COMEDY

GENDER AND SEXUALITY 75her mobile relationship to the city, living in several homes at once, andslipping, ‘from one company to another like a fat eel/between aDutchman’s fingers’ (Middleton and Dekker, 1994:2.2.206–207). ThatMoll does not really belong in her own play, is accentuated by the factthat instead of following comedic convention and donning female attireto marry at the end of act 5, she vows to stay single and to remainalways dressed as a man. Moll’s exclusion from the resolution grants herleave to comment on patriarchy’s orthodox views of women.Challenging the female role in marriage, she declares that,I have no humour to marry. I love to lie o’ both sides o’th’ bedmyself; and again, o’ th’other side, a wife, you know, ought to beobedient, but I fear me I am too headstrong to obey, therefore I’llne’er go about it… I have the head now of myself, and am manenough for a woman; marriage is but a chopping and hanging,where a maiden loses one head, and has a worse i’th’ place.(Middleton and Dekker, 1994:2.2.36–45)Moll sees marriage as a resignation of her liberty, losing her ‘head’, hervirginity, or at least, sexual integrity, to a man, who then becomes the‘head’ of the household.In Congreve’s The Way of the World, as in much Restoration comedy,the heroine is apparently contradictory. It may be worth remindingourselves that the Restoration saw the first actresses perform in theatres,which must have changed the dynamic of the representation of the sexesconsiderably in contrast to the singularly male population of theElizabethan and Jacobean stage. Restoration heroines must at onceprove their virtue, but also run dangerously close to compromising itthrough demonstrations of wit that are the foundation of herdesirability. This fear is best articulated by Pinchwife in WilliamWycherley’s The Country Wife (1675) who declares, ‘he’s a fool thatmarries, but he’s a greater that does not marry a fool. What is wit in awife good for, but to make a man a cuckold’ (Wycherley, 1996:1.1.388–390). Near the end of Congreve’s play, Millamant, pursuedshrewdly and ardently by Mirabell, makes a series of demands, requeststhat must be satisfied if she is to be his wife. These include,liberty to pay and receive visits to and from whom I please; towrite and receive letters, without interrogatories or wry faces onyour part; to wear what I please; and choose conversation withregard only to my own taste; to have no obligation upon me to