Amanda Prynne is an intelligent, savvy, and alluring woman who matches Elyot’s wit and fearlessness and fulfills the archetype of the free spirit and vixen. She is “quite exquisite with a gay face and a perfect figure” (12), which suggests her physical attractiveness lets her get away with bad behavior. She first appears dressed in an elegant nightgown and captures Victor’s appreciative gaze: “God! […] You look wonderful” (12). Amanda is strong-willed and says what she thinks, even when her remarks are hurtful and insensitive. When Victor seeks reassurances on their honeymoon, Amanda responds dismissively. She doesn’t remember if she loves Victor more than Elyot because “it’s such a long time ago” (12), and she describes the party where she first met Victor as “completely commonplace” (16). The contrast between Amanda’s sleek appearance and callousness contributes to the play’s satire on the superficialities of the upper class. 

Despite their constant battles, Amanda and Elyot are not a case of opposites attracting or a couple with irreconcilable differences. If anything, the two selfish and petty lovers are made for each other and are partners in crime. Coward based the bickering leads on his own friendship with actor Gertrude Lawrence, for whom he wrote the role of Amanda. He considered the characters almost identical: “‘Elyot’ and ‘Amanda’ are practically synonymous” (Coward, Noël. Present Indicative: The First Autobiography of Noël Coward, 1937, Methuen Drama, 2008). Like Elyot, Amanda considers love and hate necessary for one another. Recalling their stormy relationship, Amanda contends that the former causes the latter: “Selfishness, cruelty, hatred, possessiveness, petty jealousy. All those qualities came out in us just because we loved each other. […] it’s love that does it” (34-35). Also, like Elyot, she evades confrontation with a similar air of nonchalance. Instead of flippancy, Amanda performs a lofty detachment about her flaws; in uncomfortable situations, she deflects responsibility with poised indifference. 

Unlike Elyot, Amanda sometimes tells the truth and feels guilt. This may be motivated by the fact that as a woman, she faces more consequences than Elyot for extramarital misadventures. Unlike Elyot with Sibyl, Amanda is honest with Victor, admitting that she wants to leave the hotel because of her ex-husband’s presence, and in the final confrontation, acknowledging that she has “behaved badly” (81) and apologizing. Yet in other situations, Amanda is defiantly unapologetic, particularly regarding gender double standards and her own sexual desires. Amanda’s internal conflict is that she feels she is “unreliable” (18), immoral, and has internalized the stigma of The Defiance of Rigid Gender Roles. It is significant that her last name is an allusion to the iconic archetype of the adulteress, the literary heroine Hester Prynne of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850).

Twenty-three-year-old Sibyl Chase is Elyot’s naïve and insecure second wife. Sibyl is enchanted with marriage and eager to please her new husband. She often asks for kisses, and her habit of “slipping her arm through his” (5, 10) suggests that she clings to him for reassurance. Sibyl represents traditional femininity, as evident in her offer to join Elyot at the casino as an accessory: “I shall come and sit just behind your chair and bring you luck” (12), she offers, volunteering to be a decorative object in the masculine sphere of the gambling table. Described as “very pretty and blonde, and smartly dressed” (5), Sibyl represents the archetype of the ingénue and serves as a foil for Amanda, the older, jaded divorcee. Elyot confirms that he doesn’t expect much from Sibyl and describes her to Amanda as “[f]air, very pretty, plays the piano beautifully” (31).

Sibyl’s name is ironic; in ancient Greece, sibyls were female oracles who embodied wisdom and foresight. By contrast, Sibyl Chase has superficial views on marriage, love, and gender. She is content with her “pleasant-looking,” rich husband and a view of a yacht from a fine hotel; these are enough for her to be “so happy” (5). Sibyl’s nickname for Elyot is also ironic: “Elli” (5) is an affectionate diminutive that signifies sweetness and familiarity, which means Sibyl has yet to discover how distant and cruel Elyot can be. 

Sibyl believes she is nothing like Elyot’s ex-wife, but to the cynical Elyot, Sibyl has the potential to be just as conniving as Amanda. Elyot teases that he notices her “watching [him] carefully like a little sharp-eyed, blonde kitten” (10), implying that she will one day expose her lacerating claws. Sibyl thus exposes Elyot’s misogyny, as he often makes blanket statements about women’s connivance and vanity aimed in her direction. Primarily a flat character, Sibyl represents the vacuity and petulance of the upper-class. Coward described Sibyl and Victor as “a couple of extra puppets thrown in to assist the plot and to provide contrast […] These poor things, are little better than ninepins, lightly wooden, and only there at all to be repeatedly knocked down and stood up again” (Griffiths, Trevor R. Romantic Comedy, 2022, p. 131). Yet Sibyl’s comically drastic transformation at the end of the play is more than a plot device to land the punchline: It cements Coward’s point about the ubiquity of toxic relationships, as she enacts the ingénue’s journey from innocence to experience.