She Stoops to Conquer

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1773

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Summary

Background

Act Summaries & Analyses

Act I

Act II

Act III

Act IV

Act V

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Warfare

In the title and in the dialogue throughout She Stoops to Conquer, finding love is symbolically represented by the language of battle and warfare. The title itself uses the term “conquer,” which typically implies a military victory, but within the context of the play represents Kate's successful marriage to Marlow. By portraying courtship as a military conquest, Goldsmith draws attention to how tactical and strategic the process of finding love can be. Rather than a calm and casual endeavor, finding a romantic partner requires courage and devious planning in order to succeed.

Marlow refers to his courtship with Kate through the language of battle when he first arrives at the Hardcastle house. As he speaks to his friend Hastings, he decides on an outfit to wear and figuratively compares his decision to the opening gambit of a war: “the first blow is half the battle. I intend opening the campaign with the white and gold” (24, emphasis added). Mr. Hardcastle listens to Marlow and Hastings strategizing about clothing and emphasizes the similarity between their conversation and a commander preparing for a war, saying, “your generalship puts me in mind of Prince Eugene, when he fought the Turks at the battle of Belgrade” (27). Similarly, when Marlow first speaks to Kate, Hastings encourages him to keep talking by comparing having a pleasant conversation to winning a military victory: “you never spoke better in your whole life. Keep it up, and I'll insure you the victory” (33). By referring to Marlow carrying on a conversation as a “victory,” Hastings suggests that social interactions can be won or lost, and that courtship is a competitive and even adversarial process. Marlow does not merely need to share his thoughts with Kate—he needs to win her.

Kate also views her courtship with Marlow as a battle, but she uses language that compares her actions to espionage rather than straightforward military assault. In a speech to her maid, she declares that she will use a disguise to gather information about Marlow in the same way that a hero from a book would spy upon his enemy before a battle to assess the strength of his opponent. The disguise will be beneficial, she says, because “I shall perhaps make an acquaintance and that's no small victory gained over one who never addresses any but the wildest of her sex. But my chief aim is, to take my gentleman off his guard, and, like an invisible champion of romance, examine the giant's force before I offer to combat” (53, emphasis added). While Kate does not wish to harm Marlow, her language symbolically represents them as enemies in a war. In the end, Kate is the one who successfully “conquers” Marlow. In a subversion of traditional gender roles, Kate is the one who wins him over with her clever tactics.

Clothing

Goldsmith uses clothing to symbolize women's social power and class status. While men sometimes mention their clothing, female clothing is given far more importance within the plot of the play, serving as a disguise for Kate and as a goal for Constance. The clothing that these women wear denotes their identity far more than it does for men and conveys their value in society.

Marlow treats Kate entirely differently when she is dressed in her modern, fashionable clothing, finding her so intimidating that he can barely speak to her. He tells Hastings that women's fine clothing is a source of anxiety for him, claiming, “a modest woman, drest out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of a whole creation” (23). When he sees Kate without her fashionable clothing, he cannot determine her identity at all, believing her to be a servant. This indicates that women's clothing is a more important marker of identity than their face or other physical features of their body.

Conversely, Constance and Hastings are divided in their quest to obtain Constance's family jewelry. While Constance wants the jewels back, Hastings is willing to leave them behind as long as they can get married. He tells her, “perish the baubles! Your person is all I desire” (31) when he asks her to elope to France with him. However, to Constance the jewels are not simple pretty “baubles”—they are a symbol of her family's class identity. While she loves Hastings, she wants him to wait to marry her until they can do so without giving up the level of wealth she is accustomed to having. Mrs. Hardcastle also tries to convince Constance to give up on the jewels, although she uses a different rhetorical tactic. Rather than claiming that jewels are unimportant, she tries to convince her that jewels are only suitable for older women and therefore are misaligned with Constance's identity as a young lady. She scoffs at Constance's request, exclaiming, “such a girl as you want jewels! It will be time enough for jewels, my dear, twenty years hence, when your beauty begins to want repairs” (48). Mrs. Hardcastle therefore associates jewelry with a way for women to wield social power once they have lost their beauty. While young women can rely on their good looks to influence others, older women need to use jewels to have power once they begin to lose their sexual appeal to men.

Through Kate and Constance's relationship with clothing, Goldsmith indicates how women's clothing is a far more significant marker of identity and social power than men's clothing is. While men can hold authority for reasons other than their looks, women's social rank is dependent upon their aesthetic appeal.

Travel

Travel is a recurring motif in She Stoops to Conquer that relates to the disorientation of interacting with people from a different social environment. Marlow and Hastings travel away from home and end up confused because of the unfamiliar locations that they find themselves in, while Tony Lumpkin uses travel as a form of trickery that can render even a familiar place somewhere that seems strange.

Travel between the city of London and rural England is a particularly significant motif, embodying Conflict Between the Old and the New in how new, modern fashions are infiltrating and transforming the social world of the old-fashioned countryside. Mr. Hardcastle recounts how, “in my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stage-coach” (5), representing how advancements in transportation technology have resulted in a more interconnected England, but not necessarily a more desirable social situation. Kate has been living in town before returning home to the country and Mr. Hardcastle complains that she has brought back a new style of dress. Similarly, Mrs. Hardcastle claims to love the urban culture of London, and is upset that she cannot actually travel there to experience it. She interrogates Hastings about the fashions of London, telling him, “I'm in love with the town [. . .] but who can have a manner, that has never seen the Pantheon, the Grotto Gardens, the Borough, and such places where the nobility chiefly resort? All I can do is to enjoy London at second-hand” (38). Her dialogue assumes the ability to travel to an urban center as being a mark of the upper class. In order to be like the nobility, she believes she needs to physically experience the same geographical space that they inhabit. Travel thus becomes a method for elevating her social status.

However, travel is also sometimes confusing, promoting social disarray. At the beginning of the play, Tony Lumpkin tricks Marlow and Hastings into believing that his family's house is an inn because they are unfamiliar with the geography of the countryside. Tony's reliance on their geographical ignorance indicates how travel makes Marlow and Hastings vulnerable to manipulation. By leaving their social circle and familiar geography in London, they are more likely to be deceived. Similarly, Tony uses travel to disorient his own mother later in the play. To prevent Constance from being taken away to her Aunt Pedigree's house, he leads the carriage in circles around the property. Tony's plan works, as Mrs. Hardcastle believes herself to be miles from home and mistakes her own husband for a highway robber. It is only after she has been told where she is that she begins to recognize familiar landmarks such as the horse pond. Tony's travel pranks expose how the process of travel itself separates a person from their environment in such a way that even a familiar location can appear unfamiliar. Travel is therefore a destabilizing action—bringing people away from the people and places they know and making them unsure of their social role.