She Stoops To Conquer, by Oliver Goldsmith

Essay by sophia_lispectatorUniversity, Bachelor's September 2004

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She Stoops to Conquer, a comedy by Oliver Goldsmith, deals with the necessity of debasement in love i.e. with the debasing of women of superior breeding in order to make them approachable to men who would otherwise feel unmanned in their presence. It is a common tendency in our day and age and most obviously it has always been so.

Kate Hardcastle is a fine, young gentlewoman, who has been to London and knows how to dress fashionably but in order to please her backward father she dresses more plainly in the evening. Marlowe is a young gentleman who is extremely sheepish with gentlewomen ("modest girls" as he names them, stating that he was never familiarly acquainted with a single modest woman except his mother) and equally as liberated with women of low social stature. He mistakes Kate's house for an inn, takes her for a barmaid and her father for an innkeeper.

Seeing her dressed fashionably in daytime he is too shy to take a look at her. On the other hand, in the evenings, when she changes into her plain clothes, he immediately begins to flirt, and even tries to rob her of her honor. To do justice by Marlow I would have to add that he insists that if he found her possessed of virtue he would be the last person to attempt to corrupt it. The later scenes are occupied with the gradual transformation of Kate-barmaid into Kate-gentlewoman. Marlow realizes that he is staying at the Hardcastle's and not at an inn but Kate doesn't yet reveal her true identity. She tells him that she is a poor relation. She lures him into offering marriage and his impulsive commitment is rewarded in a development typical of sentimental drama, with the discovery that Kate has...