press; London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 10-40.
41A11 quotations from A True Widow are from The Complete Works of
Thomas Shadwell, ed. Montague Summers, 5 vols. (London: Fortune Press,
1927), 3: 283-363.
42Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, "The Introduction," in The Poems
of Anne Countess of Winchilsea, ed. Myra Reynolds (Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1903), pp. 4-5.

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JON LANCE BACON 443
43For details of Behn's reception by her male contemporaries, see Goreau,

pp. 135-42, 209-10, 230-34.
44Wycherley, "To the Sappho of the Age, Suppos'd to Ly-In of a Love-
Distemper, or a Play," in The Complete Works of William Wycherley, ed.
Montague Summers, 4 vols. (Soho: Nonesuch, 1924), 3: 155.
45All quotations from The Lucky Chance; or, An Alderman's Bargain are
from The Works of Aphra Behn, ed. Montague Summers, 6 vols. (1915; rpt.
New York: Blom, 1967), 3: 183-279.
46Robert Gould, The Play-House, A Satyr, in Montague Summers, The
Restoration Theater (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1934), p. 305.
47According to Goreau, "everyone knew that the 'lewd widow' was also
Aphra, Mrs. Behn" (p. 251).
48See C.V. Wedgwood, Seventeenth-Century English Literature (London
and New York: Cumberlege-Oxford Univ. Press, 1950), p. 153; Rogers, The
Troublesome Helpmate: A History of Misogyny in Literature (Seattle: Univ.
of Washington Press, 1966), p. 160; Virginia Ogden Birdsall, Wild Civility:
The English Comic Spirit on the Restoration Stage (Bloomington and
London: Indiana Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 95-104; Margaret Lamb McDonald,
The Independent Woman in the Restoration Comedy of Manners (Salzburg:
Univ. Salzburg, 1976); and Sarup Singh, Family Relationships in Shakespeare
and the Restoration Comedy of Manners (New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press,
1983), pp. 146, 156-62.

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