| From John Dryden and Jeremy Collier in the seventeenth century to James Agate and Allardyce Nicoll in the twentieth, wit was accepted as a sufficient criterion for defining and asserting equality of the sexes in the Restoration comedies of manners. This single standard is no longer considered satisfactory. Critics such as Eve Sedgwick and Robert Hume are demanding that legal and social traditions be recognized as qualifying barriers to such a contention. For equality to be convincingly asserted, its gendered context must be acknowledged and neutralized. It is my argument that this requirement is met in the plays of Sir George Etherege, William Wycherley, William Congreve, Sir John Vanbrugh, and George Farquhar.;Psychoanalytic criticism explores the personal power and the private power relationships that allow individuals to experience the illusion of autonomy and, subsequently, of equality despite external reality. In examining the tension between dependence and independence, D. W. Winnicott exposes the intricate systems of attachment that define social context differently for each individual. Brotherhood and sisterhood relationships are essential aspects of these systems. Sisterhoods illustrate the irrepressible element of choice in forming attachments, even when structures (from legal and social to residential) restrict a woman's options. However, sisterhoods also illustrate the desirability of attachment in providing women with power in numbers to counter their inherent impotence within a patriarchal system. Brotherhoods respond to different psychological agenda than sisterhoods do. Brotherhoods, generally more public and less personal than sisterhoods, often function as a unit for establishing dominance, and men, both as individuals and as members of groups, can find themselves competing rather than cooperating with each other. Thus, brotherhoods can foster splits and promote division even as they unite.;Juxtaposing numerous brotherhoods and sisterhoods reveals a variety of patterns in relationships, including the possibility of limited but significant equality between the sexes. The playwrights have convincingly asserted such equality by illustrating the effects of the interplay between primary and secondary attachments, their relative and fluctuating stability and instability, and their tendency to alter each other. Peripheral attachments can and do alter the power balance of primary relationships. |
