She Stoops to Conquer, a comedy by Oliver Goldsmith, deals with the necessity of debasement in love i.e. with the debasing of women of superior breeding in order to make them approachable to men who would otherwise feel unmanned in their presence. It is a common tendency in our day and age and most obviously it has always been so.
Kate Hardcastle is a fine, young gentlewoman, who has been to London and knows how to dress fashionably but in order to please her backward father she dresses more plainly in the evening. Marlowe is a young gentleman who is extremely sheepish with gentlewomen ("…
