Economics and Mate Selection in The Beau Defeated

Abstract

During the Restoration era the preponderance of plays were written by men, thereby negating any opportunity for etic female commentary on British life during this time in this arena of popular culture. Although women were allowed to work, and often did so, those who were married had virtually no control over the household finances, nor money or property in cases where their husbands' deaths preceded their own. Due to the legal and economic structure of Britain during this time women, from an economic standpoint, were effectively slaves. Mary Pix, one of the few female playwrights of her time, used her position as a mechanism for illustrating the lack of equal treatment given to women in the economic sector and to demonstrate the liminal position women occupied. My paper explores the legalities of this liminal space in terms of property rights and inheritance law through an examination of Pix's play, The Beau Defeated (1700), and the laws of that era. The paper explores the way the law represented different types of women: the maid, the widow, and the married woman; her place within society, the societal norms as related to class and the rights for women to their shared and personal money and real property during this era through the skillfully written machinations of two lead female characters to find the kind of husband that best fit the type of lifestyle each wished to live. This paper can be presented in approximately fifteen minutes.