A Woman Killed With Kindness

A Woman Killed with Kindness follows two plots: Frankford, Anne, and Wendoll’s conflict, and Charles, Francis, and Susan’s conflict. Act III sets up both conflicts, building toward separate climaxes. Nick confesses to Frankford that he witnessed Anne and Wendoll’s affair, prompting Frankford to develop a scheme to expose his wife and friend, promising an explosive confrontation in Act IV. At the same time, Francis falls in love with Susan, who hates him and is the sister of the man he has inadvertently ruined. Scene 3 foreshadows a confrontation when Charles and Susan discover that Francis is trying to resolve Charles’s struggles in order to marry Susan. 

Both conflicts deepen the play’s exploration of The Limitations of Forgiveness Following Betrayal. Wendoll and Anne have betrayed Frankford, and it is unclear whether Frankford will be able to restrain himself from killing them both. In an aside, Frankford thinks of Wendoll, “Thou robb’st me of my soul, of her chaste love; / In thy false dealing thou hast robbed my heart” (171-72), emphasizing the depth of betrayal, which destroys trust and love. Meanwhile, Francis has betrayed Charles, which Susan sees as a betrayal of the entire Mountford family, making it unlikely that she will accept Francis’s assistance. Notably, both conflicts also involve the “ownership” of women in patriarchal society: Anne is Frankford’s “property” which Wendoll has “stolen,” while Susan is Charles’s “property” which Francis seeks to “purchase” with the removal of Charles’s debt. Marriage and Gender Roles in a Patriarchal Society therefore continues to be a dominant theme, though it manifests differently in each storyline, with the “ownership” of a female character instigating the conflict in the primary storyline and potentially resolving it in the other.

Act III clarifies Frankford’s character, which is already established as generous, in preparation for the titular act of “kindness” he will show Anne. He accepted Wendoll into his home, and he provides for his guests without reservation. When Nick initially tells Frankford about Wendoll and Anne’s affair, his reaction is disbelief, acknowledging that Nick is “blunt, yet he is honest,” Frankford still wonders, “May this be true? O, may it? Can it be?” (168). Frankford’s struggles to accept his wife and friend’s duplicity underscore his own honesty, while his determination not to leap to conclusions characterizes him as fair-minded. Indeed, while Frankford decides, “Their wonted favors in my tongue shall flow; / Till I know all, I’ll nothing seem to know” (169), he struggles to maintain this pretense during cards, again highlighting his forthrightness. The card game affords Heywood the opportunity for elaborate wordplay, with Frankford, for instance, punning on Wendoll and Anne’s declarations of their trump cards: respectively, “knave” (scoundrel) and “queen” (which Frankford likens to “quean,” a word for a sex worker). However, when Frankford finds he has no hearts in his hand, he can no longer bear the parallels to his own circumstances and loses his composure.