Wit & Attitude Quote by William Congreve

Congreve loads this couplet like a trap: it starts in the cosmic register, then snaps shut on the domestic. “Heaven” and “hell” aren’t theology here so much as measuring devices, grand enough to make a private grievance feel apocalyptic. The line’s real engine is reversal. Love is assumed to be soft, civilizing, even sanctifying; Congreve flips it into its most combustible form, “love to hatred turned,” as if affection is just rage waiting for a reason.

The second half is the more famous because it’s the more socially dangerous. “A woman scorned” isn’t merely angry; she is fury with a moral claim. Scorn implies public humiliation, a breach of social contract, not just a bruised ego. In a Restoration culture obsessed with reputation, seduction, and spectacle, scorn is currency, and retaliation is theater. Congreve, a playwright as much as a poet, writes the kind of line that plays well: it gives the audience a chill and a wink at the same time.

Subtext: this is less about women’s “temper” than men’s fear of consequences. The warning is aimed at the scorner, not the scorned. The gendering does cultural work too, turning righteous anger into a kind of exotic menace - thrilling, comic, and slightly misogynistic in the way Restoration wit often is. It flatters listeners into thinking they’re worldly enough to recognize the stereotype, even as it reinforces it. That’s why it sticks: it’s a proverb disguised as a punchline, with the bite of experience and the sheen of performance.