She Stoops to Conquer

In She Stoops to Conquer, Oliver Goldsmith reverses traditional masculine and feminine qualities in the characters Kate and Marlow, thereby challenging the profoundly unequal conventions of marriage decried by the poets Anne Finch in her poem “The Unequal Fetters” and Lady Montagu in her poem “Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband”.

The importance Kate Hardcastle places on the physical beauty of her future husband challenges the marital conventions of the day by reversing the expectations of beauty placed on women. She expresses her desire for, above all other qualities, a handsome husband, stating, “Young, handsome; these he put last; but I put foremost. Sensible, good-natur’d; I like all that,” (Goldsmith 4). Kate apparently values handsome features over other qualities in a husband, as she explicitly says she places such characteristics foremost, and therefore above all others. She also desires a sensible and good-natured husband, but she puts this second to youth and beauty. Her preference for a good-looking husband is also made apparent when she tells her father, “He must have more striking features to catch me, I promise you. However, if he be so young, so handsome, and so everything, as you mention, I believe he’ll do still. I think I’ll have him,” (Goldsmith 4). Kate will have Marlow based on his youth and looks, and relegates the other qualities he is purported to being “everything else”. His other characteristics are of too little importance to be explicitly restated. Though such great importance as she places on appearance may seem shallow, Kate’s insistence on a handsome husband, a luxury previously reserved for men, is empowering, and indicates a shift in marriage conventions towards increased freedom for women.

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...r marriage. He is petrified by modest women, which demasculinizes him and renders him powerless. The image of Marlow so greatly at odds with expectations of masculinity places him in a more feminine role, both emphasizing Kate’s rejection of accepted gender roles and expectations in marriage, and reinforcing the importance of a shift from hypocritical and constricting marriage conventions to more equal ones.

Women are thought to be submissive and weak, yet these qualities are attributed to the male love-interest, while the female lead takes on a more traditionally masculine role. Kate’s masculine expectations in terms of beauty and position of power in her courtship with Marlow is indicative of a greater cultural shift in female liberty within their marriages and the archaism of the severe marriage constraints portrayed by the poets Anne Finch and Lady Montagu.