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Uncertainty in Courtship, ANGELICA, LOVE FOR LOVE CRITICAL DEBATE: ENDING …

- - - - Angelica’s resistance is so extreme, it cannot be read as flirtation and instead provokes the sarcastic implication that she will suffer for the loss of a warm lover. She has, in other words, failed to tread the proper and alluring line between readiness and reserve that continues to appeal apparently even to some modern readers

TATTLE AND PRUE

Congreve has Tattle proceed to precisely this point: “Besides you are a Woman; you must never speak what you think; Your words may contradict your thoughts; but your Actions may contradict your words” (2.1.663–66).

Tattle bluntly informs Prue that all her agency must be indirect, based on lies and contradictions. His instructions continue: she must say no, but she must love him, too; she must contradict his flattery even while believing herself charming; she must be angry if he kisses her, but not refuse him; she must threaten to cry out, but hold her tongue.

Congreve reveals the violence latent in Tattle’s code as he has the newly enlightened Prue respond, “Ah, but I’ll hold the Door with both Hands, and be angry— and you shall push me down before you come in” (2.1.703–9).

CONTRAST - PRUE AND BEN?

On the one hand, the “Sea-Calf” might be read as a kind of oracular fool breaking through the hypocritical conventions Markley notes the play as a whole critiques.  example, he responds bluntly, “it’s but a folly to lie” (3.1.412).

 On the other hand, Ben reiterates the same assumption about women that we hear from Tattle: “mayhap you may be shame-fac’d; some Maidens tho’f they love a man well enough, yet they don’t care to tell’n so to’s face: If that’s the Case, why silence gives consent” (3.1.418–21).

This provokes Prue to insist on her aversion, but she is caught within the same ensnaring instructions that issue from seventeenth-century conduct literature: she must not speak her mind, but she must also realize that silent “shame-fac’dness” can and will be interpreted as consent, just as we are warned by Brathwait, de Pringy, and “Philaret.”20 These ideas are so deeply embedded in Congreve’s culture,they simply trip off Ben’s untutored tongue

Robert Markley describes Tattle’s speech as “a reductive satiric attempt to
normalize the language of deceit, to reduce double-dealing to a social lesson.”

From this perspective, the humor is at Tattle’s expense. But we have also seen repeatedly that deceit and double-dealing, particularly as they are conflated with a requisite “modesty” or “shamefastness,” are indeed “a social lesson” for proper women who must not say what they mean or do what they say.

ANGELICA: WANTS CERTAINTY AT THE END? **

IT IS NOT PERMANCE THAT KILLS LOVE - IT IS THE IMBALANCE OF POWER

Congreve thus attempts to explain and resolve all problems with the motif of a trial passed, just as he does in The Double Dealer.28

But Congreve’s resolution does not fully account for Angelica’s insistent, almost cruel rejection, and it certainly does not acknowledge her encomium to uncertainty.

After all, what she seems to seek in the final act, in Valentine’s generosity, is certainty itself.

One can explain the tension between the conclusion and Angelica’s dissertation by ‘noting the paradoxical situation in which late seventeenth-century comic heroines find themselves: they must move toward marriage without violating injunctions, schematized in Tattle’s crude lesson, that they not acknowledge their interest in the men they desire.

Through Valentine, Congreve shows his awareness of this convention: “Nay, faith, now let us understand one another, Hypocrisy apart, —The Comedy draws toward an end, and let us think of leaving acting and be ourselves; and since you have lov’d me, you must own I have at length deserv’d you shou’d confess it” (4.1.760–64). Angelica manages to avoid concluding “The Comedy” until the next act, which includes Valentine’s demonstration of generosity. But Valentine is right; their union is as inevitable as her “Hypocrisy.”

REVERSAL OF GENDER ROLES

Hero’s attachment to love signals his increasing valorization of the private self that is marked by a ‘feminine’ surrender to emotion.

His decleration to Angelica that ‘I thought I wanted more than love to make me worthy of you’ betrays his insecurity in the face of her changeability and forcefulness. It is an emotional overbid that desigates ‘feminine’ submission to the game of love whose rules are set by the powerful party.

The reversal of gender is forgrounded by Angelica’s rather than Valentine’s triumph over Sir Sampson: ‘Learn to be a good father… You have no more faults than he has virtues; and tis’ hardly more pleasure to me, that I can make him and myself happy, than I can punish you.

The battle was won by means of Angelica’s superior deceit.

Male setiment and moral reformation can be achieved on one condition: the renunciation of public place and monetary intrest.

The last word of the play belongs to Angelica: ‘Men are generally hypocrites and infidels; they pretend to worship, but have neither zeal nor faith. How few, like Valentine, would preserve even unto martyrdom, and sacrifice their interest to their constancy!