Divorcing the Comedy of Remarriage and the Screwball Comedies

Abstract

In 1981 Stanley Cavell produced his book Pursuits of Happiness, a book which distinguished and defined a new subgenre within the screwball comedy genre that was at the peak of its popularity from 1930’s to the 1950’s. The comedy of remarriage is a subgenre of the screwball comedy that deals with a male and a female character that divorce or are already divorced at the beginning of the film, and eventually remarry at the end. Because this narrative structure occurred in multiple films within the screwball genre, philosopher Stanley Cavell suggested it as a subgenre in a series of articles he wrote which were then made into this book. In this thesis, the comedy of remarriage is questioned as a subgenre; is it useful?