ABSTRACT
In an age when marriage was preceded by a period of ritualized courtship that ostensibly celebrated the idea of romantic love but was actually based on economic necessity, hard bargaining and fiscal power, disillusion at the disjunction between expectation and reality was perhaps inevitable. This chapter explores the marital journey of the Widow Barnaby and Major Allen as they make their picaresque way through England, Australia and America. It focuses on three major themes: the power struggle between them, the performances they enact for each other as well as for the outside world and the plots and subterfuge they initiate for their survival. The Major and the Widow engage in a power struggle from the moment of their first meeting. Both the Widow and the Major are moral chameleons and this is reflected in their changing physical appearance. The struggle for power and control within their relationship ebbs and flows and moments of equipoise are reached.
