Stretching the Form

The 1690s began with two socially symbolic events. Mary Wharton sued for a divorce in parliament; not only did she receive it, thereby making her the only woman before 1801 whose marriage was dissolved, which is the word used in parliamentary and legal debates, but she was also declared a virgin.' The second event was the performance of Thomas Southerne's surpassingly ugly and vicious play, The Wives' Excuse. This play ran only three nights, but in recent years it has been praised and analyzed by the most influential critics of Restoration and eighteenth-century drama, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan in Stratford, and treated to long reviews and serious analyses, even in the popular press.2 It gives us an unforgettable picture of a vicious, trivial society, monstrous people, and, at the end, the tableau of a lonely heroine, an icon of misery and virtue. Unlike Mary Wharton, she has no case for divorce, because her husband, not she, has committed adultery. Of long-suffering heroines, Elizabeth Inchbald wrote, [they are] egregiously impassioned by conjugal love.3

Computer Science · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Literature: history, themes, analysis

• Cou’d You Put On Our Sex With Your Breeches”

  Youmi Jung•English Studies•2020

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