Paper on The Way of the World (2 pages of brainstorming due Thursday, Feb. 5)

Choose ONE of the following two questions and write a paper on it (typed and double-spaced, approximately 750 words or three pages, MLA form with a title and page numbers in parentheses after the quotes). Support all your points with quotes (and explanations of why the quotes make the points you say they do). This is an exercise that I hope will give you practice in identifying which lines in the play are particularly important and in looking closely at those lines.

Answer either #1 OR #2:

Topic #1: Choose one major character (not Petulant, Mirabell, or Millamant) and explain what insight he/she gives the audience into how "wit" works. Frequently, good plays help us gain an insight into how things work. "True wit" is viewed in this period as the ability to find some healthful relationship--for the individual and the society--between the forms that make us civilized and our natural disires--perhaps to use those forms to train up our desires as a trellis does a rose. A plant sprawled all over the place is not seen as realizing its own beauty or contributing to the beauty of the countryside. Neither, however, would putting it in a small cage allow either end to be achieved.

The paper should address the following areas:

A. Explain what the character intends to accomplish (something that we too would consider a desirable goal).

B. Explain what the character's technique or method is (the kind of action that he/she thinks will accomplish the goal and why).

C. Explain why that action is wrongheaded--why it will not produce the intended result. You are, in other words using specifics from the play to prove something about method or kind of action that will apply outside of the play.

Topic #2: Way of the World shows how difficult it is to find a golden mean between our desire for independence/freedom/power and our desire for "community." How can we satisfy our own whims, desires, and will while recognizing the bonds of togetherness and obligation to each other? Look closely at the concerns of Millamant and/or Mirabell in order to discover the kind of problems involved, the causes of the difficulties. (You are looking for kinds of things supported by specifics.) You may look at evidence concerning other marriages or relationships to see if their concerns and worries are well-founded.

(You can use things people do and things they say for proof. Often, things people say show that they recognize certain kinds of pressures at work in the society; for instance, if Mirabell is afraid Millamant might lace herself up so tightly that it would deform a baby's head, you must infer the reason he thinks she might do so. Then you would look at what women in the play say to see if their words show that they do indeed feel the pressures he is talking about.)

Here is a sample essay for topic #1 (on Petulant) (Please double-space your paper and provide a title)

Petulant wants to establish his identity, something we all want to do. (No one wants to be a faceless number in a crowd.) His method is to adopt a stance directly opposite to whatever anyone else asserts. He takes exception to everything anyone says, arguing for the sake of arguing: "If I have a humour to quarrel, I can make less matters [the cause]" (199), he tells Millamant. It doesn't matter how trivial the point, he will take exception to it in order to establish that his perspective is different. If, for instance, someone says black's black and he has "a humour to say 'tis blue" (186), that humour must be granted.

That technique does not succeed in establishing an individual identity for several reasons. The most important is that his wit provides only obstruction, no positive direction of his own, and one cannot establish an identity built only on negation. Such an identity is a zero, as is humorously indicated by Witwoud's comment that he has known Petulant to "call for himself" and "not finding himself, . . .sometimes leave a letter for himself" (164). Petulant's "self" is so vague that he himself cannot find it. Head-on disagreement offers little scope for constructive action. He can establish no direction, no long-term goals. As Millamant says, "he has said nothing. . .but. . .contradicted everything" (184). Instead of acting, he can only react. He must wait to act in order to contradict, and then all he can say is the opposite. The possibilities are on or off, yes or no, black or blue. Everything is antithetical.

Also, although Petulant's wit frequently takes the form of rudeness and insult, his arguments seem devoid of real passion. The purpose of social "forms," such as language, is to provide a means to fulfill our passions and desires, but Petulant's "forms" do not seem connected to his emotions and desires. When he says "there are throats to be cut" and Mirabell takes him up by saying "meaning mine, sir?" Petulant says "Not I; I mean nobody." He backs off as if his words are non-directional: they don't address anyone in particular and they therefore seem to come from no one in particular. Even his courting lacks any basis in feeling. When he proposes to Millamant, he says, "If you can love me, say it, and that's the conclusion. Pass on, or pass off" (199). "Yes" and "no" are presented as equals; both are of little account.)

Petulant's arguments seem put-ons to establish his position as a man of sense, an assertive man of few words- the Clint Eastwood of the Restoration world? He would be a man like Fainall- a man to be reckoned with, a man that others cannot "run over." However, since his words are only obstructive (a reflex "no" to every "yes") and since they do not arise from personal objectives, his "assertiveness" does not work. It seems like "petulance," which is defined by one dictionary as "rudeness" or "peevishness"--the kind of childish behavior observed in two-year-olds, who say "no" to everything in order to assert themselves as "people." Adults are supposed to have more linguistic resources than two-year-olds.

When Petulant asks Mirabell to "grant him common sense for the future," Mirabell answers, "Faith, I'll do what I can for thee; and I'll pray that Heaven may grant it thee in the meantime." (In other words, "I'll try, but only divine intervention can do much.") Petulant's words constantly rebound on him, meaning something other than what he intended. As he says, "Learning hurts not me--it's no enemy but [to] them that have it" (186). Even Witwoud laughs at Petulant, who is an "epitomizer of words" (199) in the etymological sense of "cutting them short." The man who "just says no" is not a man of sense.