The Country Wife

by

William Wycherley

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Reputation, Appearance, and Hypocrisy Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Reputation, Appearance, and Hypocrisy  Theme Icon
Love, Marriage, and Misogyny  Theme Icon
Theatre, Puritanism, and Forbidden Desire  Theme Icon
Town vs. Country Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Country Wife, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Reputation, Appearance, and Hypocrisy  Theme Icon

William Wycherly’s The Country Wife criticizes Restoration society (late 17th century England) for its hypocrisy. Harry Horner, a wealthy “rake” who spends his time pursuing women and hedonism, spreads a rumor that he has contracted a venereal disease and has been made impotent. Although this destroys Horner’s reputation, he uses this to his advantage to seek out “honorable” women and conduct affairs with them because he knows that their husbands, and society more broadly, will not suspect him of seducing women in his new “impotent” state. The “honorable” women are happy to take advantage of this situation, as it protects their reputations in society while allowing them to pursue their own hedonistic desires. This ploy by Horner makes up a large part of The Country Wife’s action and supports Wycherly’s broader argument: that reputations often do not align with reality, and that Restoration society is more interested in the appearance of “virtue” than the practice of it.

Characters are preoccupied with maintaining their reputations throughout the play. For example, the jealous Pinchwife, whose wife Margery (the “country wife”) falls in love with Horner, is terrified that Margery will cheat on him because of the social shame attached to the label of “cuckold.” He dreads this reputation so much that he is willing to lock his wife up rather than risk letting her out in public where she might meet other men. What’s more, Horner tells Pinchwife that, if a country wife does not make him “a cuckold, she’ll make him jealous and pass for one; and then ‘tis all one.” This suggests that looking like a cuckold is as bad as actually being one in the eyes of a society that does not care about the truth, but only the appearance of things. Similarly, Mrs. Squeamish—an “honorable” lady seduced by Horner, asserts, “the crime’s the less when ‘tis not known.” It seems Restoration society’s obsession with reputation has made everyone markedly shallow; people don’t actually care about being virtuous, so long as they look like they are.

Indeed, many characters who present themselves publicly as caring about virtue and honor are decidedly different in private. Pinchwife, for instance, is obsessed with the idea that his wife should be pure and that she should not make him a “cuckold,” yet he himself was once known as a notorious “whoremaster.” The “honorable” ladies seduced by Horner—Lady Fidget, Mrs. Dainty Fidget, and Mrs. Squeamish—only pretend to be disgusted by sex and by men like Horner, yet they are in fact extremely promiscuous. Hypocrisy is particularly clear in Lady Fidget’s description of her honor as a “jewel.” This implies that an honorable reputation is a woman’s most prized possession, yet this moment is ironic: the viewer knows that Lady Fidget is not an honorable woman and only uses her honorable reputation to hide her many infidelities. Horner understands this and uses his ruse, his pretense at impotence, to seek out the ladies he knows will be unfaithful to their husbands. He believes that women who “love the sport” and are willing to have affairs, will show “the greatest aversion” to a man who is impotent, as this type of man cannot satisfy them sexually. He is proved right, and his method helps him court Lady Fidget, Mrs. Dainty Fidget, and Mrs. Squeamish. Therefore, in the context of the play, the women who pretend to be the most virtuous are the most promiscuous. Reputation is thus not correlated with actual virtue in this world, and many characters who pretend otherwise are hypocrites.

Together, these details reveal how such intense preoccupation with reputation can in fact blind people to the truth. Although Horner differs from the other characters in that he does not care what society thinks of him, he still relies on his appearance to deceive those around him and get what he wants. To be sure, although Horner’s reputation as impotent is an unfavorable one according to the conventions of Restoration society (which emphasized vigor and sexual prowess in men), he maintains this unfavorable reputation among the town husbands because of the privilege this affords him with their wives; he is able to freely spend time with them and make them his mistresses without the husbands asking questions because of his reputation. The peril of relying on appearances to judge character is further supported by the fact that the only truly honorable woman in the play, Alithea, is not recognized as such and is constantly accused of leading Margery astray by Pinchwife. Ultimately, Restoration society is so blinded by appearances and pays so much attention to reputation rather than reality that it makes it extremely easy for clever men like Horner to exploit this to their own advantage and use their own reputations to pretend to be something they’re not.

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Reputation, Appearance, and Hypocrisy Quotes in The Country Wife

Below you will find the important quotes in The Country Wife related to the theme of Reputation, Appearance, and Hypocrisy .
Act 1 Quotes

A quack is as fit for a pimp as a midwife for a bawd; they are still but in their way both helpers of nature.

Related Characters: Harry Horner (speaker), Quack
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

Dear Mr Doctor, let vain rogues be contented only to be thought abler men than they are, generally ’tis all the pleasure they have, but mine lies another way ... there are quacks in love, as well as physic, who get but the fewer and worse patients for their boasting. A good name is seldom got by giving it oneself, and women no more than honor are compassed by bragging. Come, come, doctor, the wisest lawyer never discovers the merits of his cause till the trial. The wealthiest man conceals his riches, and the cunning gamester his play.

Related Characters: Harry Horner (speaker), Quack
Page Number: 6-7
Explanation and Analysis:

Ask but all the young fellows of the town, if they do not lose more time, like huntsmen, in starting the game, than in running it down. One knows not where to find 'em, who will, or will not. 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, as those women that are gone, whom I warrant to be right. And then the next thing is, your women of honor, as you call ’em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons, and ’tis scandal they would avoid, not men.

Related Characters: Harry Horner (speaker), Quack
Page Number: 12
Explanation and Analysis:

Horner: A pox upon ’em, and all that force nature, and would be still what she forbids ’em! Affectation is her greatest monster.

Harcourt: Most men are the contraries to that they would seem. Your bully, you see, is a coward with a long sword; the little, humbly fawning physician with his ebony cane is he that destroys men.

Related Characters: Harry Horner (speaker), Harcourt (speaker), Sparkish
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Harry Horner (speaker), Pinchwife
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2 Quotes

Pinchwife: 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.

Margery Pinchwife: Nay, if to enjoy all these things be a town-life, London is not so bad a place, dear.

Pinchwife: How! If you love me, you must hate London.

Alithea: The fool has forbid me discovering to her the pleasures of the town, and he is now setting her agog upon them himself.

Related Characters: Margery Pinchwife (speaker), Pinchwife (speaker), Alithea (speaker)
Related Symbols: Blindness
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:

Mrs. Squeamish: ’Tis true, nobody takes notice of a private man, and therefore with him ’tis more secret, and the crime’s the less when ’tis not known.

Lady Fidget: You say true; i’faith, I think you are in the right on’t. ’Tis not an injury to a husband till it be an injury to our honors; so that a woman of honor loses no honor with a private person; and to say truth.

Related Characters: Lady Fidget (speaker), Mrs. Squeamish (speaker), Mrs. Dainty Fidget
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

Lady Fidget: Well, that’s spoken again like a man of honor; all men of honor desire to come to the test. But, indeed, generally you men report such things of yourselves, one does not know how or whom to believe; and it is come to that pass we dare not take your words, no more than your tailor's, without some staid servant of yours be bound with you. But I have so strong a faith in your honor, dear, dear, noble sir, that I’d forfeit mine for yours at any time, dear sir.

Horner: No, madam, you should not need to forfeit it for me; I have given you security already to save you harmless, my late reputation being so well known in the world, madam.

Related Characters: Harry Horner (speaker), Lady Fidget (speaker)
Page Number: 50
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3, Scene 2 Quotes

Because I do hate 'em and would hate ’em yet more. I’ll frequent ’em. You may see by marriage, nothing makes a man hate a woman more than her constant conversation. In short, I converse with ’em, as you do with rich fools, to laugh at ’em and use ’em ill.

Related Characters: Harry Horner (speaker), Harcourt, Dorilant
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 57
Explanation and Analysis:

Harcourt: I see all women are like these of the Exchange, who, to enhance the price of their commodities, report to their fond customers offers which were never made ’em.

Horner: Ay women are as apt to tell before the intrigue as men after it, and so show themselves the vainer sex.

Related Characters: Harry Horner (speaker), Harcourt (speaker), Sparkish, Alithea
Page Number: 60
Explanation and Analysis:

Gad, I go to a play as to a country treat; I carry my own wine to one, and my own wit to t’other, or else I’m sure I should not be merry at either. And the reason why we are so often louder than the players is because we think we speak more wit, and so become the poet’s rivals in his audience. For to tell you the truth, we hate the silly rogues; nay so much that we find fault even with their bawdy upon the stage, whilst we talk nothing else in the pit as loud.

Related Characters: Sparkish (speaker)
Page Number: 60-61
Explanation and Analysis:

So we are hard put to’t, when we make our rival our procurer; but neither she nor her brother would let me come near her now. When all’s done, a rival is the best cloak to steal to a mistress under, without suspicion; and when we have once got to her as we desire, we throw him off like other cloaks.

Related Characters: Harcourt (speaker), Sparkish, Alithea
Page Number: 64
Explanation and Analysis:

Margery Pinchwife: I don't know where to put this here, dear bud. You shall eat it. Nay, you shall have part of the fine gentleman’s good things, or treat, as you call it, when we come home.

Pinchwife: Indeed, I deserve it, since I furnished the best part of it. (Strikes away the orange.)

The gallant treats, presents, and gives the ball; But ’tis the absent cuckold, pays for all.

Related Characters: Margery Pinchwife (speaker), Pinchwife (speaker), Harry Horner
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 4, Scene 1 Quotes

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 … But what a devil is this honor? ’Tis sure a disease in the head, like the megrim, or falling sickness, that always hurries people away to do themselves mischief. Men lose their lives by it; women what’s dearer to ’em, their love, the life of life.

Related Characters: Lucy (speaker), Sparkish, Alithea
Page Number: 85
Explanation and Analysis:

I say, loss of her honor, her quiet, nay, her life sometimes; and what’s as bad almost, the loss of this town; that is, she is sent into the country, which is the last ill usage of a husband to a wife, I think.

Then of necessity, madam, you think a man must carry his wife into the country, if he be wise. The country is as terrible, I find, to our young English ladies as a monastery to those abroad; and on my virginity, I think they would rather marry a London jailer than a high sheriff of a county, since neither can stir from his employment. Formerly women of wit married fools for a great estate, a fine seat, or the like; but now ’tis for a pretty seat only in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, St James's Fields, or the Pall Mall.

Related Characters: Alithea (speaker), Lucy (speaker)
Page Number: 86-87
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 4, Scene 3 Quotes

Oh, amongst friends, amongst friends. For your bigots in honor 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. They rail at a poor, little, kept player, and keep themselves some young, modest pulpit comedian to be pricy to their sins in their closets, not to tell ’em of them in their chapels.

Related Characters: Harry Horner (speaker), Quack
Page Number: 101
Explanation and Analysis:

If you talk a word more of your honor, you’ll make me incapable to wrong it. To talk of honor in the mysteries of love is like talking of heaven or the deity in an operation of witchcraft, just when you are employing the devil; it makes the charm impotent … I tell you, madam, the word ‘money’ in a mistress’s mouth, at such a nick of time, is not a more disheartening sound to a younger brother than that of ‘honor’ to an eager lover like myself.

Related Characters: Harry Horner (speaker), Lady Fidget
Page Number: 102
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 5, Scene 4 Quotes

Why should our damned tyrants oblige us to live
On the pittance of pleasure which they only give?
We must not rejoice
With wine and with noise.
In vain we must wake in a dull bed alone.
Whilst to our warm rival, the bottle, they’re gone.
Then lay aside charms
And take up these arms.
Tis wine only gives ’em their courage and wit,
Because we live sober, to men we submit.

Related Characters: Lady Fidget (speaker)
Page Number: 139
Explanation and Analysis:

Lady Fidget: Our reputation! Lord, why should you not think that we women make use of our reputation, as you men of yours only to deceive the world with less suspicion? Our virtue is like the statesman’s religion, the Quaker’s word, the gamester’s oath, and the great man’s honor – but to cheat those that trust us.

Squeamish: And that demureness, coyness, and modesty that you see in our faces in the boxes at plays is as much a sign of a kind woman as a vizard-mask in the pit.

Dainty: For, I assure you, women are least masked when they have the velvet vizard on.

Related Characters: Lady Fidget (speaker), Mrs. Dainty Fidget (speaker), Mrs. Squeamish (speaker)
Page Number: 141-142
Explanation and Analysis: