Coyness and Crime in Restoration Comedy Women's Desire, Deception, and Agency

In allowing female actors to appear on stage, the Restoration may have marked a watershed moment in English theater history, but this did not mark a corresponding improvement in social attitudes toward women. As Thompson (Agnes Scott College) expertly documents, a wide range of late-17th-century comedies contested some as basic as a woman's right to say 'no' to persistent/unwelcome suitors. The author identifies what she terms the 'trope of insincere resistance,' a motif whereby a woman's 'no' actually means 'yes,' and female characters conceal insatiable desire behind masks of false modesty. After tracing the evolution of this pernicious trope through conduct literature of the period, Thompson charts how comic types and stock situations in drama reflected and reinforced gendered inequities in society. Chapters document that some of the era's best-loved dramatists--Wycherley, Dryden, Shadwell, Congreve, Southerne, Vanbrugh--wrote plays curtailing woman's sexual freedom and social options. Even Aphra Behn proves a traitor to her sex, depicting romantic love as mercenary self-interest, and affirming 'the prerogative of well-born men by implicitly blessing their sexual aggression in the face of women's denials.' Meticulously researched, clearly organized, methodically argued, this book strips the veils of elegance and wit from Restoration theater, exposing dismaying prurience, misogyny, and exploitation. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers. CHOICE