Richard Steele and the Genealogy of Sentimental Drama: A Reading of The Conscious Lovers

The mother, then, is treated quite ambiguously in Steele. She may serve, even when absent, as an essential link between generations, as in the case of Indiana's mother furnishing the evidence that Indiana belongs to Sealand and guaranteeing Bevil's financial independence; butshe may also be an obstructive, even usurping force, as in the case of Mrs. Sealand. Whether a departed angel or a current harpy, however, she must give place to the assertion of patriarchal hierarchies, patrilineal descent, and male-dominated marriage. This point deserves some elaboration. To begin with Bevil Jr., the young man's privileged connection with his mother paradoxically draws him all the closer to his father. His mother's money renders him independent, but this liberty is valuable to him only in that it allows him to respect patriarchy for a better reason than economic necessity: pure duty replaces compulsion, and subjection to the law of the father is now undertaken freely. Humphrey observes to Sir John that his son "is as dependant and resign'd to your Will, as if he had not a Farthing but what must come from your immediate Bounty" (1.1.39-41). Patriarchal authority now subsists as what is right in the abstract, not what can be enforced by extraneous, and presumably corrupt, considerations. In the case of Indiana, even though she is identifiable precisely as her mother's daughter, her place in society and her eligibility for marriage can only be established by her reintegration with her father's family. After recognition by Sealand, her prospects change entirely: no longer a threatening outsider, she is instantly recategorized and assimilated as a marriageable heiress. At the level of broadly social reproduction, the substitution of bodies (Indiana for Lucinda) allows the alliance of Sir John's and Sealand's families to proceed as if there had been no essential change in plan: it is only on the personal level that the lovers can distinguish one Sealand female from another. If Indiana's private story has a happy ending, it is because she, too, has come under the shelter of the father's law.

Finally, Mrs. Sealand, despite the dangers she presents, is ultimately construed as a figure of fun, her ambition to rule the household heavily satirized and her motives eventually reduced to a sordid desire not to be outshone in public by her daughter. In rediscovering Indiana, Sealand also recovers his authority over the family, and the prudent withdrawal of Cimberton from the market for Lucinda forces Mrs. Sealand to take comfort in the fact that "the Girl's disposed of any way" (5.3.278-79). Apart from this concession, she is treated as a traditional comic scapegoat, the outsider who cannot really join in the festive congregation of the successful lovers.

From a more narrowly aesthetic point of view, the implicit nostalgia of The Conscious Lovers comes out best in the play's most extended reference to literary precedent: it does in fact have a classical ancestor in Terence's Andria. I have already discussed Steele's adaptation of the "tricky slave" figure in his characterizations of Tom and Humphrey; it is now time to look at the way the example of Terence serves Steele both as a source of empowerment and as a kind of safety net.