Catharine Trotter’s Love at a Loss and Nicholas Rowe’s The Fair Penitent: The Tragic end of their Female Characters

Sorry for the horrible title, but I couldn’t think of anything else. As can be seen in Trotter’s play, active women like Lesbia are unable to pursue their true desires due to the restrictions of society (she is “divided between love and honor” (Trotter V.iv. 240). While Lucilia and Phillabell as well as Miranda and Constant get married in accordance with their own wishes, Lesbia forfeits her preferred lover Grandfoy after she allows her future marriage partner to be ”put [...] to the vote” (V.iv. 254) by a public forum of friends and strangers. As a result, she is forced to marry Beaumine and conform to her former marriage vow to him. While the play’s end appears tragic in that Lesbia loses her lover Grandfoy, this end is chosen by Trotter because, in her view, Lesbia breaking her marriage vow is implicitly worse than her freely choosing Grandfoy.  Lesbia even admits “his right is indisputable” (V.iv. 281) and conforms to the traditional belief that men hold a right to possess women if a woman promises to marry him. A man could easily forfeit his marriage promise to a woman without any social condemnation, but, when a woman does it, it can destroy her “honor”.

 Likewise, in Rowe’s The Fair Penitent, Calista also experiences a tragic end due to the patriarchal forces against her as well as society’s sexual double standard that privileges men above women. By the way, I should probably express my intense hate for this play, which I consider to be the worst play in this course so far (and, arguably, the worst play that I have ever read). I do not think that it is a coincidence that Rowe’s play ends on the page 666 of our text book and I suspect that Satan indirectly manipulated Nicholas Rowe to create this abysmal play as a means to torture future English undergradutates such as myself and lead them to commit suicide, so as to escape the world that created such bad art. There is no greater crime than bad art and I can only hope Rowe was subsequently hanged after the play’s first performance  (I kid, I kid) and the play itself then faded into obscurity. Alas, this did not happen and I am forced to write a blog about it.

Now, back to my theme. Despite lines like “How hard is the condition of our sex!/ Through ev’ry state of life the slaves of man” (III.i. 40-41) and Calista’s own desire to “Shake off this vile obedience they exact,/ And claim an equal empire o’er the world” (III.i. 53), this “she-tragedy” will then go on to reinforce patriarchal conventions to an insane degree (even more overtly than the other plays). While Calista’s independence and her desire for freedom in this patriarchal world is interesting, Rowe most likely would regard these traits as signs of her supposedly wicked nature. Unlike other people in our class, I would view Calista more leniently and I would even go as far as to say that she does nothing that I would regard as evil or wicked in the play (and that includes her disruption of Horatio and Altamont’s friendship which is merely a survival response as, I think, Emily mentioned in class). The play, however, evidently characterizes her as “prone to evil” (V.i. 158).

However, the play’s internal logic desires the viewer to see Calista as in need of punishement for her sexual transgression with Lothario and the corruption of her family’s honour (or, more specifically, her father Sciolto’s honour). Even Calista sees herself as in need of death in passages such as “my soul abhors the wretched dwelling/ And longs to find some better place of rest” (V.i. 92-93). Calista thus does not question the sexual double standard of her society and accepts its negative consequences upon herself. By characterizing her as a deviant women who must be punished for her defiancy of “feminine” gender roles due to her passionate nature, the discovery of her betrayal and the demonization of her character then strenghtens the homosocial reunion between Horation and Altamont and the patriarchal power that is embedded within such male relationships. Thus, Rowe’s play reinforces the conventions of a patriarchal society by tragically suppressing the independence of Calista at its end. 

On a side note, I didn’t think there could be a character as ignorant as Wycherley’s Sparkish, but Bonsot in Love at a Loss gives him a run for his money.

That’s all for now.