Lady Wishfort
Throughout Robert Erickson’s article “Lady Wishfort and The Will of the World,” he discusses the plays various characters and how their names and traits effect the conclusion of the story. In addition, Erickson focuses on Lady Wishfort’s “depraved will” and is seemingly obsessed with her character flaws. Erickson expresses a bias opinion against Lady Wishfort, making her out to be the vilest and least reformed character in the play.
If readers relied only on the abstract of this article, there would be a great deal of confusion as it expresses the topic as “Attention to Lady Wishfort and Foible; Restoration comedy; Unfulfilled desires of Lady Wishfort” (Erickson n.p.). Unfulfilled desires, not exactly the topic Erickson goes on to describe.
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Erickson discusses the beginning of the play in great detail, being sure to drag out all the flaws in Lady Wishfort’s character before her transformation at the end. He writes, “At the beginning of the play, Lady Wishfort is a powerful social arbitress in a shame society; her words and status have real power to hurt, to pass judgement, even to “kill” (342). Albeit, a true statement, but what about the person she becomes, the woman that has to swallow her pride and ask Mirabell for help. Erickson further berates Lady Wishfort by stating, “ill language further binds her, ironically, to the low world from which she prides herself on having rescued her waiting maid” (345). Thus, Lady Wishfort is a hypocrite with no chance for redemption because that is the last titbit of information readers are left with, except for his comparison that Lady Wishfort’s face is similar to furniture with cracking varnish, how kind (347).
Obviously Robert Erickson’s shows a bias opinion against Lady Wishfort in his article “Lady Wishfort and The Will of the World.” From her “depraved will” to comparing her face to cracked furniture, the author clearly did not like Lady Wishfort’s character. Unfortunately, this means readers are missing out on his (unbiased) insight regarding the character. If one is going to evaluate a particular character, it should be done from beginning to end; had Erickson included Lady Wishfort’s transformation, perhaps his writing would not seem so
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