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One of the primary focuses of William Wycherley’s comedy, ‘The Country Wife’, is the concept of satirising the pretence and artificiality surrounding marriage particularly during the Restoration era and its rebellion against the prior strictness of the Puritan rule. Traditional marital values of love, fidelity and trust are distorted by intense emotion and lust, and these qualities are applicable to the typical comic characters of rakes, and adulterous wives who cuckold their husbands. The play may simply expose the ignorance of conventional fools to provide humour using dramatic irony and may not be deriding the amoral quality of marriage.
Yet, more commonly inferred is the critical denouncement against the hypocrisy of ‘respectable’ people and their attitudes towards marriage, mirroring the age in which Wycherley was writing.
The characters’ lack of contentment in a relationship is obvious, and the quick craving and yearning that results from this, for other men and women. This is unmistakeable in both sexes alike; the wives are cast off and abandoned, and consequently look for other men to fulfil their romantic desires – initiating cuckoldry.
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Throughout the play, nearly all characters are preoccupied with their reputation, and thus lie; but as the play ends with the restoration of order and inevitably the truth comes out, Sparkish, the stock fool, explicitly portrays the reality of marriage. Revealing his real attitude to his marriage vows, he declares he would have cast off Alithea “with as much joy as I would after the first night, if I had been married to you.” The candid language stresses the lack of respect and affection he ever had for her, and hence his indifferent view of marriage.
The men, for instance Sir Jasper Fidget, are also completely preoccupied with business “which must be preferred always before love and ceremony with the wise”, and Wycherley’s disapproval of this is evident as he has created Sir Jasper as a fool, who ends up being cuckolded by his wife, Lady Fidget. Arguably, it is only human nature for a man to desire to be upwardly mobile; however valuing your profession higher than that of your wife surely indicates the unpleasant morals of this society, which the writer is criticising.
Likewise, we see the wives in all of the marriages, the adulterous town wives (Lady Fidget, Dainty and Squeamish, and the stock character of the country bumpkin, Margery) end up being unfaithful as “a woman of honour loses no honour with a private person”. Clearly, they do not care for their husbands, and would do anything to satisfy their own sexual desires. It is arguable that, in reality, men may actually deserve to be cuckolded if they discard their wives whilst they “go abroad indecently alone” and this view will definitely be employed by a modern, feminist audience.
Furthermore, it is often noted that women in the play are dominated by the power of the male sex. At the end of the play, during the complete chaos and confusion, typical of a comedy, Horner crudely “resigned your sister to him” (in reference to Alithea and Harcourt). Regardless of the fact Alithea wishes to wed Harcourt, it gives off the sense that women do not get a say in such matters, and are prohibited to have their own voice and opinions, especially when it comes to marriage. In an equally patronising and sexist view of women, it is apparently necessary to “provide innocent diversion for a wife as to hinder her unlawful pleasures; and he had better employ her, than let her employ herself.” Likewise, Pinchwife, the squire, always locks Margery away, and does not allow her contact with human civilisation, in the fear she may turn into “a mere notorious town-woman” (the urban lifestyle is traditionally linked with corruption). This also provides the 20th Century view of an inequality in marriage, which will be more relevant for a modern day audience.
Moreover, the lack of respect for the female in a married relationship is clear throughout the play in the presence of the language used against them. Margery, the eponymous character, is referred to as “baggage” by her husband throughout the play – a derogatory term which derides her to a mere object. Through food imagery, women are also likened to “a private feast” as something to be consumed, to satisfy the men’s hunger and sexual appetite. Pinchwife also uses money and business imagery to extend this notion saying he will give “five thousand pound” to Sparkish “to lie with my sister.” It is clear that the male’s intentions revolve around copulation, demeaning the personal and profound qualities of a married relationship. This language is also reflected in the, perhaps comic, perhaps unsettling, constant threat of violence from the aggressive caricature of Pinchwife to Margery; although he never actually hurts her, a married man should never even threaten to lay a hand on his wife.
The ending, although conventional in that everything gets resolved and everyone is brought together, clearly depicts how the characters do not care who they marry. Lucy, the stock character of a clever servant, fixes everything and everyone merely pretends that everything is alright, and returns to the status quo. Pinchwife tells himself “Cuckolds like lovers should themselves deceive”, hence believing what has been said although beneath it all he knows it is not true, illustrating how the marriages in the play are purely based on lies and deceit.
Not only this, but some who go through (or say they will) with marriage purely do it to preserve their honour and virtue, and make petty excuses like “The writings are drawn, sir, settlements made; ‘tis too late, sir, and past all revocation.” Without any mention of romantic love, Alithea here gives her reasons for continuing her arranged marriage with Sparkish, the fool; her obligatory language lending to make the matrimony sound like a bleak, loveless business arrangement. Alithea does not love him and stays with Sparkish even though he treats her as an animal and a possession saying he will “get me a wife”, “a wife of mine”, and uses her as something he can show off to his friends: “do you approve my choice?” Here, Wycherley attacks the idea of women’s ‘entrapment’ in marriage. The audience recognises the writer’s view because Sparkish has been created as the stock character of a fool, and at the end of the play he is punished (he loses Alithea to Harcourt), whereas Alithea has been depicted as one of the more honourable and moral characters, and she is rewarded with a husband at the end.
Arguably, the implied marriage at the end of the play, between Alithea and Harcourt, does indeed provide some comic resolution – and more importantly implies love and marriage as triumphant. The sincerity of their relationship is manifest; we see Harcourt as the noble courtly lover who will go to any extent to gain her love, by the comic means of deception and disguise. Harcourt betrays Sparkish, in an attempt to steal his wife, when he disguises himself as a “parson”, and demands “nobody else shall marry you” in a double entendre. What makes his character more honourable though, and makes the potential marriage more meaningful, is the fact that he is the only character on stage at the end to believe and proclaim Alithea’s innocence, despite all evidence being against her: “I will not only believe your innocence myself, but make all the world believe it.” This absolute trust and his desire to fight to preserve her name, reflect attributes vital to any married relationship, and he also states “’tis possible for me to love too, without being jealous”. Harcourt is therefore presented as an ideal husband, especially in contrast to the other men who are mistrustful and consumed by the prospect that their wives will cuckold them if not “in our closets under lock and key.”
Surprisingly, Horner, the stock character of a rake, offers a contrasting and less superficial opinion of women; perhaps proposing that women in a married relationship offer more than just sex and wealth (central motifs in the comedy). Valuing intellect and personality in a woman, he states “me thinks wit is more necessary than beauty, and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it”, his speech providing a more encouraging exemplar of a man’s authenticity in love. Nevertheless, the play opens amid an informal conversation regarding the spread of a rumour of “damned malady”, devised only so the protagonist, Horner, can sleep with other men’s wives. It is here when the writer begins to censure the corruption of matrimony in Restoration society, and despite Horner offering some positive views of women, it is this rumour that totally encapsulates the entire play, and thus discloses Wycherley’s attack against the sadly typical marriages of the Restoration period.
Through his comedy, Wycherley persistently confronts the lack of “matrimonial love”, and the affectation and hypocrisy that is present throughout Restoration marriages and their corrupt urban lifestyle. Satirising the pretence of the society, Wycherley employs the caricatures of Pinchwife and Sir Jasper Fidget to paint a representative picture of the paranoid and ignorant male personas that ironically lead their wives into the hands of rakes; the large majority of female heroines conform to the stock character of the adulterous wife. Conclusively, it can be taken that although there are subtle hints at hopes of real love entwined throughout the comedy, Wycherley has undeniably crafted a play that carefully attacks the artificiality of marriages in Restoration society.
''The Country Wife'' by William Wycherley. (2017, Aug 01). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/the-country-wife-by-william-wycherley-essay
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