SOURCE: "The Mistakes of a Night: Double Standards in She Stoops to Conquer," in Multiple Personality and the Disintegration of Literary Character: From Oliver Gold-smith to Sylvia Plath, St. Martin's Press, 1983, pp. 38-46.

In the essay below, Hawthorn contends that competing value systems in society are reflected in the divided personalities of the characters in She Stoops to Conquer.

One of John's maternal cousins, his mother's sister's daughter, a young lady of about his age, became quite unsettled mentally when twenty-five years old. She became nervous, ugly, hypochondriacal and pessimistic. She had a special antipathy to her mother, and scolded considerably [George B. Cutten, "The Case of John Kinsel," Psychological Review X, No. 5, 1903].

Virginia Woolf on Gi; Virginia Woolf on she Stoops to Conquer: =~ Sshe Stoops to Conquer:

Nothing could be more amusing than She Stoops to Conquer—one might even go so far as to say that...