The theme of Love, marriage and adultery in Way of The World.
William Congreve is one of the greatest playwright of restoration period. The way of the world is a world famous comedy of manners. It deals with the theme of love and marriage and adultery. In this play, we find love affair. We meet true love making and false love making. Unhappiness in marriage and desire for divorce for the sake of money and property are also obvious. Actually, money and property are based on love and marriage. But love and marriage are based on property.
The love affair between the hero and heroine is the central figure in the play. Mr Mirabell loves Mrs Millamant with all her fault. On the contrary, Mrs. Millamant knows that her husband, Mr. Mirabell is not perfect. Their love develops in marriage.
The love affair between Mr.Mirabell and Mrs. Millamant is one sided.Mrs. Marwood loves Mr.mirabell and tries to win her love. But Mr. Mirabell does not response . so she becomes his enemy.
Mr. Fainall and Mrs. Fainall are husband and wife. She becomes Mistress of Mr. Mirabell. So she becomes pregnant by him. Mr. Mirabell condrives her marriage with Mr.fainal with her money. By tempting with money , Mr. Fainall agrees to marry her.Mrs. Fainall also agrees to marry him so that her child can get its father name.Again Mr Mirabell arranges marriage for his own interest. Waitwell is married to foible who is the servant of lady Wishfort. Waitwell does not feel any attraction to her. He only wants to meet his sexual hunger.
Thus Congreve wants to show that such marriage is unable to bring happiness too. Love without money is an impossible sentimental dream, although money often corrupts what love there is.
Marriage and adultery are of course main themes in The Way of the World, and it seems that characters have much more of a problem with the potential for a tainted reputation than with any moral or emotional imperative not to cheat on their spouse.
Marriage was dependent on the social status, money and power that the individuals possessed. It was unheard of, at that time, to marry solely for love. The highly contrived plot of The Way of the World reflects these preoccupations with money and status. Even though Mirabell loves Millament, he is unwilling to let go of her inheritance. They could have married without Lady Wishfort’s approval, but stood to lose half of Millament’s money. The entire plot is designed to allow the two to marry with Lady Wishfort’s permission.
This starts in the first place with the problem that, though the primary marriage being arranged in the play seems to be based on love, many of the marriages set in place before the play, like Mrs. Fainall's marriage to Fainall, were done more tactically as ways to ensure money and reputation. A major conflict in the play too is who will have claim to Ms. Millamant's inheritance, with Fainall attempting to leverage his wife's apparent adultery to get claim to her, and Ms. Millamant's, inheritance.
The play is also shows multiple adulteries in the characters .Mirabell has several affairs with more than one characters like Lady Wishfort, Mrs Fainall who was pregnant By him Before her marriage,Mrs Marwood. Mr Fainall has some stain of affair with Mrs Marwood though he is married to Mrs Fainall.Lady Wishfort always wishes to be in an affair with any man that resembles to a man.
To sum up, we can say that Congreve has expressed his philosophy about love and marriage and adultery.
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