She Stoops To Conquer, by Oliver Goldsmith

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 …

…approach a woman is to surmount his respect for her. This he achieves by dealing only with women of lower stature. Kate therefore had to stoop. Had she not stooped, she never would have conquered. Goldsmith, of course, could never have read any of Freud's works. His ingenuity lies in the sensitivity that enabled him to perceive the hidden impulses in the minds of other people, and the courage to let his own unconscious speak.