The setting of the play, The Way of the World, by William Congreve is the Restoration Era, and Congreve, as the author, has taken the help of his own drama to provide his opinion about this age. In the second chapter of the drama, William Congreve provides us a picture about the history of the Restoration Era. With the help of this Socio-cultural and historical approach of the era, Congreve tried to satirize the various things happening in the society at that time.
It is mostly through the character of Fainall that Congreve satirises the materialistic society of the time. Fainall is a character which has a huge desire for and interest in money, possession, et cetera. He is a character who shows more interest in materialistic things like those mentioned earlier than spiritual things like art, et cetera. The satires that we can see in the drama The Way of the World are marriage as an economic contract, the greed of the middle class people and the lifestyle of the rich or high class.
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The first place where we can find the indirect satire towards marriage is through the married life of Fainall. Fainall is shown to have a very happy life as a husband and a man. He is married to a woman of a high class and is leading a good successful life. However, if we look into it, the marriage of Fainall is only a mean for him to exploit the fortune of Mrs. Fainall. Marrying Mrs. Fainall has given him the opportunity to lead an easy life and have access to all of her fortune. In Act III, Scene III, there is also a dialogue between Mrs. Marwood and Fainall where the latter speaks about how insignificant his marriage is to him, he considers it to be nothing.
This dialogue is one of the major examples of the indirect satire towards marriage in the restoration era. Most of the people of the time looked at marriage as an economic contract. Very rarely was there somebody marrying for love. Marriage for them was a ticket to financial security.
He sees his marriage only as legality and is only going on with it because of all the money it gives him, he never loved his wife. He even goes as far as to say that when he gets all the money of his wife, he might even leave her as she is nobody to him. Fainall had plans of squandering all the money he is getting from his wife’s fortune with his mistress. Congreve, however, is in no way stealing in the money of his wife. He is just taking advantage of the whole system of marriage of the time. Fainall also might have gotten the opportunity to get full of Millamant’s fortune as Millamant’s fortune will also go to Mrs. Fainall if she doesn’t get permission from her parent, Lady Wishfort, to marry someone.
Another indirect satire through this lies towards the male-dominated or patriarchal society of the restoration era. Through Fainall’s character and his perception towards marriage, he satirises how women at the time were nothing more than a property in a marriage transaction. Her money, estate, property and everything owned by her was given to her husband, as she, by law, had become his too. Women had very little to almost no say in the decisions regarding their marriage. Their marriage was conducted solely based on family name, social status, and their fortune. This marriage system of the time had also played a huge role in making the society even more materialistic by feeding their greed. At that time, med didn’t really need to work hard; all they had to do was marry a woman with a good fortune and who comes from the upper class so that they can get a higher social status for themselves and live their lives lazing around.
The second satire that we can find in the drama is towards the government officials, lawyers and other successful merchants who had mostly come from the middle class families. The play also helps in satirising their greed. Fainall is one such man who initially belonged to a middle class family. It was only after he had married Mrs. Fainall that he rose to a higher class of people and started enjoying a more lavish life. There is a dialogue exchange between Mrs. Wishfort and Mr. Fainall where Fainall tells the latter how there is no way to save her ruin and that she has to give all of her property to estates to Fainall. This dialogue clearly shows how there’s no end to the greed of Fainall. He first raised to the higher class my marriage and still desires to get more and more.
Fainall’s greed is a symbol for the greed of all the middle class people of the time hwo were never really happy with what they were actually getting. They always wanted to get more and were never happy with what they already have.
The third satire lies towards the lifestyle of the people of the higher class. From the beginning of the play, Fainall is portrayed as someone who lives lavishly and likes to spend money in cafés and also in playing cards and other such activities. He is a representation of all those people to eat white bread, chocolates and coffee while people of the lower class suffer to get enough food to last a day. There were also places where only the people from the high and aristocratic classes were allowed to enter. These kinds of distinctions refrained the people from the lower classes to do anything even if they really wanted to do it. These circumstances make them materialistic people who are ready to take advantage of the situation to get to the higher classes and live more lavishly. It is the gap of the society that makes them like this.
Congreve here not only satirises the lower class to want to gain a higher life style, he also satirises the aristocrats who were so involved in their own lives that they became ignorant of the trouble of the others. Fainall had enough money to make him happy. However, when he hears about the fortune of Millamant, he changes his perspective towards it and thus falls victim to his own greed.
The end of the drama is also a satire towards how most of these greedy people met their ends. Fainall, not only loses Millamant’s fortune that he was supposed to get, he also loses his wife’s fortune which is then given to Millamant.
After observing all these little scenes, we can say that the main aim of Congreve was to satirise the materialistic society of the time with this drama. He might have wanted to show the society how these people suffered because of their own greed and choices. He tries to show that doing everything based on their materialistic urges can often lead to a sad ending.
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