The Amorous and the Predatory in William Congreve’s The Way of the World

Congreve’s The Way of the World was published in the year 1700 and possesses all the quintessential elements of Restoration comedy. Restoration comedy was a combination of the Elizabethan comedy of Manners and the Jacobean comedy of Humours. Comedy of Manners is a commentary on society as a whole, but mainly focuses on the aristocrats. Comedy of Humours, on the other hand, discusses the flaws in an individual and exaggerates them to create a comedic effect. Restoration comedy also made use of humour names. This can be seen from the title of the play itself. The Way of the World actually talks about the “way of the world”. It talks about society of the time. New stock characters also came into existence. The portrayal of love changed as well. In this paper I will discuss the two sides of love that this play exposes – the romantic notion or amorous notion of love along with the contrasting predatory or mercenary motives behind “love”. Sometimes a character possesses both amorous and predatory love. I will explore the motives behind the actions of such characters and think about why the characters of the play act like they do.

I would like to split this discourse into two portions. In this first section I will talk about the predatory and mercenary side of love that is portrayed in the text. England faced quite a few changes in both society and literature during the eighteenth century. With the rise of Robert Walpole, the patronage system of art died out. Poets had to earn their living through their writing and could no longer depend on a patron for funds. During this time, the bourgeois sphere was rapidly emerging into prominence. More and more people from the bourgeois sphere had access to literature since the arrival of the printing press. Therefore, in order to earn a living, writers had to please this particular section of society, thus leading to the concept of market capitalism. The bourgeois class enjoyed reading about the aristocrats and this explains why a lot of Restoration plays talk about life of the upper class or life in the court. The Way of the World is no exception. It is focused on members of the upper class of society.

The emergence of print capitalism and the rising of the bourgeois is reflected in the ideas of love in Restoration comedy. Restoration comedy uses humour as a mask to cover the seriousness of the issues that it discusses. The audience can laugh at what they can relate to without the play being too didactic in nature. During this time, marriage became more of a social contract and the main aim was always attainment of wealth. This is seen in most of the characters in the play. In fact when we closely examine the characters in the play, we will find that most of them had monetary motives behind their actions and decisions. Lady Wishfort can be seen here as the central source of wealth and the indirect target of all the men who want to marry Millamant. The man who marries Millamant becomes wealthier because of Lady Wishfort’s fortune. As Elizabeth Ward puts it in her essay titled “Way of the World: Marrying for Money”,

“The play can roughly be described as being about love, and money. On the balance, the characters spend more time professing their love than professing their interest in money, but the underlying currents of the scenes imply that money is what really matters, and that love is, in great part, based upon the wealth of the proposed amour.” (Ward)

Attaining money was the only way that the bourgeois could hope for a better life in terms of finance. This is why money was such an important aspect of the society at the time. If we consider Mirabell, we see that he has a brief affair with Lady Wishfort only so that he can get to Millamant and also obtain money. The nature of this affair is not clearly discussed. In the first Act, Fainall and Mirabell talk about this alleged affair. We find out that Mirabell thought he was just flattering Lady Wishfort a little bit so that she would allow him to marry Millamaunt.

“Fainall:The Discovery of your sham Addresses to her, to conceal your love to her Neice, has provok’d this Separation: Had you dissembl’d better, Things might have continu’d in the State of Nature.

Mirabell:I did as much as Man cou’d, with any reasonable Conscience; I proceeded to the very last Act of Flattery with her, and was guilty of a Song in her Commendation… The Devil’s in’t, if an old Woman is to be flatter’d further, unless a Man shou’d endeavour downright personally to debauch her; and that my Virtue forbad me.” (III.i.78-83)

We see that Lady Wishfort interpreted Mirabell’s flattery differently. She thought that Mirabell was genuinely trying to woo her. That is why she took such a dislike to him after Mrs. Marwood told her that he was only after Millamant. Marwood also convinces Lady Wishfort to keep her fortune within the family. That is why Lady Wishfort wants Millamant to marry Sir Willfull. Lady Wishfort is determined to keep the money within the family. She wants Willfull Witwoud (a humour name) to marry Millamant instead of Mirabell, whom she now has a personal grudge against. But Mirabell does not take this decision lying down. He creates a plan, which when executed involved Lady Wishfort considering marriage with Mirabell’s own personal servant Waitwell (yet another humour name) disguised as Sir Rowland. Mirabell then planned to reveal the true identity of Sir Rowland and would only keep quiet about the situation if Wishfort allowed him to marry Millamant and give him Millamant’s fortune. However, this plan cannot be completed because of Fainall. He also is after Wishfort’s fortune and threatens to reveal the truth about Wishfort’s daughter Arabella (his wife) and her affair with Mirabell unless she signed over Arabella’s property as well as her own fortune to him. At this point, Mirabell seizes his opportunity and offers to help Wishfort out of her dilemma. In her gratitude, Wishfort grants Mirabell everything that he intended to attain through deception and blackmail.

Mirabell can also be seen as a predatory lover simply because of the number of affairs he has had. He has had an affair with almost every woman in the play. In fact, Mirabell can be compared to the character of Willmore in Aphra Behn’s The Rover. One of the main differences between Willmore and Mirabell is the way their characters are portrayed. Both men are womanizers but they are shown in contrasting lights. The Rover is set during the carnival. The carnival is a time when laws and conventions are openly broken. So what Willmore does is all justified in the spirit of the carnival. He is very open about his sexuality. The same cannot be said for Mirabell. His sexuality is no less than Willmore’s, yet is portrayed in a more subdued way. He does not openly accept the fact that he has had affairs with many women. Outwardly, his love for Millamant shines in the spotlight. It is only through the dialogues of the women he has had affairs with that readers come to realize that he is not quite the quintessential Petrarchan lover.

The concept of predatory love is not seen in Mirabell alone. There is a strong undercurrent of jealousy in all the women that he has been with. Each of these women, though married – and in Mrs. Marwood’s case, having an affair with Fainall – still feel jealous of Millamant. They express this jealousy in different ways. Lady Wishfort is Millamant’s aunt, but she still resents Mirabell.

In many ways, Mrs. Marwood is central to the plot of the play. Her character is anything physically. She simply talks to people and through that she spreads doubt and conflict. She is clever and strategic. She uses manipulation to get what she wants. Her attitude towards Mirabell seems to imply that if she cannot have him, then she will make sure that no one else can have him either. It is she who tells Lady Wishfort that Mirabell was seeming to court her only in order to get Millamant’s hand in marriage. She is the one who sends a letter to Lady Wishfort revealing Sir Rowland’s true identity. She is the one who plots with Fainall regarding claiming Lady Wishfort’s money and property for themselves.

“Mrs. Marwood: Discover to my Lady your Wife’s Conduct; threaten to part with her – My Lady loves her, and will come to any Composition to save her Reputation, take the Opportunity of breaking it, just upon the Discovery of this Imposture. My Lady will be enrag’d beyond Bounds, and sacrifice her Neice, and Fortune, and all at that Conjecture. And let me alone to keep her warm, if she shou’d flag in her part, I will not fail to prompt her.”(III.i.666-674)

Even Mrs. Fainall is Millamant’s rival. She is willing to help Mirabell and not Millamant. This is because she too had an affair with Mirabell and is jealous of Millamant. So we see that the women also play a part in the idea of a predatory lover. There is a constant trope of the hunter and the hunted. Almost everyone is desired by someone but they desire someone else.

Though it is not very apparent, there still remains an amorous aspect to the portrayal of love in the play. When we consider Lady Wishfort, she does not have any mercenary reason for desiring to be loved. She represents the lonely human being who simply wants to be appreciated and desired. However, she holds her reputation above everything else. In fact, one of the reasons she is so eager to get married is to re-establish a reputable position for herself for something other than her money. Nevertheless, she does long for company and this is made apparent by the extensive preparation for receiving Sir Rowland, whom she believes to be a potential husband. This is what makes her so easily gulled by Mirabell. One cannot help but feel sympathy for Lady Wishfort as she is constantly used by Mirabell as a means to an end. It is even sadder that she must compete with her niece for attention from the opposite sex. Mirabell and Millamant seem to be the most desired characters in the play. The love between them is also unconventional. Millamant does not want Mirabell to call her “Love” or any names of that sort. This reflects the slow transition of society from marriages in which the husband dominates to marriages in which both partners are considered equals. Millamant represents women who are trying to establish a place for themselves that subverts patriarchy. Nevertheless, their love is central to the play and the audience is happy when this love triumphs in the end.

Fainall is one character who shows an interesting balance between mercenary and amorous love. He only married Arabella, is wife, in order to attain her property and fortune. But he is willing to spend this property and fortune all on Mrs. Marwood, the woman he truly loves. In fact, he reassures Mrs. Marwood of his intentions in the second act of the play.

“Fainall:… and wherefore did I marry, but to make lawful Prize of a rich Widow’s Wealth, and squander it on Love and you?”(II.i.213-215)

Although their love does not triumph in the end, we see that the love between Mrs. Marwood and Fainall was the only one that was closest to the concept of amorous love without greed. Initially they were completely at peace with the fact that they might not inherit money from Lady Wishfort. But they were still willing to persevere in their love.

This amorous aspect of love is not completely devoid of power politics. Kevin J. Gardner talks about Patrician authority in his essay “Patrician Authority and Instability in “The Way of the World””.

“What happened to the patrician gentleman was that for the sake of social survival he was forced to exchange the last feudal vestiges of violence and independence for courtly intrigue and dependence. Court life, which requires the gentleman to constrain his impulses, demands that personal conflicts be increasingly internalized. Steven Shapin has shown that a "self- imposed" control or "discipline" is a crucial feature of English genteel identity. Self-restraint and internalized passions eventually become the hallmarks of civility, the culturally- endorsed manifestations of power and authority in the patrician culture of late Restoration Britain. Such restraint is, moreover, a particularly masculine trait: in The Way of the World the female figures are largely unable effectively to discipline their passions” (Gardner)

From Gardner’s essay, we see that even amorous love establishes who is superior and inferior. The women are considered inferior because they cannot control their emotions and internalize them. The men are superior because they do not let their emotions control them. He also talks about how amorous love and predatory love are centered around intrigue.

One of the biggest criticisms of this play is that only Mirabell and Millamant’s dilemmas are solved. The rest of the characters have unresolved issues that are never dealt with. The main question that arises is the motive behind the behaviour of different characters. One way of analyzing this is by thinking of the play as a reflection of society. In the eighteenth century, men feared cuckoldry, but were not supposed to express it. Affairs happened all the time but they were kept hidden. Through all of this, the main aim of the bourgeois society was to gain social standing. In an essay called “Playhouse Flesh and Blood”, Katharine Eisaman Maus talks about how women began to act on stage and largely gained fame because they were the mistress of an aristocrat. The bourgeois were constantly trying to attain the wealth and status of the aristocrats. This is clearly depicted in The Way of the World. Money and reputation take priority over selfless love. All the characters represent the typical bourgeois need for climbing to the top of the social ladder and this was a major influence on all their decisions.