Parental Affection in Baillie's "The Tryal"

Hi guys, this week I'm blogging as well as presenting on The Tryal and not Count Basil or De Monfort, since we've been sticking to comedies thus far (and unfortunately there's only so much time at this time of year).

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We've been talking all term about how especially early eighteenth century drama tends to lack valid parental figures, a lot like an episode of Friends where you have a world run by a bunch of of sexy, well-dressed twenty-somethings with seemingly no family ties.

I find it fascinating how these later plays are starting to shift towards familial realism, towards the inclusion of a wider family sphere and not just young people in isolation. I was really struck by how both the opening and closing scenes of Joanna Baillie's The Tryal (1798) are ones of believable familial affection. I liked how the hero of the piece, Harwood, befriends the parent figure as well as the object of his affection: "her uncle comes this way. He look'd so kindly at her, I could not help loving him; he must be a good man, I'll make up to him" (I.I.143-145). I found Mr. Withrington a refreshing character... no Mr. Bennet, but a lot more realistic and likeable compared to many a father figure we've seen.

So when I read Catherine Burroughs' article "'A Reasonable Woman's Desire': The Private Theatrical and Joanna Baillie's The Tryal," I hadn't picked up on Burrough's argument that Withrington is ultimately a figure of patriarchal domination. Burroughs says that “Agnes abandons the trajectory of her original improvisation in order to devise another plot responsive to her uncle’s concerns” (Burroughs 196). True, but I don't think she would have agreed to the second trial if she herself hadn't agreed with her uncle's concerns. I disagreed with Burroughs that the second trial “can be seen as Withrington’s unnecessary interference in Agnes’s private improvisation” (Burroughs 198). I felt like it was necessary. If Harwood had married Agnes after the first trial, I would have felt really unsatisfied.

According to Burroughs, Withrington objects to the marriage of Agnes and Harwood and insists on the second trial because he questions “the degree to which Harwood’s masculine identity can be regarded as secure” (Burroughs 199). This isn't what I saw the purpose of the second trial to be. Rather than a lack of gendered manliness, I thought that it was a lack of basic nongendered human integrity that Withrington feared of Harwood.

I read the line, “If he loves you after this, his love is not worth the having” (5.1.91-92) to mean that her uncle worries that Harwood’s is an unhealthy love with no moral backbone. I saw this as a wise parental act, not a patriarchal power trip. In short, I didn't read the second trial as her uncle's insistence on taking away Agnes' agency, but an act truly “out of concern for her welfare” (Burroughs 196).

Thoughts? Was I the only one who didn't read patriarchal oppression and metatheatrics into the ending?

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A photo of the Pump Room in Bath!

Mr. Opal: "a vulgar looking devil... insisted upon going with us to the pump-room: men of fashion, you know, are always plagued with paltry fellows dangling after them." (I.II.109-111)