No Laughing Matter: "The Female Wits"

My first impression of "The Female Wits" was one of struggling to keep interested in the anonymous author's plot, characters, and humour. Thinking this over, I think my attention lagged due to the fact that none of the characters are well-rounded, developed, or realistic people, but mere stock characters whose sole purpose is to verbalize the pre-determined views of the author. I found that the plot suffered because of the author's obvious, one-sided, misogynistic agenda, and that the humour soon grew repetitive.

Right from the start, in the Dramatis Personae (which, as has been pointed out, omits all the women in the play since the author doesn't consider them "persons"), the characters are pigeon-holed into roles that they continue to fulfill throughout the story. Mr. Awdwell is immediately deemed a man of "Sense and Education," in marked contrast with all the female characters, who are immediately branded either vain, false, or stupid... and never depart from these labels. The characters are never allowed to break out of the gendered molds set out for them; in the author's estimation, women who aspire to writing are by definition self-flattering creatures who are only "pretending" to possess male wisdom.

Moreover, amongst themselves, the women writers are portrayed as catty and two-sided. Marsilia, for instance, cuts down the literary endeavours of Calista behind her back--"she pretends to Grammar, writes in Mood and Figure; does every thing methodically," she says--while embracing her as "the charming'st Nymph" to her face. The author allows them no redeeming characteristics whatsoever; they are not only bad writers, they are bad people.

Mr. Praiseall functions as a "blind leading the blind character"--he demonstrates that only foppish, effeminzed cowards would esteem ridiculous women like Marsilia. In esteeming her, he abandons what the author considers proper masculinity, thereby becoming more of a woman than a man. Mr. Praiseall acts as a sort of foil to Mr. Awdwell, who as the normal or straight man may find the ridiculous women writers physically attractive, but never goes so far as to esteem them.

My reading of the play is that we are meant to scorn, to ridicule, to laugh at the women's expense, but never to admit the possibility of a true female wit. The play's dimissiveness is epitomized in the final line: "I'll leave the Scribbler to her Fops, and Fate; I find she's neither worth my Love or Hate." Ultimately, says the author, women writers are not even worth paying attention to.