Character sketch of Kate Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer

Analysis of multidimensionality of Kate Hardcastle's character

Kate Hardcastle

Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer (1773) is seen as the first successful reaction to the Sentimental Comedy. It is endowed with an ingenious and lively plot, a cast of excellent characters and a vivacious and delightful style. Based on the Restoration Comedy, lacks the Restoration grossness both in plot and characterization. Kate Hardcastle is the most discussed and widely appreciated character in this play. She is the centre and mainspring of the plot of the drama.

          The most remarkable theme of Kate's character is that though she is extremely intelligent, lively, sensible, inventive, resourceful and is both capable and intent upon shaping the course of her own life, there is no streak of violent iconoclasm in her character: "By living a year or two in town", she has a love for finery. She is a pretty woman, well-read in Shakespeare, at the same time, she is obedient to her father, Mr Hardcastel. Following her father's dictates, she agrees "in the evening" to "put on" her "housewife's dress to please" him. Kate also accepts her father's choice of Mr Marlow (Young) as her prospective husband. But at once rationally she expresses her little objection to father of getting "no room for friendship and esteem" with Marlow. Hearing the acclamation about Marlow from her father, she also, like other girls of her age, starts loving Marlow and says, "I'll have him". In Spite of all these, as a rationalist, she also expresses her view on Marlow that "He must have more striking features to catch me, I promise you" and "I vow I'm disposing of the husband before I have secured the lover". Thus, at once intelligent and obedient, self-assertive and conforming, she evinces a conspicuous element of maturity in her character that strikes her as much advanced than her counterparts in contemporary popular Sentimental Comedy. She also anticipates the idea of the modern woman, smart, self-confident but also conventional where it needs to be.

          The most remarkable aspect of Kate’s character, however, is not her innate modernity but her reformative streak. The guests who arrive from London, are misdirected by her brother Tony and they also behave likewise, as if they are in a country inn. And when the Hardcastles get sick and tired of the whims of the guests, especially Marlow, Mr Hardcastle decides to show them the door and all but Kate wants her father to be patient and informs him about their deception. Right from the beginning, she got an insight into the psychological complication of Marlow’s character. He has an uneasiness with upper-class women, but comfortable with women belonging from lower economic class. This decides her to adopt the ruse of playing a barmaid and a “poor relation” with the Hardcastle family. She does this in order to conquer the bashful and bohemian Marlow. Kate tries to boost his confidence up by going beyond appearance, develops an instant liking of a man and reforms him in a comic way:

I never know half his merit till now. He shall not go, if I have power or art to detain him. I’ll still preserve the character in which I stooped to Conquer;

In this respect, she becomes a foil of Tony whose practical jokes have negative and sataric consequences, where Kate's play-acting would reform Marlow to prepare him for a successful marriage. Another point is worthy to be mentioned is that though Kate Hardcastle cherishes her physical beauty, she plays the role of a barmaid in front of her lover.

          Thus, Kate Hardcastle reminds us of many other characters in literary canon; she has something of an intelligent simplicity of Shakespeare’s Rosalind and Viola; the infinite resourcefulness of Portia and her self confidence and maturity remind us of Shaw’s archetype of ‘New Woman’.

          Kate Hardcastle, actually, is one such character who binds all the characters with a single string of her elegance. She resides at the centre of the plot. Sketching the character of Kate is as difficult as to define the multidimensional Shakespearean characters due to richness in her character. She is one such woman who is lovable at her time as well as to the current generation of young men. Every man has a dream to have such a woman as their life partner.