The Country Wife

“Women of quality are so civil, you can hardly distinguish love from good breeding, and a man is often mistaken. But now I can be sure she that shows an aversion to me loves the sport.”

Horner points out that upper class women are raised to be polite and accommodating, and therefore their kindness and hospitality means nothing. But a woman who, upon hearing that he is a eunuch, is disgusted by and dismissive of him is showing that she valued him for his rakish reputation and the rumor of his sexual prowess. Therefore, she reveals herself as being open to affairs.

“A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town; not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away, to taste the town the better when a man returns.”

As Dorilant states, the womanizing men in this play treat women as dalliances. He, Horner, and Sparkish disavow marriage and proclaim their intent to remain bachelors forever. A mistress, therefore, should be available when desired but scarce when she is not wanted. She is meant to serve at the convenience of a man and not her own pleasures. This informs the disconnect between Horner and Margery, as Margery expects Horner to marry her, but Horner only wants to use her and send her back to her husband.

“I tell you, ’tis as hard to be a good fellow, a good friend, and a lover of women, as ’tis to be a good fellow, a good friend, and a lover of money. You cannot follow both, then choose your side: wine gives you liberty, love takes it away.”

As Horner explains, within the context of the competitive homosocial male relationships, loving women is incompatible with maintaining these friendships. The game of cuckolding involves sleeping with one’s friends’ wives or winning a woman that another man is pursuing. If a man loves his wife, he will prioritize her over his friendships. One cannot treat money or love as all-important while being a good friend since friendship requires that one be generous with both.

“Good wives and private soldiers should be ignorant.” 

Pinchwife compares wives to private soldiers because mercenaries work and sacrifice for their masters with no thought to ideology. If a private soldier becomes too intellectually invested what he is fighting for, he might discover that he disagrees and therefore fight poorly. Similarly, Pinchwife wants a wife who obeys her husband with no thoughts of her own ideologies or best interests. Just as an ignorant private soldier will not question his orders, an ignorant wife will (theoretically) do only what her husband tells her to do.

“He’s a fool that marries, but he’s a greater fool that does not marry a fool.”

Pinchwife betrays his contempt for marriage, despite having been recently married. However, his contempt for women is even greater. He deems the institution of marriage to be a foolish venture that is only worthwhile if the woman has no sense of agency or self outside of the marriage. An intelligent woman will question the way her husband treats her and may seek better treatment elsewhere.

“But tell me, has marriage cured thee of whoring, which it seldom does?” 

Horner asks this of Pinchwife flippantly, but this question has many implications. First, both men and women have extramarital affairs, and Horner is suggesting that this is so commonplace that it is rare for a man to remain faithful. Additionally, although Pinchwife is not being unfaithful to his wife, he still treats her and thinks of her as a “whore,” having viewed marriage as a way to “keep a whore to [him]self” (56). Therefore, his marriage is a sort of lazy “whoring” where he wants a woman to be available for his sexual needs but does not want to work for or pursue her.

“Ay, ay, a gamester will be a gamester whilst his money lasts, and a whoremaster, whilst his vigour.” 

Dorilant compares “whoring” to gambling. Not only is womanizing a game, but it is a game that requires energy and effort. A man who becomes tired or lazy is out of the game, just like a man who gambles and runs out of money.

“Why, ’tis as hard to find an old whoremaster without jealousy and the gout, as a young one without fear or the pox. As gout in age from pox in youth proceeds, so wenching past, then jealousy succeeds; the worst disease that love and wenching breeds.”

As Horner demonstrates, each character has a different idea of what constitutes a disease in this play. For Horner, that disease is jealousy. Pinchwife, an “old whoremaster,” knows full well what lengths men will go to while trying to bed a married woman. Therefore, he becomes excessively jealous over his wife.

“Ay, my dear, you must love me only, and not be like the naughty town-women, who only hate their husbands and love every man else; love plays, visits, fine coaches, fine clothes, fiddles, balls, treats, and so lead a wicked town-life.”

Pinchwife tells Margery that he must be the center of her world. In the city, there are many distractions, and he fears that any one of them will turn her head away from him. Of course, his sister Alithea proves that a woman can live in the city and remain faithful, so Pinchwife’s attempts to keep Margery isolated only backfire and make her long for freedom more. Pinchwife tries to teach Margery loving anything else is tantamount to hating him, so when Margery discovers that she does love these things, they become incompatible with her marriage.

“Yes, above the world, or the most glorious part of it, her whole sex; and till now I never thought I should have envied you or any man about to marry, but you have the best excuse for marriage that I ever knew.”

Harcourt, a rake like Horner and Dorilant, disavows his disdain for marriage the moment he meets Alithea. He frames his praise as if it compliments Sparkish, when he is really flirting with his fiancée. Sparkish, so invested in the opinions of his male friends, accepts this without questioning the implications of a man who so thoroughly praises his wife-to-be.

“Because you are a lover, and true lovers are blind, stock blind.”

Harcourt calls Sparkish “blind,” but—like many insults toward Sparkish in the text—disguises this insult as a compliment. Sparkish is not a “true lover,” blinded not by Alithea’s beauty, but by his own inflated self-worth. Harcourt knows that Sparkish is blindly oblivious to his attempts to steal Alithea and calls him “blind” to his face. Sparkish puts so much stock in his friendships with men who do not care for him that cannot see it, even when Alithea warns him.

“Well, there is no being too hard for women at their own weapon, lying.”

Ironically, the central premise of the play is a man’s lie. Pinchwife frames women as more deceitful than men, but Margery does not lie to him until he pushes her to do so through ill treatment and restriction. In fact, the most honest person in the play, Alithea, is a woman. Pinchwife lies to both Margery about the nature of how a woman should behave and to his friends about what his wife is like. He also lies to the women who arrive to socialize with Margery. Margery is, for most of the play, exceedingly and unabashedly honest, but Pinchwife simply does not like the truth she tells.

“’Tis not injury to a husband till it be injury to our honours; so that a woman of honour loses no honour with a private person.” 

Lady Fidget highlights the prevailing notion in the play that reputation is everything. A woman does not hurt her husband by cheating, she does so by letting her infidelity be known to the public. Therefore, the crime is not infidelity, but making her husband look like a fool for having a wife who does not obey him. Of course, the men who cuckold and brag to each other about it know whose wives are cheating, but there is a different between private and public knowledge.

“Why, these are pretenders to honour, as critics to wit, only by censuring others; and as every raw, peevish, out-of-humoured, affected, dull, tea-drinking, arithmetical fop sets up for a wit, by railing at men of sense, so these for honour by railing at the court and ladies of as great honour as quality.” 

Although Horner is pretending to despise women, he is, in a sense, speaking the truth. Honor is purely a social construct, based not on actions but on public perception. And respectability comes from loudly disavowing dishonor rather than from honorable acts. 

“Well, if thou cuckold me, ’twill be my own fault, for cuckolds and bastards are generally makers of their own fortune.”

Pinchwife makes a pun of the phrase “makers of their own fortune” since fortune can mean both money and one’s life path. A “bastard” has no family fortune and so must make his own. A cuckold causes his own cuckoldry by letting it happen. Pinchwife believes that allowing another man to cuckold him is the man’s fault for failing to keep close watch on his wife. In truth, he is correct that it is his fault that Margery cheats, but she does so because he abuses her, not because he did not lock her up well enough.

“You may see by marriage, nothing makes a man hate a woman more, than her constant conversation.” 

Horner complains about women frequently in the play, seemingly for the effect of bolstering his lie that he is impotent and no longer interested in women. But this contempt for women as anything but objects of sexual desire seems genuine. He charms them well enough, but once he has won them, he tires of them. Horner can marry Margery at the end of the play—a woman he proclaimed his love for—but does not want her once he has her. He is content to send her back to a bad marriage and move on to the next conquest.

“When all’s done, a rival is the best cloak to steal a mistress under, without suspicion; and when we have once got to her as we desire, we throw him off like other cloaks.”

Harcourt’s trickery in stealing Alithea from Sparkish is clearly a skill learned from womanizing. Horner suggests and demonstrates a similar tactic, enlisting and utilizing Sir Jaspar and Pinchwife in his mission to sleep with their women. For the game of bedding married women, enlisting the husband works to especially humiliate and demean them for their obliviousness. In this case, while Harcourt—like the rest of the men—despises Sparkish and has no concern for his potential feelings, he still treats him like a cuckolded husband rather than a soon-to-be-jilted fiancé.

“The woman that marries to love better will be as much mistaken as the wencher that marries to live better. No, madam, marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.”

As in most plays from the period, the servants have insights into the affairs of the aristocracy that the members of the aristocracy don’t see. They are treated as furniture and therefore privy to what goes on behind closed doors. Lucy is a maid and has likely watched how marriages function among the upper class. She knows that these marriages do not become more loving. If anything, the participants become bored and the love they began with fades.

“If we do not cheat women, they’ll cheat us; and fraud may be justly used with secret enemies, of which a wife is the most dangerous.”

Pinchwife refers to wives as “enemies,” a strange insight from one who was only recently married and hasn’t had time to become jaded or disillusioned with his wife. There is a game not only among men, but across gender lines as well. Pinchwife is competing with his wife to hurt her more than she can hurt him. Although they remain married at the end, this suggests the tone of their future marriage, which will likely be full of resentment and deception.

“For your bigots in honour are just like those in religion. They fear the eye of the world more than the eye of heaven, and think there is no virtue but railing at vice, and no sin but giving scandal.”

Horner compares those who live for honor to those who are extremely religious. He accuses the religious of having forgotten the greater concept of heaven and rightness to instead turn their attentions to the world and judging those around them. Rather than performing good deeds, they simply rail at others for sinning. Similarly, people who are obsessed with honor are hypocritical—more interested in calling out others for scandalous behavior than living honorably themselves.

“For though my hunger is now my sauce, and I can fall heartily without, but the time will come when a rival will be as good sauce for a married man to a wife as an orange to a veal.”

Sparkish foresees boredom in his marriage to Alithea, and although this may be a reasonable expectation based on the marriages around him, it does not match the romantic notions that Alithea expresses about marriage. He assumes that once his initial desire and the newness of the marriage wears off, he will no longer be interested. But the jealousy of another man vying for her attentions will renew his interest. The orange references the oranges that Horner gives to Margery, a symbol of prostitution and forbidden fruit.

“Our sisters and daughters, like usurers’ money, are safest when put out, but our wives, like their writings, never safe but in our closets under lock and key.” 

Pinchwife believes that men must hide their women from the world. When a lender loans money, that money goes out into the world and then comes back to its original owner with interest. Therefore, the passing around of money only improves it. In Pinchwife’s estimation, a woman, however, loses her value once she has been out in the world. Alithea shows that exposure to the world makes a woman intelligent and witty, but Pinchwife fears these qualities as they might inspire a woman to want things outside of the marriage. 

“Women and fortune are truest still to those that trust ’em.”

Alithea makes a pun on the word “trust.” Putting one’s fortune into a trust protects it and generates interest. But while a financial trust hides money away from the world, trusting a woman means allowing her to go out into the world. Pinchwife’s mistrust of Margery leads her to deceive him. When Sparkish fails to trust Alithea, their relationship ends. A wife who is trusted by her husband has the freedom to be fulfilled without fear of jealousy and is more likely to be content in her marriage.