What is The Country Wife satirizing?
The Country-Wife, comedy of manners in five acts by Restoration dramatist William Wycherley, performed and published in 1675. It satirizes the sexual duplicity of the aristocracy during the reign of Charles II.
What is the theme of The Country Wife?
The major themes of William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, according to prominent scholars of Restoration comedy, are marriage, love, and sex. To this, we also must add the social order of Restoration England, particularly the relationship between authority and language.
Why was The Country Wife written?
The Country Wife is a Restoration comedy written by William Wycherley and first performed in 1675. A product of the tolerant early Restoration period, the play reflects an aristocratic and anti-Puritan ideology, and was controversial for its sexual explicitness even in its own time….
| The Country Wife | |
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| Setting | London |
What is the central character of the play The Country Wife?
Harry Horner. The protagonist of the play, Horner, is a well-known playboy in London. After a trip to France, he pretends to have become impotent because of a venereal disease that he supposedly caught abroad in order to convince married men to allow him to have access to their wives.
What are Lady Fidget’s concerns about Horner at the beginning of the play?
What Are Lady Fidget’S Concerns About Horner At The Beginning Of The Play Later In The Play? Despite Horner’s claim that his “honor” would be compromised, Lady Fidget makes an impression that she can’t help notice, so in reaction, she is eager to discover how he was able to compromise her’s “honor”.
What is the relationship between Horner and Lady Fidget?
She is the female counterpart of Horner in everything except what society expects from her, because she is a woman and he is a man.
How is The Country Wife a comedy of manners?
As a comedy of manners, The Country Wife satirizes Restoration London’s patriarchal hierarchy through cuckolding, wherein Horner, the play’s licentious libertine posing as a eunuch, undermines the power of the patriarchy by having affairs with married women and deceiving their unsuspecting husbands.
What is the China scene in The Country Wife?
In the infamous “china scene” of William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675), Lady Fidget operates within the discourse of “woman as consumer” in order to forward her sexual agency, participating in the surface play that luxury commodities as ultimately empty signifiers afford.
What is the relationship between Mr and Mrs Pinchwife?
Pinchwife is Margery’s husband. He is obsessively jealous and is terrified of being made to look foolish and of gaining a reputation as a “cuckold.” He has chosen Margery for a wife because he believes that she is innocent and naïve and therefore easy to control.
How is the country wife a comedy of manners?
Is a sister in law of Lady Fidget?
Lady Fidget is Sir Jasper Fidget’s wife and, ironically, a woman known in the town for being extremely virtuous and “honorable.” She spends most of her time with her sister in law, Mrs. Dainty Fidget, and her friend Mrs.
What does China mean in The Country Wife?
China is used to symbolize sex throughout the play and Horner and his lovers use it as a code word. When Horner takes Margery aside in Covent Garden, stealing her away under Pinchwife’s nose, he gives her some “China oranges” which she proudly takes back and presents to her husband.
What is connotation of the character name Pinchwife?
Pinchwife’s name is significant as it reflects his behavior; he annoys and bullies Margery and is stingy with her, or “pinches” her, when he keeps her locked up. It also suggests that his wife will be “pinched,” or stolen, which is nearly the case in the play.
What does Pinchwife attempt to have his wife write to Horner?
Pinchwife instructs Margery to write to Horner that his kisses repulsed her and that she wants nothing more to do with him.
What does Homer say is soon to happen to the newly married Pinchwife?
He will become a cuckold.
Is Wycherley’s the country wife above criticism?
“The Country Wife” is a work remarkable for its occasional wit and consis If some works are above criticism, this one is unquestionably too low. As the editor of the edition that I read notes: “In truth, Wycherley’s play is protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters.
Where did William Wycherley get his inspiration for his plays?
Like Charles II, Wycherley had spent some Commonwealth years in France and become interested in French drama, and throughout his short playwriting career (1671–1676) he would borrow plotlines and techniques from French plays, particularly Molière.
What is the courtier code proposed by Wycherley?
The courtier code proposed by Wycherley is of a sexual game. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argued in Between Men that the game is played not between men and women, but between men by means of women, who are merely the “conduits” of homosocial desire between men. The hierarchy of wits meant that the wittiest and most virile man would win at the game.