Philosophies of Human Nature in Catherine Trotter’s “Love At A Loss”

“…I know how to value myself…”
~Beaumine, V.iv.307-308

Doing a quick browse of internet material for this week’s playwright, Catherine Trotter, I was interested to see that she seems to be just as often talked about as one of the most important women philosophers of her time as she is as a writer, just as often discussed for her connection to John Locke and Enlightenment thinking as for her plays. In her introduction to Catherine Trotter: An Early Modern Writer in the Feminist Vanguard, Anne Kelley suggests that Trotter explored in her philosophical writings “concerns that had always been evident” in her literary works, and that “Trotter’s plays are unusual in that the resolution of ethical problems is their principal focus” ( Kelley 97). I could certainly see how philosophical questions about human nature permeate Trotter’s Love at a Loss (1700).

I found it interesting that, as a courtship play, Love at a Loss seems to really hinge upon whether men and women can in fact change their natures and be transformed into married people. A debate over human changeability seems integral to the play, and complicates the very possibility of happiness in marriage. Both the Lesbia and Beaumine and the Miranda and Constant plots involve a skepticism about the possibility of genuine changes in people’s personalities and actions, and whether Beaumine and Miranda can be domesticated—whether either will give up their radical expressions of personal freedom—is the main obstacle to marriage and the central complication of the plot.

In scene after scene, Trotter presents her audience with staged debates regarding conceptions of human nature and opinions about the institution of marriage. One key topic of conversation throughout the play, mainly between the rake Beaumine and the virtuous Phillabell, is that of novelty. If humans are irresistibly drawn to new sensations and experiences, argues Beaumine, and these things must come to an end when singledom does, then by definition married life can never be satisfying.

If liberty is indeed “the dear prerogative of nature” (I.ii.33-34), as Beaumine says, then marriage is an unnatural state. After Phillabell’s statement, “I secure my happiness, With a chaste wife, like my Lucilia, true,” Beaumine’s response, “I, with a mistress, ever gay and true” (I.ii.142-144) is that of a philosopher who recognizes the impossibility of lasting marriage. This makes him “considerably less morally degenerate than the rakes in some of the earlier works of male playwrights” (Kelley 104). Beaumine does not display a destructive contempt of the female sex in particular like other Restoration rakes we have encountered, but a belief in flawed human nature in general.

But through the speeches of Phillabell as well as those of Lesbia, Lucilia, and Constant, Trotter endorses the idea that the greatest happiness does in fact lie in security. Security, reason, and happiness are shown to be bound up in each other: "I have all the security for a lasting love and happiness that reason can desire or give" (I.ii.79-80), says Phillabell. Beaumine is ultimately dismissed--he is not allowed to dominate the action of the play, his duplicitousness results in none of the women actually being in love with him, and of course in the end he is made to reform.

Perhaps Trotter’s gentle debunking of Beaumine’s libertine rake philosophy can also be seen as a rejection of his false reason and pessimistic world view. Trotter seems to show more of an “optimistic view of society” and a “belief in the fundamental benevolence of humanity” (107) than the bleak view of human nature espoused by libertinism. The conception of human nature sketched for us by Trotter is that man is more than just a savage animal, and that there is potential for human development and the constructive power of reason. This, I think, is the chief didactic end of the play, and in keeping with the content of her later philosophical writings.

See also: Paula R. Backscheider's "Stretching the Form: Catharine Trotter Cockburn and Other Failures"