36 pages • 1 hour read
William CongreveLove for Love
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1695A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
True “Love for Love” Versus Love for Ulterior Motives
The play’s title emphasizes the central thematic importance of “love for love” in the world of the play, as the idea of marrying out of genuine emotion is a rarity in Valentine’s social circle. The eventual match between Valentine and Angelica is made all the more powerful through the contrast it forms with the “love” experienced by the other characters.
Some characters, such as Tattle, Scandal, and Mrs. Foresight, treat love and seduction as mere games played for the thrill of deception and pleasure. Tattle brags about his many conquests of married, high-born ladies, and Scandal believes that women are not capable of fair or virtuous conduct. Mrs. Foresight, although married, engages in affairs, as suggested by her conversations with Mrs. Frail and her night of passion spent with Scandal. For such characters, love has no real emotional weight and is primarily a form of amusement. Meanwhile, for a single woman with no fortune like Mrs. Frail, marriage is a means of securing financial and social status, and love does not factor into her deliberations at all: she is eager to marry Ben when she thinks the inheritance will fall to him, and she swiftly rejects him without regret when she discovers he has lost it.
Angelica and Valentine represent an alternative to these points of view. Valentine claims to have little interest in social or financial status, except as a means of making Angelica happy. Angelica, as a woman of independent means, is less concerned with money and more preoccupied with ensuring that Valentine’s love for her is authentic. As Valentine seeks to restore his fortune and win her over throughout the play, Angelica seeks to test his love by keeping her feelings private and observing how he responds to her testing. By the play’s end, both Angelica and Valentine are able to declare themselves openly to one another, in the full assurance that their marriage truly is a match based on “love for love” and not any of the other ulterior motives represented in the play.
Filial Obligations and Family Ties
The central conflict of the play is rooted in the fight between Sir Sampson and Valentine over Valentine’s debts. While Valentine believes that his father should relent and release him from signing over his inheritance to Ben, Sir Sampson believes that Valentine’s disobedience has forfeited his right to his estate. Valentine and Sir Sampson hold markedly different conceptions of the parent-child relationship: While Valentine believes it should be based on affection, Sir Sampson believes he has the right of absolute authority over his sons. This tension is later mirrored in the relationship between Sir Sampson and Ben as well, as Ben ultimately rejects his father’s authority and decides he will only marry a bride of his own choosing.
The idea of filial obligation also occurs in the relationship between Foresight and Miss Prue. When Miss Prue rejects Ben in favor of Tattle, only to get jinxed by Tattle in turn, she vows to marry one of her father’s servants instead. Foresight is disgusted by this suggestion, as it violates the norms of their social hierarchy. Instead of accepting Miss Prue’s agency, he decides to keep her away from the servant and dismiss the servant immediately, thereby asserting his authority as a father the way Sir Sampson often does. When Sir Sampson thinks he has a chance to marry Angelica, he abandons all thoughts of passing his inheritance on to his grown children for the sake of solidifying the match; he ensures that he can pass the inheritance on to his possible heirs with Angelica. His actions suggest a total disregard for his current family and confirms that he feels no obligation toward his sons.
Determinism and Agency
Foresight’s obsession with omens and predetermined astrological influences in the lives of humans is a comic embodiment of one of the play’s key themes: the tension between fate/determinism and agency in the lives of the characters. The main characters seek to exercise their agency in different ways, but not all characters have the same degree of agency.
Birth circumstances and financial dependency are both forms of determinism that hinder agency in the play. Valentine is financially dependent upon Sir Sampson, and as such is vulnerable when Sir Sampson demands that he sign over his inheritance to gain clearance of his debts. Ben, as the younger son, stands to inherit very little under normal legal circumstances, as the eldest son usually inherits the bulk of an estate in Restoration England. Ben must therefore initially have his own profession of sailor as a means of sustenance, and his only hope of gaining the inheritance for himself is through his eldest brother’s fall from grace. While Ben is disadvantaged legally through his status as a younger son, his profession nevertheless grants him a degree of agency that Valentine—as a man without a profession—almost entirely lacks.
Determinism and agency also factor into the lives of the women in the play. Mrs. Frail, for example, is well aware that she needs to marry again in order to secure financial and social protection for herself, and she attempts to win over Ben even when she has no love for him. Miss Prue is not quite free to make her own match either, as her attempts to persuade Tattle fail, and her proposed match with one of the servants is thwarted by Foresight. Angelica is a unique example of a woman who does indeed enjoy full agency: unlike Valentine, she is not dependent upon a parent for her money, and unlike Miss Prue, she can marry when and as she likes without seeking anyone else’s permission.
