SOURCE: "Goldsmith's Feminist Drama: She Stoops to Conquer, Silence and Language," in Papers on Language & Literature, Vol. 28, No. 1, Winter, 1992, pp. 38-51.

In this essay, Brooks analyzes Kate Hardcastle's use of language to oppose the patriarchal system which would relegate her and all women to passive silence.

In the closing lines of his introduction to She Stoops to Conquer, Tom Davis observes that Kate Hardcastle "undergoes voluntarily (as no one else does) the reversal of class-roles, and does this in order to create a space for lovers to talk in that is independent of class and of the constrictions that reduce Marlow to lies or silence." Of primary interest here is Davis's observation about "silence" and "class-roles." Such terms are prominent in feminist discourse about the sociology and anthropology of women, a discourse that when applied to Goldsmith's "laughing comedy" reveals a significantly more sophisticated thematic to She Stoops...