SOURCE: "Sex and Gender in Gay's 'Achilles,'" in John Gay and the Scriblerians, edited by Peter Lewis and Nigel Wood, Vision Press; St. Martin's Press, 1988, pp. 184-215.

In the following essay, Noble argues that Gay's later drama registers the paradoxical position of women in a patriarchal society, with an emphasis on contemporary constructions of rape. Noble concludes that while Gay was not necessarily 'feminist," his work nonetheless reflects the voice of the oppressed.

At a time of unparalleled academic interest in the relationship (which is to say, discrepancy) between sex and gender, John Gay emerges as an extremely interesting writer, distinctively conscious and candid, able through his characteristic duple forms and modes to render the simultaneous state of authenticity and inauthenticity in which those who do not embody the norm are condemned to dwell. Little interested in party politics, uninterested in social theory, Gay was acutely aware...