45 pages • 1 hour read
William WycherleyThe Country Wife
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1675A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Masks and Disguises
Masks, both literal and metaphorical, are important in the play. When Alithea suggests that Margery wear a mask to go out into the city to appease Pinchwife’s desperation to keep her unseen, Pinchwife exclaims, “A mask makes people but the more inquisitive. […] No, I’ll not use her to a mask, ‘tis dangerous; for masks have made more cuckolds than the best faces that ever were known” (89). The mask is titillating because it hides something underneath. The Fidget ladies wear masks to Horner’s house to enjoy a masquerade party, but Horner, who has already seen what is under the masks, is no longer intrigued. Margery’s breeches outfit, which stands in for a mask, both hides what is underneath and, as Pinchwife feared a mask alone would, shows “her shape, stature” (89) clearly. A mask allows Margery to trick her husband into believing that she is Alithea because she not only covers her face but also hides her body in Alithea’s clothing.
Figuratively, the characters mask themselves and their intentions with both lies and physical disguises. Horner’s lie about impotence masks his sexual desire and the danger he poses to other men’s marriages. Harcourt’s non-disguise as his own twin masks him as a threat to Sparkish and Alithea’s wedding. These masks and disguises provide freedom for the characters who wear them to escape the consequences of acting from behind their own faces. Margery’s disguise in her breeches allows Horner and Dorilant to pretend that they don’t know who she is, giving them leeway to kiss her over and over. The three Fidget women wear masks at Horner’s house and proceed to get drunk, becoming freer with their words and admissions. Margery’s mask gives her the ability to move freely throughout the city, unknown even to her own husband.
Oranges
When Horner sees Margery out in the city dressed as a man, he takes the first opportunity to whisk her away out of Pinchwife’s protection. Horner returns her with a hatful of oranges. In Elizabethan England, oranges were associated with prostitution, as girls who sold oranges were often also selling their bodies, especially near the theatre. By returning her with oranges, Horner is playing with Pinchwife. The fruit could be innocent, but it could also signify that he has taken advantage of her sexually. We learn later that he kisses her over and over, even attempting to use his tongue (which Margery coyly threatens to bite). The oranges send the message to Pinchwife that although Margery is forbidden fruit, Horner has tasted her, even though he continues to pretend that he does not know that she is not a man.
Margery does not understand what is happening or seem to realize that Horner knows who she is, and she reports back to Pinchwife as if the kisses were all innocent, meant to be bestowed upon her imaginary brother. There is a sense in this play that the same sexual act doesn’t count in certain situations. A kiss given to her in drag doesn’t mean the same thing as the same kiss given with her identity in plain view. Similarly, Horner’s kisses are harmless if he is a eunuch and not if he isn’t. Thus, Margery can misconstrue Horner’s kisses as innocent. When she returns to her husband, Margery hands him the orange. The way Pinchwife regards the orange with contempt shows that he fully understands what it is meant to signify. Pinchwife, who has been calling his wife (and all other women) “whores” since the beginning of the play, knows that the orange means that his wife has been treated as a woman who is sexually available.
The Theatre
If the city is a site of corruption and disease, one of the most prominent centers of wickedness is the theatre. In a metatheatrical sense, the playwright recognizes that religious conservatives see the theatre, recently banned in Commonwealth England, as impious and heretical. The play flaunts this assertion rather than refuting it, displaying flagrant sexual content. And as the Prologue emphasizes, the playwright refuses to apologize for the likely offense that the audience will take at the play. It’s ironic that the play was banned for lewdness, since it expresses and exploits the newly regained freedom of the stage. In Western history, since the Ancient Roman Empire, the theatre has been frequently misaligned for its Bacchic influences and deemed anti-religious. Wycherley gleefully confirms that belief.
Within the context of the play, theatre is a place that endangers the innocent and erodes their morals. Horner first sees Margery at the theatre and identifies her as a conquest. The theatre is a place to look at other attractive bodies, which Pinchwife realizes unhappily after discovering that Margery enjoyed the actors so thoroughly. He attempts to suppress Margery’s newfound curiosity by forbidding her attendance at the theatre, but it’s too late. The theatre is a social place, where members of the aristocracy go to be seen as much as to see and be entertained by the play. As many playwrights have done before and after The Country Wife, Wycherley gives a nod to the theatre and its role in society. It’s a gathering place, but it is also a place for fun and the occasional debauchery.
