Comedy of Manners – Final Paper Outline

Defining Ingénue and Adventuress

From The Reader in Comedy
 “New comedy stresses the young man’s efforts to overcome obstacles posed by an
older man . . . to his winning of the young woman of his choice” (reader 322)
o Young woman is a prize to be won, fulfills feminine role, the incipient
ingénue, though emphasis on her virtue comes later
 “Old comedy puts particular stress on the heroine, who may hold the key to the
successful conclusion of the plot, who may be disguised as a boy, and who may
undergo something like death and restoration” (reader, 322)
o Disguising as a boy indicates a more masculine-typed expression of
sexuality
 “prevalent cultural values . . . emphasize male superiority and dominance
together with female passivity and create role models for women in keeping with
such values and attitudes” (reader, 326),
o Hence the ingénue, in keeping with the trend of role models “that
emphasize modesty, virtue, and passivity” (reader 337)
 Ethnographies from around the world indicate that in the vast majority of cultures
“a woman beyond menopause is considered to be sexless” (reader, 335) no longer
subject to “the convention that young women should be modest in their behavior
and speech in public” (reader, 336)
o Hence why one of the defining traits of the ingénue is her youth while the
adventuress is marked by experience/ at least somewhat more advanced
age required to accumulate this experience
 “constraints are viewed as necessary for an ideal female sex role” (332)
Dual Traditional Case Study
The School for Wives – Ingénue case study
 The ingénue in extremity, a synthetically created innocence
 “virtuous and modest ignorance.” ( Act I, Scene V)
 Agnés reflects “how strange the joy one feels from all this; up to this time I was
ignorant of such things” (Act II, Scene VI)
 A brief and decidedly non sexual moment of romance, is condemned by Arnolphe
as “treading . . . down the broad path to hell and perdition” (act III, scene I)
 Arnolphe instructs Agnés “take care not to flirt, and your soul will ever be white
and spotless as a lily; but if you stain your honour, it will become as black as coal.
You will seem hideous to all, and one day you will become the devil's own
property, and boil in hell to all eternity” (Act III, Scene II)
 One of the maxims of marriage “Amongst her furniture, however she dislikes it,
there must be neither writing−desk, ink, paper, nor pens. According to all good
rules everything written in the house should be written by the husband”
 “Do you think I flatter myself so far as not to know in my own mind that I am an
ignoramus? I am ashamed of myself . . . I do not wish to pass any longer for a
fool”
o Here she begins to throw off the role of the ingénue
 o Marriage with Horace conveniently keeps her from any attempt to mitigate
her sexual ignorance outside the bounds of what is acceptable under
patriarchy
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
An Ideal Husband – Adventuress Case Study
 Announced in the stage directions “makes great demands on on’s curiosity” (act
one)
 “I want to talk business” (act one)
 Chiltern: “ did you know baron Arnheim well?” Cheveley “intimately.”
 “the baron taught me [fairness] . . . amongst other things” (Act One)
 Mrs. Cheveley becomes self-referential in her adventuressness : “My prizes a
little later on in life I don’t think any of them were for good conduct”
 “it is not fashionable to flirt till one is forty, or to be romantic till one is firty-five”
(act one)
 “I have never read a blue book. I prefer books . . . in yellow covers” (Act Two)
o an “annually revised publication listing notable persons . . . those listed
are considered leaders of the English-speaking world in the arts and
sciences, business, government, and the professions”
o Conversely “the yellow dust jacket denoted either risqué French fiction or
popular novels” (wilde women) content further tying her to transgression
from the societal expectation for women
 Despite lines indicating the persistence of the established patriarchal ingénue ideal
(Lord caversham “ no woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all” (act
two)
 “ I don’t mind bad husbands. I have had two. They amused me immensely” (Act
three)
 “Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and
end with a settlement” (act three)
o A cheapening of connection and disbelief in the sentimentality of love
o compare to Agnes’ romantic rapture
o This is a non-essential feature of the ingénue/adventuress but it
emphasizes the patriarchal roots of the types in the cold ‘unattractive’
attitude coming hand in hand with the woman who is “damaged goods”
o Another example of thi strop in action is Mme. Armfeldt in A little Night
music, she is however unsexed, aforementioned menopaused
desexualisation
 Also comes through in one of the better known quips in the play: “people are
either hunting for husbands or hiding from them” (act one)
o Further Exemplifies the removal of the adventuress from sentimentality
20th Century Take
Oklahoma!
 These types persist into the 20th century
  The musical comedy is fertile ground for the implementation of these types since
scripts and plots are often thin so falling back on long culturally endorsed types is
effective for communicating the plot
 See Laurey vs. Ado Annie

What the Butler Saw

 Here, a mere 26 years after the smashing success of Oklahoma and its
endorsement of the ingénue and adventuress, comes a clever farcical comedy that
appears at first to play by the rules of the types but goes on to subvert them
 This play as evidence of the modern evolution, continuation, subversion, and
interplay of these two types
 The incident that starts the plot rolling: “ive never undressed in front of a man
before” - Geraldine
 “I’ll be delighted to help you in any way I can doctor” – Geraldine
o classic ingénue behavior, as noted in agnés who says to arnolphe “Oh how
greatly I am obliged to you” (Act II, Scene VI)
 In denying her transgressive sexual behavior of the previous evening she puts for
the defense; “I’m a married woman” – Mrs. Prentice’s excuse for a lack of
sexuality, previously the single woman was the more chaste figure
o This goes directly against the prevalent traditional attitude that married
women “are supposed to have had sexual experiences” (334, reader)
 “wives are angry if they find their husbands have undressed and seduced a girl” –
Geraldine, proves herself to understand her earlier situation
 Rance vis-à-vis Geraldine “she may be a nymphomaniac”
o Fluidity of identity in the post-wildean age
o Mistaken action and identity as a thinly veiled endorsement of fluid
identity
 Men fear that this fluidity of female identity and freedom from socio-sexual
constraint ‘may disrupt social order, hence their desire to control women’s
sexuality” (reader, 337)

Into the future!

 Media continues to throw off the initial restrictions of the dual archetypes
 See film version of the importance of being earnest, 21st century and the clever
wordless subversion of the initially played straight ingénue
 The continual boundary pushing of comedy’s Avant garde ensures the further
breakdown see House/Lights which mixes “the cultural icon of Faust with a B-
movie”
o Faust is portrayed as a lesbian woman whose “struggle seems at once silly
and self-important”
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