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Goldsmith does not so crudely mock patriarchal society, although his character of Kate also gains power through the use of the ‘weapons’ of deception and disguise, the writer wishing to change his audience’s view of women. Indeed, like the women of the 1300s, Kate and the female characters of Goldsmith’s play would have been thought of as objects by the society of the 1700s: at the time, women were ranked by publications such as the London Chronicle in terms of their beauty and, in marriage, did not have any legal rights over their children or matrimonial property. Although, like the female characters of Jane Austen who are able to use the patriarchal system to their advantage, Goldsmith’s Kate Hardcastle is able to gain power from the misogynistic society in which the play is set through deception. Employing different ‘masks’, one of the ‘weapons in the battle of life’, Kate holds power over her future husband, Marlow: she pretends to be both a barmaid, subserviently referring to Marlow as ‘sir’ and ‘your honour’, and ‘a poor relation’ of the Hardcastles in order to educate him as to his, as Christopher Brooks notes, ‘perverted class-virtue double standard’. This ‘creates a space for talk’, one of Kate’s aims according to Brooks, enabling her to have an equal status to that of Marlow in their marriage. Brooks plausibly argues that Marlow recognises his wife-to-be has ‘gained authority’- achieved through deception- when, at the end of the play, he refers to her as his ‘little tyrant’, ‘tyrant’ implying her power, whilst ‘little’ signifying their companionate relationship, not Marlow’s objectification. Kate succeeds in the ‘battle of life’ to gain more power, but also to educate the audience, as the Epilogue testifies. Written by Dr Goldsmith but spoken by Kate, this ending evidences that the playwright’s aim is the same as his female protagonist’s: to ‘conquer’ his audience and challenge their view of women influenced by patriarchal society. Thus, Chaucer and Goldsmith seem to have a shared goal to re-educate their audiences, achieved by the same means of deception by their female characters that ridicules those that represent the patriarchy. owever, though May and Kate gain greater authority, they are still trapped in marriages controlled by the patriarchy, Chaucer and Goldsmith ultimately presenting ‘masks’ and ‘deceptions’ as ineffective in the futile ‘battle of life’ to convey the power of men over women in their societies. Whilst Kate’s increase in power should not be ignored or underestimated, by the end of the play, she has not truly defeated her enemy, the patriarchy, in this ‘battle of life’, rather she has only made her marriage more tolerable. Brooks’ optimistic interpretation of the events of the play still stands in that Kate does ‘conquer’ Marlow. However, Peter Dixon convincingly argues Miss Hardcastle continues to be a ‘prisoner’ of the ‘world of masculine values’ as, though now in a more equal relationship withMarlow, she is still in a marriage arranged by her father and Sir Charles Marlow, these being figures of the patriarchy. Dixon furthers this by plausibly noting Kate is a ‘complicit prisoner’ by using her ‘mask’ of the barmaid to act as a ‘sexual plaything’ for Marlow that conforms to his fetish for women of ‘lower-birth’. Yet, unlike Brooks, Dixon misses that she is also ‘complicit’ in accepting her father’s choice of man to marry. This is because she recognises her trapped position: Kate knows she can use deception to improve her marriage to Marlow, but she also realises that she is still viewed by society as an object, hence, like Austen’s characters, she pragmatically uses the system to her advantage by ‘[bringing] her face to the market’, ‘market’ conveying her status in the 1700s as akin to an item to be bought by a man. Writing during a time of relaxed libel laws that saw a rise in satire from the likes of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, Goldsmith wishes to make fun of the futility of the ‘battle of life’ for women against H
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