The Antipodes - Sexuality

Sexuality

The subject of sex is central to the play's concerns. At least part of Joyless's problem with his wife is that he is no longer capable of satisfying her sexually; he fears that his wife will seek out another man for "some sport," since he "can make her none." Doctor Hughball asserts that in the Antipodes "the maids do woo / The bachelors," and that "The wives lie uppermost" — which Diana Joyless calls "a trim / Upside-down Antipodean trick indeed."

Martha Joyless is a child bride, a "poor piece of innocence" who has been kept ignorant of sexuality; she longs desperately for a baby, but doesn't quite know how to get one. She weeps as she complains of her husband Peregrine that

He ne'er put child not any thing towards it yet

To me to making; for I am past a child

To think they may be found in parsley beds,

Strawberry banks or rosemary bushes, though

I must confess I have sought and search'd such places

Because I would fain have had one.

Barbara Blaze calls Martha's enforced married chastity "monstrous." Martha asks Barbara "How came you by your babies?" and wants to be shown the mechanics of sex. Martha says that "A wanton maid" once kissed and fondled her — a franker indication of lesbian activity than plays of English Renaissance theatre usually provide.

Before he consummates his marriage, Peregrine talks about the Gadlibriens, a people mentioned in Mandeville who have an odd sexual practice: a bridegroom always hires "Another man to couple with his bride, / To clear the dangerous passage of a maidenhead." This suggests an inhibition and fear of sexuality that goes deeper than anything derived from Peregrine's obsession with travel.

At the end of the play, Brome includes Cupid and love as an essential part of his recipe for social sanity.