The Way of the World
William Congreve is one
of the greatest playwrights of restoration period. The way of the world is a
world famous comedy of manners. It deals with the theme of love and marriage.
In this play, we find love affair. We meet true love making and false love
making. Unhappiness in marriage and desire for divorce for the sake of money
and property are also obvious.
We find that wait well is
married to Foible, Mr. Fainal and Mrs. Fainal is leading a conjugal life. Mr.Mirabell
is going to marry Mrs. Millamant. Actually, money and property are based on
love and marriage. But love and marriage are based on property.
The love affair between
the hero and heroine is the central figure in the play. Mr. Mirabell loves Mrs.
Millamant with all her fault. He says that All the fault of Mrs. Millamant have
become familiar to him. Yet he loves her. On the contrary, Mrs. Millamant knows
that her husband, Mr. Mirabell is not perfect.
There is a good relation between
them. From the very beginning, Mr. Mirabell loves Mrs. Millamant and tries to
come close to Mrs. Millamant. As a result their love develops in marriage.
The love affair between
Mr.Mirabell and Mrs. Millamant is one sided. Mrs. Marwood loves Mr.Mirabell and
tries to win her love. But Mr. Mirabell does not response. So she becomes his
enemy.
Mr. Fainal
and Mrs. Fainal are husband and wife. Their marriage is very interesting. In
‘the way of the world’, we see that Mrs. Fainal is the daughter of lady Wishfort.
She is at first married to languish. Unfortunately her husband dies. After the
death of her husband, she becomes Mistress of Mr. Mirabell. So she becomes pregnant
by him. Mr. Mirabell contrives her marriage with Mr.Fainal with her money. By
tempting with money, Mr. Fainal agrees to marry her. Mrs. Fainal also agrees to
marry him so that her child can get its father name. Mr. Mirabell also tempts Mr.Fainal
that after the death of lady Wishfort, he will inherit the money and property
of lady Wishfort. Mr. Fainal becomes greedy after wealth. He demands the wealth
of his wife and threatens if lady Wishfort does not pay, he will divorce his
wife.
In the play, we find that
Mr. Mirabell and Mrs. Millamant are engaged in love Makin. We see that the lady
Wishfort is an aristocratic lady of fifty five. She is humiliated and left by
her lover, Mr. Mirabell. So she wants to take revenge upon him and arrange the
marry between Sir Rowland and Mrs. Millamant. When it is known to her the real identity
of Sir Rowland, he arranges the marriage between Sir willful Witwound and
Millamant.
To sum up, we can say
that Congreve has expressed his philosophy about love and marriage.
0 comments:
Post a Comment