Throughout The Country Wife, Wycherly uses theatrical devices, such as disguise and costume changes, to suggest that the more something is forbidden, the more titillating and attractive it becomes. The Restoration was a period of rebellion against Puritanism, which was enforced in England after the defeat of Charles I in the English Civil War. During this period of Puritan rule, theatres were closed and activities such as dancing and drinking were heavily censored. After the Restoration of Charles II, these things were flaunted in popular drama and the theatre once again became an important aspect of social life in London. The Country Wife suggests that forbidding things makes them more desirable. It pokes fun at the Puritan government that chose to ban various allegedly sinful activities in order to keep people away from them—and suggests that, by doing so, that government accidentally encouraged people to take sinful activities up.
Wycherly uses certain characters in The Country Wife to personify the Puritan approach to sin: the idea that people should be kept away from immoral things to avoid being corrupted. Sir Jasper Fidget makes it his business to find entertainment for his wife and sister, Lady Fidget and Mrs. Dainty Fidget, because he believes that, if he does not, they will find it for themselves. He believes that “’tis as much a husband’s prudence to provide innocent diversion for a wife as to hinder her unlawful pleasures.” A husband, therefore, in Sir Jasper’s mind, should control his wife’s behavior and will have more success at this if she is distracted than if she is left to her own devices. This suggests that Sir Jasper has a puritanical attitude towards women and believes that they must be kept away from vice to keep them from being corrupted. Pinchwife mirrors this attitude in his treatment of Margery; he keeps her locked up so that she will not learn deceitful behavior from corrupt influences in the outside world. This implies that, according to men like Pinchwife and Sir Jasper, it is better to force people to behave well than to allow people the freedom to make moral decisions for themselves. They incorrectly believe that limiting people’s choices and censoring society is a way to restrict and control behavior.
However, Wycherly points out that this type of restriction usually makes forbidden things all the more attractive and can actually lead people to sin. This idea is demonstrated literally in the character of Sir Jasper, who believes he is leaving his wife and sister with an impotent man, who cannot lead them into promiscuity. Instead, however, Sir Jasper leads them to and leaves them with Horner who plans to seduce them. Similarly, Pinchwife, by denying Margery access to the town makes her “desire it.” As Margery is not allowed to see the city herself, she imagines that it must be wonderful and cannot stop fantasizing about it. Although Pinchwife tries to blame Alithea for setting a bad example to Margery, it is really Pinchwife himself who keeps titillating Margery with information about town life. For example, when he overhears Margery ask Alithea about the theatre, he tries to put her off going by suggesting that, if she were to go, men might fall in love with her. This makes the experience seem even more attractive to Margery. Pinchwife then sets her on a path to fall in love with Horner when he tells her that Horner is already in love with her. Although he means to frighten her with this information, he really makes her curious to meet Horner. These examples directly parody Puritan attitudes towards sin, which tried to censor things, like going to the theatre, to stop people from partaking in sinful behavior—but which inadvertently encouraged people to do the opposite.
Wycherly draws attention to theatrical devices in The Country Wife to further support the idea that hiding something only encourages people to discover it. Before the Restoration, Puritans specifically objected to the theatre because of its associations with deceit and disguise and because of the sexual connotations of spending time there (theatres were often frequented by prostitutes and used as a social space in which wealthy patrons could flirt with each other). The Country Wife emphasizes the idea that it is not only the actors who are disguised, but also the audience. For example, it was common for women use “vizard-masks” when out in public to hide their real identities so that they could engage in covert flirtations during the plays. Pinchwife, as a representation of puritanical behavior, is especially afraid of Margery going to the theatre because she finds the actors sexually attractive. Alithea suggests that he put her in a mask when they go into town, to hide her face from the young men. Pinchwife, however, complains that “a masked woman, like a covered dish, gives a man curiosity and appetite.” The hidden face makes men more interested, as they can imagine that the woman is extremely attractive, regardless of what she really looks like.
Ironically, however, Pinchwife then uses another theatrical technique and disguises Margery as a man so that she will not be attractive to young “gallants.” This would have been especially ironic and comical to Restoration audiences, as women had only recently been allowed to appear on stage and it was common for playwrights to cast women in men’s roles so that their bodies, usually hidden by large dresses, would be visible and titillating to the audience. This demonstrates the way that Restoration playwrights like Wycherly flaunted their enjoyment of titillation and risque comedy and used it to distance themselves from the puritanical values of the previous decades and show their allegiance to the hedonistic court of Charles II. Wycherly showcases his antagonism towards puritanism by mocking puritanical characters and by demonstrating how, in trying to make the world less sinful, they actually encourage the very behaviors that they wish to prevent.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Theatre, Puritanism, and Forbidden Desire ThemeTracker
Theatre, Puritanism, and Forbidden Desire Quotes in The Country Wife
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Would it not make anyone melancholy, to see you go every day fluttering about abroad, whilst I must stay at home like a poor, lonely, sullen bird in a cage?
A mask makes people but the more inquisitive, and is as ridiculous a disguise as a stage beard; her shape, stature, habit will be known. And if we should meet with Horner, he would be sure to take acquaintance with us, must wish her joy, kiss her, talk to her, leer upon her, and the devil and all. 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 … No — a woman masked, like a covered dish, gives a man curiosity and appetite, when, it may be, uncovered, ’twould turn his stomach.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So, ’tis plain she loves him, yet she has not love enough to make her conceal it from me. But the sight of him will increase her aversion for me, and love for him, and that love instruct her how to deceive me and satisfy him, all idiot that she is. Love! ’Twas he gave women first their craft, their art of deluding. Out of nature’s hands they came plain, open, silly, and fit for slaves, as she and heaven intended ’em, but damned love –well – I must strangle that little monster whilst I can deal with him.
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.
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.
Well, 'tis e'en so, I have got the London disease they call love; I am sick of my husband, and for my gallant. I have heard this distemper called a fever, but methinks ’tis liker an ague, for when I think of my husband, I tremble and am in a cold sweat, and have inclinations to vomit, but when I think of my gallant, dear Mr. Horner, my hot fit comes and I am all in a fever, indeed, and as in other fevers my own chamber is tedious to me, and I would fain be removed to his, and then methinks I should be well.
Sparkish: Lord, how shy you are of your wife! But let me tell you, brother, we men of wit have amongst us a saying that cuckolding, like the smallpox, comes with a fear, and you may keep your wife as much as you will out of danger of infection, but if her constitution incline her to't, she'll have it sooner or later, by the world, say they.
Pinchwife: What a thing is a cuckold, that every fool can make him ridiculous! – Well sir – but let me advise you, now you are come to be concerned, because you suspect the danger, not to neglect the means to prevent it, especially when the greatest share of the malady will light upon your own head, for
Hows’e’er the kind wife’s belly comes to swell
The husband breeds for her, and first is ill.
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.
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.
