The Country Wife is a comedy of manners, a genre prominent during the Restoration period in England. A typical comedy of manners will focus on the various economic and social behaviors of the propertied, titled, and wealthy upper classes. As an extension of this, many such comedies will also focus on sexual and romantic exploits related to the institution of marriage and the political dimensions of consolidating power through relational bonds.
Though not every comedy of manners is self-flagellating or critical in nature, many of these literary works do take on a more satirical bent, The Country Wife included. Wycherley directs his satire in The Country Wife against both the sexual libertines of the English upper classes and their judgmental counterparts—individuals who publicly pass moral judgment on the sexual appetites of others while craving those same pleasures in private.
Wycherley was not alone in his criticism of the upper classes, nor in his use of a comedy of manners as a genre with which to level his critique. One of Wycherley's contemporaries, the French playwright and poet Molière, became well known for The Misanthrope (1666; Le Misanthrope), a comedy of manners that utilized satire to further an extensive critique of the French aristocracy.
