Love And Marriage In Restoration Comedy

Love And Marriage In Restoration Comedy A comedy is usually a light, rather amusing, play that deals with contemporary life and manners. Such a drama often has a satirical slant, but ends happily. Among the many sub-genres under comedy, one can find the comedy of manners, which originated in France with Molieres Les Precieuses ridicules (1658). Moliere saw this comic form as a way to correct social absurdities. In England, the comedy of manners is represented by the plays of William Wycherley, George Etherege, William Congreve, and George Farquhar. This form was later classed Old Comedy but is now known as Restoration Comedy because it coincided with the return of the Charles II to England. The main goal of these comedies of manners in the period of Restoration is to mock society, or in other ways lift up society for scrutiny, which could cause negative or positive results. In the end, audience will laugh at themselves and society. The definition of comedy and the background of the Restoration Comedy help to explain the themes that run throughout these comedies of manners. One of the major themes is marriage and the game of love. However, if marriage is a mirror of society, the couples in the plays show something very dark and sinister about order. Many critiques of marriage that we see in the play are devastating, but the game of love is not much more hopeful. Although the endings are happy and the man invariably gets the woman, one can see marriages without love and love affairs that are rebellious breaks with tradition. This study will focus on two plays of Restoration comedies, William Wycherleys The Country Wife (1675) and William Congreves The Way of the World (1700), to show how dramatically society has progressed. A dramatic change, in moral attitudes about marriage and love has taken place. In Wycherleys Country Wife, the marriage between Pinchwife and Margery represents a hostile marriage between an old (or older man) and a young woman. The couple, Pinchwife, is the focal point of the play, at least as couples go, and Margery affair with Horner only adds to the humor of the play. Horner runs around cuckolding all of the husbands, while he pretends to be a eunuch. This pretension brings the women swarming to him. He is a master at the game of love, though he is emotionally impotent. He cannot love, which makes him an interesting character for analysis. The relationships in the play are dominated by jealousy or cuckoldry, with the exception of the gay couple, Alithea and Harcourt, but they are really pretty boring. The element of jealousy in marriage seems to be especially prevalent in the play. In Act IV, scene ii, Mr. Pinchwife says, in an aside: Mr. PINCHWIFE. So, tis plain she loves him, yet she has not love enough to make her conceal it from me; but the sight of him will increase her aversion for me and love for him, and that love instruct her how to deceive me and satisfy him, all idiot as she is. He insults her, not to her face of course, but hes serious. He wants her to be stupid, not able to deceive him. But even in her obvious innocence, he doesnt believe she is innocent. To him, every woman came out of natures hands plain, open, silly, and fit for slaves, as she and Heaven intended em. As he says, No woman can be forced. But he also says, in another aside: Mr. PINCHWIFE. Why should women have more invention in love than men? It can only be because they have more desires, more soliciting passions, more lust and more of the devil. Mr. Pinchwife isnt especially bright, but in his jealousy, he becomes a dangerous character. He becomes passionate in his mad ravings, thinking Margery had conspired to cuckold him. Little did he know that he was correct, but if he had known the truth, he would have killed her in his madness. As it is, when she disobeys him, he says: Mr. PINCHWIFE. Once more write as Id have you, and question it not, or I will spoil thy writing with this. I will stab out those eyes that cause my mischief. He doesnt ever hit her or stab her in the play (such actions wouldnt make a very good comedy), but Mr. Pinchwife continually locks Margery in the closet, calls her names, and in all other ways, acts like a complete jerk (to put it nicely). Because of his abusive nature, Margerys affair is not a surprise. In fact, it is accepted as a social norm, along with Horners promiscuity. At the end, the whole scene with Margery learning to lie is also taking in stride because the idea has already been set up when Mr. Pinchwife voiced his fears that if she loved Horner more, she would conceal it from him. And with that, social order is restored. In Congreves The Way of the World, the trend of restoration continues, but marriage becomes more about contractual agreements and greed, then about love. Millamant and Mirabell iron out a pre-nuptial agreement before they agree to marry. Then Millamant, for an instant, seems willing to marry her cousin, Sir Wilful, so that she can keep her money. It is a battle of the wits; it is not a battlefield of emotions. In that way, The Way of the World can be likened to Shakespeares Much Ado About Nothing, where Beatrice and Benedict play at love in their battle of wits. Its comical to see the two wits going at it, but, when we look deeper, there is an edge of seriousness behind their words. After they list conditions, Mirabell says: MIRABELL. These provisos admitted, in other things I may prove a tractable and complying husband. Love may be the basis of their relationship, as Mirabell appears honest; however, their alliance is a sterile romance, devoid of the touchy, feely stuff, which one should hope for in a courtship. Mirabell and Millamant are two wits perfect for each other in the battle of the sexes; nevertheless, the pervading sterility and greed reverberates as the relationship between the two wits becomes much more confusing. But then, that is the way of the world. Confusion and deception are the way of the world, but compared to The Country Wife and other earlier drama, Congreves play shows a different kind of chaos, one marked with contracts and greed instead of the hilarity and mix-up of Horner and other rakes. The evolution of society, as mirrored by the plays themselves is apparent. Sources 1. Drabble, Margaret , The Oxford Companion to English Literature 2. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors, Sixth Edition 3. Abjadian, Amrollah, Dr., A Survey of English Literature (II) 4. Patterson, Michael, The Oxford Dictionary of Plays 5. Abrams, M.H., A Glossary of Literary Term, Eighth Edition 6. William Wycherley, The Country Wife, 1675 7. William Congreve, The Way of the World, 1700

Animal Farm Essay

In the movie, I began to see examples of collectivism and individualism. For instance, in collectivism the group comes before the individual. The â€Å"experts† do all the thinking for the people. Which in this case, the pigs, Napoleon and snowball were the experts. They made the rules that the farm animals had to abide: all animals were equal, no animal shall be killed by another, no sleeping on beds or drinking alcohol ect. As the revolution went on, the animals helped one another,like we as people do in the everyday world. Napoleon soon felt as if snowball was getting in the way of his dictatorship and had him killed. Napoleon now became the leader, and even spread the word to other farms so other pigs could start the same revolution. The weaker animals were sacrificed the laws that were set soon changed, the farm animals became more and more like slaves , they ate less, worked dawn to dusk and no longer were equal. The law now was some animals were equal but some more than others. While the farm animals did all the hard work, the pigs got to sit back, relax and eat all the food for themselves. With that said, Collectivism is a lot like communism, the pigs had control of the farm animals, made the laws, even everything the farm animals made soon belonged to the pigs. It’s like how the world is today, part of the hard earned money and things we make go to the government. The government and the corporations are the pigs. On the individualistic side of things, in individualism the individual comes before the group. They only worry about their family and close friends. Towards the end of the movie, the horse was sold off and later killed, because he was no more use for the pigs. The donkey who is a close friend to the horse took that as a final straw and recognized what the pigs were really doing. Compared to individualism they fought with what they believed in. That no individual should work for pigs like them. That’s how it is with humans we fight with what me believe in.

Kant and Causal Law in Pure Reason - 1682 Words

Kant, and Causal Law Introduction In the critique of pure reason, Kant states, â€Å"All alternations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect.†1 This statement is interpreted in two different ways: weak readings and strong readings. Weaker readings basically suggest that Kants statement only refers to â€Å"All events have a cause†; however, the strong readings suggest that â€Å"the Second Analogy is committed not just to causes, but to causal laws as well.†2 To understand the difference between the readings, it is helpful to notice Kants distinction between empirical laws of nature and universal transcendental principles. Empirical laws have an empirical element that universal transcendental principles cannot imply.†¦show more content†¦Now in order for this to be cognized as determined, the relation between the two states must be thought in such a way that it is thereby necessarily determined which of them must be placed before and which aft er rather than vice versa. The concept, however, that carries a necessity of synthetic unity with it can only be a pure concept of understanding, which does not lie in the perception, and that is here the concept of the relation of cause and effect, the former of which determines the latter in time, as its consequence, and not as something that could merely precede in the imagination (or not even be perceived at all). Therefore, it is only because we subject the sequence of the appearances and thus all alteration to the law of causality that experience itself, i.e., empirical cognition of them, is possible; consequently they themselves, as objects of experience, are possible only in accordance with this law.†(B233-234) To explain his argument, it is necessary to distinguish between objective succession and subjective succession. Objective succession is a succession in appearances. Appearances, as Kant introduces in A20/B34, is a kind of representations that are empirically rea l and transcendentally ideal. Appearances are objects of empirical knowledge that contain both intuitive matter that correspond to the sensation, and conceptual form. OnShow MoreRelatedKant’s Argugument for the Existance of Supreme Moral Law1639 Words   |  7 PagesMetaphysics of Morals, Kant has established that, if there were a supreme moral law, it would look like the categorical imperative. 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