Term Paper on "Feminist Analysis of Dryden's Marriage a La Mode"

Term Paper 7 pages (2348 words) Sources: 7

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Feminist analysis of Dryden's Marriage a la Mode

John Dryden is considered one of the most important English writers that followed William Shakespeare. The tone of his play in particular represented an interesting addition to elements such as love and passion that had been.

Marcie Frank argues that his well know appreciation for Shakespeare has very much influenced his works and even the manner in which he criticized Shakespeare. He even writes in the preface of "All for Love" that he is imitating the Divine Shakespeare. Whilst Dryden "demonstrates a critical impartiality which underwrites his claims that criticism speakrs to all reasonable man (…) Dryden's most longstanding critical production of Shpakespeare -- Universal Min -- allows him to cast the critical enterprise" (Frank, 2002. p. 64) coming from criticizing the grand writer in a more philosophical manner. As Dryden admired and in the same time criticized Shakespeare, he created a series of works that have happily gone through a series of trials due to his extreme critical mind.

Centuries later, the analysis of his work underlines certain aspects of modern thought, among which feminism. More precisely, in his work, Dryden takes a different stand on love and its place in the ranks of human feelings.

"Marriage a la mode" is a representative play in this sense as it tries to underline a more non-conformist approach, one that is still valid to this day from different perspectives of the feminist movement. The woman in the period of the English Renaissance and in the Restoration times, compared to modern standards was a second class citizen in societies. Besides some positive examples of women in the Bible, like Virgin Mary, most women were identified with Eve's original sin of disobeying the paternalistic rules given to her. As Carol Hansen points out "the authority of the male figure, be it in the form of the father, husband, brother or fiance, is dominant, and the woman is placed in the perilous position of either passively accepting the male code of supremacy, subtly circumventing it, or actively defying it." (Hansen, 1993, p. 3) One could say that women in Dryden's play, like Doralice and Melantha are subtly circumventing it, as they use various means of hiding their desires and decisions.

The actual statement of the play is presented in the beginning of the writing, in its initial statements. Thus, "Why should a foolish marriage vow, / Which long ago was made, / Oblige us to each other now / When passion is decay'd? / We lov'd, and we lov'd, as long as we could, / Till our love was lov'd out in us both: / But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled: / Twas pleasure first made it an oath. / If I have pleasures for a friend, / And farther love in store, / What wrong has he whose joys did end, / And who could give no more? / 'Tis a madness that he should be jealous of me, / Or that I should bar him of another: / For all we can gain is to give our selves pain, / When neither can hinder the other." (Dryden, 1981). This passage is very significant for the entire piece because it underlines some of the core elements of the play. Better said, it presents marriage as a willful action, with love in its center. However, when love or the momentum is lost, Dryden considers, through these lines, that marriage has no longer a purpose.

In the 17th century, love was portrayed as being the utmost noble sentiment of the human condition. There have been numerous poets and playwrights that have envisaged the feeling as providing the most valuable scope in one's life. Shakespeare himself, in his numerous plays, centered his creation on the belief that love is eternal and can challenge faith, as in Romeo and Juliet, or even the human condition as in Hamlet or Othello. By comparison, Dryden's position expressed at the beginning of the play points out exactly an opposing view. In his belief, love is a state that can fade; therefore, humans may be freed from the chains of marriage when such feeling is no longer there.

Another important aspect related to love from this first passage refers to love as being passion. This is indeed a revolutionary approach because in the literature preceding Dryden, love was mostly viewed as being translated into submission, respect, loyalty, and above all obedience. This type of feeling was mostly associated with the feminine presence of plays, reason for which women were most often viewed as very sensitive, oppressed, and in most cases, with few exceptions, weak. However, Dryden's approach on love as being passion portrays the woman as being capable of stronger, more noble, and higher sentiments. In this sense, the woman appears to pertain to a different level, similar to that of the man. This is a significant increase in the role of women not only as submissive wives but also as humans capable of strong individual feelings that are similar to those of men. From this point-of-view, the woman equals the man in the sense that the woman can experience passions similar to those of men that fight in battles. The feminist perspective is very fond of this approach and belief in the equality of men and women, if not the superiority of women.

The role of marriage also plays an important role in the understating of the play. In this sense, it is mentioned that the marriage should indeed be bound by love. This comes into contradiction with several other beliefs of the time that viewed marriage as the most important cell of the community. At that time, marriages were created to reflect political alliances, unities between kingdoms, and truce agreements. However, Dryden views marriage as the connection that exists based on love. When love disappears, the marriage no longer has its fundamental and should be dissolver, without any negative impact on the people.

One should not fall in any trap while analyzing "Marriage a la Mode" from a feminist approach and seeing the play as a (re)birth of women's right to love and happiness within the framework of marriages based on interests. According to modern societal values, women and men should engage in marriage on the basis of love and commit no adultery. This is not the case in this play where Dryden introduces very good examples of sexual exchanges and adultery. The events of Act IV bring two women characters, Doralice and Melantha in a game in which they transform themselves in boys. Freedom of expressing their needs and desires is impossible within their own lives so they play other roles as to satisfy their desires. By pretending to be men, the two women feel and act as if they would live in a world where their sexual desires would be free from social constraints. Doralice's questions about fidelity and the state of women explore, as Rosenthal stresses "the boundaries of acceptable sexual relations and thus potentially, by extension, analogy, or direct link, challenge traditional authoritarian structures in general." (Rosenthal, 2008) Equal chances of development and a say in the institution of marriage could have offered the two ladies the opportunity to become equal with men and not dress as man to feel free to express their ideas and desires. The first feminine treatise of the eighteen century, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" by Mary Wollstonecraft published in 1792 so after more than 100 years from Dryden's play offers one of the first effective solutions for equality between genders: "it is reasonable to suppose that they [women] will change their character, and correct their vices and follies, when they are allowed to be free in a physical, moral, and civil sense." (Wollstonecraft, 1999)

Act IV offers an important example on how Dryden parallels between the thought of women and the thought of men. When Palamede and Rhodophil become suspicious and confront each other regarding their wives sexual preferences, they almost echo Doralice's song about the innocence and even normality of adultery. "Palamede: Rhodophil, you know me too well to imagine I speak for fear / and therefore, in consideration of our past friendship, I will tell / you, and bind it by all things holy, that Doralice is innocent. / Rhodophil: Friend, I will believe you, and vow the same for your Melantha / but the devil on't is, how shall we keep them so? / Palamede: What dost think of a blessed community betwixt us four, for the solace of the women, and relief of the men? Methinks it would be a pleasant kind of life: Wife and husband for the standing dish, and mistress and gallant for the desert." The blessed community that they talk about seems like a paralel universe in which all men could be able to share their wives, and vice-versa, in order to maintain a satisfaction of all desires and frustrations.

A gender based approach on this very… READ MORE

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