Comparing Marriage in Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, She Stoops to Conq

Separation between Love and Marriage in Mary the Wrongs of Woman, She Stoops to Conquer and Moll Flanders Our aim in this paper will be to analyze and discuss the different ways in which have sex and espousal were dealt with during the eighteenth century and to what extent these two impairment were linked unneurotic or considered as opposite. To accomplish this matter we are going to focus our attention on several works that are substitute from this period and that reflect in an accurate way the social mores and more specifically, marriage conventions and romantic love. Throughout this discussion we will be emphasizing the stem that marriage is represented in these works as an institution completely detached from love and that it pursues more than anything else economic purposes and an rising in the social hierarchy. first of all we should account for the situation of English women during the eighteenth century, that despite several social improvements, continued having less rights or freedom than men within the family and marriage as an institution. Patriarchal forms were still a deep-rooted custom that ruled society, which was male-centered. Marriage was often forced on women as their only way of having a recognized position in society, but at the same time led them to slavery. Womens property could be spent to the discretion of the husband as she was considered, together with all that she owned, a possession of the husband. Significantly relevant is the fact that the convention of marriages arranged by parents was still widely accepted. Evidences of this aspect can be shew in Goldsmiths work She Stoops to Conquer. At the very beginning of the play Mr.Hardcastle expresses that he has already chosen a husband for... ...and stability. However, the existence of arranged marriages and consequently the lose of love, turned matrimony into a prison where women were locked. A male-ruled world transformed women into virtual slaves that had no rights, and the cases where marriage was the result of a true and passionate love can be counted for as exceptional. Works Cited Wollstonecraft, M., Mary The Wrongs of Woman, Oxford Worlds Classics. (1976) Defoe, D., Moll Flanders (1978) Penguin English Classics. (1999) Goldsmith, O., She Stoops to Conquer Dover Thrift Editions. (1991) Stone, L. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, (1979) Pelikan Ty, E. Unsexd Revolutionaries Five Women Novelists of the 1790s. University of Toronto Press, Toronto. (1993) Spencer, J., The stick up of the Woman Novelist From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen Oxford Press (1987)