Thesis
"We never part with our money without desire": Marriage economics and attempted rape in the comedies of Behn and Centlivre
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2006
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/497
Abstract
Though Restoration comedies by both men and women highlighted the problems inherent in the practical marriages typical of the period, Aphra Behn and Susanna Centlivre are distinctive in their use of drama to explore the conflict between the idealization of marital love and the reality that marriages were often arranged without regard for character or personality. Behn and Centlivre imply that rather than mere aversion, unhappiness, or infidelity, such marriages are inherently dangerous and potentially both physically and emotionally violent. These two playwrights provide an entirely new model for considering the effects of the marriage market by combining stock portrayals of couples negotiating the marriage market with episodes of attempted rape, a popular Restoration theatrical trope typically associated with tragedy. The outbreaks of sexual violence highlight the relentlessly economic nature of the marriage market, which commodifies the female body in ways akin to prostitution and thus licenses rape. This study will analyze three comedies by women in which attempted rapes are perpetrated, Behn's The Rover (1677) and Centlivre's The Basset-Table (1705) and The Perplex'd Lovers (1712), examining in particular the authors' arguments that because the marriage market is uneasily similar to prostitution, rape emerges as a tool which male characters use to determine if a women is chaste or unchaste. Within the action of the plays the attempted rapes, with their potential personal, social, and economic ramifications, prefigure the patriarchal control over body and financial assets the same characters will experience in matrimony. Ultimately their critique of marriage signifies the emerging eighteenth-century reevaluation of marriage that eventually established the importance of affection rather than mere economic compatibility in marital union.
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Details
- Title
- "We never part with our money without desire"
- Creators
- Leslie Michelle. Morrison
- Contributors
- Todd Wayne Butler (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- English, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; Pullman, Wash. :
- Identifiers
- 99900525119501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis