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She Stoops to Conquer: The Analysis of Class in Comic Irony

Oliver Goldsmith's play, She Stoops to Conquer, can be considered a comedy representative of the Restoration. Excluding the moral decadence and artificial grief common in comedies of manners or sentiment, this play serves as a pure laughing comedy which gives the audience unadulterated mirth. There are dichotomous oppositions between high and low classes, man and woman, and the urban and the rural which are seen in comic irony as depicted by Marlow as well as by the surrounding people, who mistake Kate's mansion for an inn. Analysing the element of class hidden in the comic irony, this article will identify the social contradictions and class consciousness that Goldsmith intends to satirize. His play protests against an aristocratic ideology typical of the bourgeois plays, giving it some of the traits of a social drama. The true intention of the author is not to judge someone as right or wrong, nor to punish him or her, but to accept the comedic aspects of each character's original identity.