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the spread of Moral Corruption through the agency of Physical Corruption in "The Country Wife"

an essay by Gabrielle Harris

Imagine this—you’re at a crowded movie theatre and someone sneezes without covering their face and unawares to you, you’ve contracted the avian flu because of someone else’s carelessness. OH NO! Or imagine this: you’ve waited until you’ve found that “special someone” before engaging in sexual intercourse…its your first time and you’re in a supposedly monogamous relationship...all of a sudden it hurts to urinate. You go to the doctor and find out you have syphilis. OH NO! Just like the body can be corrupted, the mind and the spirit can be corrupted too…ever heard of a thing called peer pressure? Imagine this: You’re hanging out at the mall with some kids who always shoplift when you guys are out at the mall, usually you never steal, but this time you get caught up in the moment and steal something too. Or imagine this: You’re at a party and there is a lot of drinking…you do not drink, but you decide to drink this time because everyone else is doing it. These scenarios are made up and to some might seem a bit absurd or oversimplified, but when thinking of corruption of morals and the erosion of character, it is indeed that easy. As the bible says “Bad communications corrupts good morals”, and this is indeed the case in the Restoration play “The Country Wife” by William Wycherley. It is also somewhat easy to track the decay of morals in Wycherley’s play because of its intimate connection with a false tale of impotency due to venereal disease.

The agent and in a way the carrier of moral corruption is the character Horner, who is supposed made impotent by venereal disease. Because of this supposed impotency, Horner can “cuckold” or have sex with the wives of men of his acquaintance. Horner’s ruse breeds immorality just as germs breed sickness. According to Columbia university press, “[Venereal Diseases] are generally graver in women, in whom diagnosis is often more difficult and treatment less available than for men; untreated they can lead to infertility or cause miscarriage, premature birth, or infection of the newborn. In some instances two or more infections may be present concurrently”. While the spread of disease or corruption in the play is not actually that of a venereal disease, it certainly acts that way in its spread throughout the play.

Just as women are more adversely affected by the infection of venereal disease, the character that is most affected by Horner’s ruse is the “country wife”, Margery Pinchwife, who comes to the Town uncorrupted, and leaves it in a state of total moral dishabille. By tracing her change, and the changes of the other characters in the play who come in contact with Horner and his diseased ruse, the breakdown in morality can be traced as well. In the first scene of the play, it is revealed that Horner has spread a false rumor about his own impotency around the Town so that he may engage in intercourse with the wives of men in his acquaintance with the men being none the wiser. Horner’s justification for the ruse is that certain women of the Town are already morally bankrupt, especially when it comes to cuckolding their husbands.

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 love the sport, as those women that are gone, whom I warrant to be right. And then the next things 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. Now may I have by the reputation of a eunuch the privileges of one and be seen in a lady’s chamber in a morning as early as her husband, kiss virgins before their parents or lovers and may be, in short, the passé-partout of the Town (Wycherley I.i ln 175-189).

Horner’s contempt for people of the Town, especially women has sparked his desire to spread his disease of immorality through his acquaintances. This theme of corruption can be seen in every aspect of the play. Here Horner refers to the mutability of women’s actions, those women who hate him the most he says are those that are ripe for an immoral liaison, and those that feel sorry for him, and would feel comfortable in his company are those that have no interest in an illicit affair with him. A scholar named Kaufman likens Horner to a Don Juan, a vile seducer using his powers of seduction as a sadistic act of defilement and debasement of the women that he seduces. “Horner…stands alone in his society, with no close friends or confidants, alienated and isolated, incapable of any meaningful action except repeated and unsatisfactory seduction…his pretend impotence is obviously symbolic, pointing to his very real sterility of emotion” (Kaufman 5). Horner’s ruse roots out initial corruption in those women around him, those who are most susceptible to the corruption that Horner wishes to spread. Before Horner ever meets Margery, he exhibits his personal moral corruption with his use of “wit”, or language with double meaning. Horner has a conversation with Lady Fidget, a women that he later has a liaison with where he uses double meaning.

H: You do well, madam, for I have nothing that you came for.

I have brought over not so much as a bawdy picture, new postures, not the second part of Ecole des filles, nor—

SJ: Ha, ha, ha, he hates women perfectly, I find…

LF: Aye he’s a base rude fellow for it, but affectation makes not a woman more odious to them than virtue.

H: Because your virtue is your biggest affectation, madam

LF: How, you saucy fellow, would you wrong my honor?

H: If I could

(Wycherley ln 100-115)

Horner speaks of “wronging” Lady Fidget’s honor, which is supposedly impossible at this point because he is supposed to be a eunuch. As the audience knows, this is a ruse, and he is not impotent, but his pseudo-fake hatred of women, and his longing to wrong their honor is part of his cover. According to Thompson, this is an instant of Direct Irony, and has a myriad of meanings. “When Lady Fidget asks ‘Wou’d you wrong my honour,” Honor’s response ‘If I cou’d” appears to have endless meanings. He cannot wrong her virtue because he is impotent; he cannot wrong her virtue because she has no virtue; he cannot wrong her reputation because of his reputation of impotence; he cannot harm her reputation because her reputation is already sunk” (Thompson 3). While the statements that Horner makes are supposed to be taken as part of his lie building, because of the statement that Horner has made earlier, it can be seen that he has previously made direct hits on Lady Fidget’s honor by calling it an “affectation”. Horner claims from the start that Lady Fidget has no honor, so in a sense when he claims that he would wrong her honor he is lying because he does not believe that Lady Fidget has any honor to wrong. In this case Horner’s lie of sexual disease gives Lady Fidget an outlet for the corruption that has been festering in her.

Lady Fidget is an example of a woman who is already infected with moral sickness and corruption, and Margery Pinchwife is an example of one who is not infected, but soon contracts the sickness when she comes to the Town and comes in contact with Horner. To this end her and her husbands naïveté are the vehicles of their destruction. In order to be “successful” in the Town, wit is a key characteristic to have. Unfortunately for Margery and Pinchwife, they are lacking. For characters such as Margery Pinchwife and her husband Pinchwife—who claims to “know the Town”, their flip-flop of awareness of the double meanings of language (made by Horner specifically) made by other characters indicates what degree of moral corruption they have achieved. This double entendre effects Pinchwife more than Margery, because Pinchwife was aware of the myriad meanings of language, of wit if you will, though he is not a “witty” character. Margery fails to connect words with acts deceitfully, the only proper way in which language, gesture and meaning can be connected in the realm of this Restoration play. She reads naively , seeing the tavern signs in the New Exchange only in terms of their most obvious signification…The sexual innuendo with Pinchwife immediately perceives, is as lost to her innocent gaze as are other important cultural codes within that society (Payne 4). While Pinchwife has a rudimentary grasp on the various uses of language among th circle of his acquaintances, Pinchwife does not have a good enough grasp on language to use it as Horner does. In fact it his inexpert use of language that helps along the seed of corruption the Horner has planted.

Pinchwife, for some unknown reason tells Margery that there is a man that he knows who has fallen “in love” with her at first sight. Margery, excited that a “fine fellow” of the Town has taken a fancy to her begs her husband to tell her who it is and to introduce her to the man that is so in love with her. With her exuberant reception of this news, Pinchwife realizes his mistake, and becomes jealous and begins to treat Margery badly. It does not help that the man who has “fallen in love” with Margery is none other than Horner, despoiler of other men’s wives. At this point in the play Pinchwife is not aware that Horner is supposed to be impotent, as such he is the only man in the play that treats Horner as if he can cuckold him, which in fact he can.

In the wake of his increasingly bad treatment of Margery, Pinchwife makes missteps in his language, a sign that his lack of wit and misunderstandings of the double meanings fraught in the language, showing his break down in morally in the form of mistreatment of his wife. Pinchwife becomes “sick with jealously” and decides to make Margery write a letter to Horner telling him how much she disdains him and “hates” him.

P: 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 as she is. Love, ‘twas he gave women first their craft, their art of deluding; out of Nature’s hands the 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.—Go fetch pen, ink and paper out of the next room. (Wycherley IV.ii ln 51-61).

Pinchwife’s jealousy causes him no end of angst against Margery, indeed she has become the outlet for all his anger, when indeed he is the one that planted the seed of “love” in her heart for Horner, though it is Horner’s influence and reputation that become the driving factors for the Pinchwifes’ actions for the rest of the play. As Margery writes the letter to Horner, Pinchwife threatens her with violence twice. The first time he threatens to stab out her eyes with a penknife, and the second time he will carve “whore” in her face with that same pen knife. Because of his jealousy at Margery’s fascination with Horner, and his desire to keep from being cuckolded, Pinchwife has deteriorated to a man whose morals have no bearing on his actions. According to Marshall, Pinchwife would have been considered insane according to Restoration criteria for insanity, or sickness of the mind. Pinchwife’s sickness takes the from of obsession and what can be referred to as temporary insanity at the thought of his becoming a cuckold. “Pinchwife is so obsessed with the single idea of cuckoldry that he comes to define everyone and every situation only in terms of this paramount idea, even when to do so creates an obvious distortion of objective reality” (Marshall 5). Pinchwife, in his sickness of the mind desires to resort to violence in order to solve problems that only grow with the threat of violence. Pinchwife’s After Margery is threatened with the penknife and forced to write Pinchwife’s dictated letter to Horner, she displays her loosened morals and writes an alternate letter to Horner declaring her love, which she then gives to Pinchwife to deliver to Horner. Because of the influence of Horner, Margery has used her husband as a vehicle for his eventual cuckolding becoming more like Lady Fidget, a character who has already been established as morally reprehensible.

Margery becomes more versed in the art of subterfuge as the play draws to an end. She writes another letter to Horner, using the name of Pinchwife’s sister to trick Pinchwife into taking her to Horner’s lodgings. Pinchwife, blinded by his jealously, readily agrees to giving his sister to Horner in the hopes that Horner will accept his sister as a suitable substitute to his wife. What his is not aware of is that Margery has learned sufficiently the “ways” of the Town, in other words that she has been corrupted enough to concoct a scheme to see the man that she would take as her lover. Pinchwife leads Margery to Horner’s lodgings, and leaves her there, thinking that he has left his sister; Margery is now able to carry out the adultery that she has been rushing towards the whole play helped along by the stifling jealously that Horner planted in Pinchwife at the beginning of the play. When Pinchwife delivers Margery to Horner, Horner remarks on the fact that Pinchwife has done his job of wooing is wife for him. Pinchwife denies this, though that is exactly what he has done, in fact he has wooed her and delivered her to him. “H: …I know thou art an honest fellow and hast a great acquaintance among the ladies and perhaps hast made love for me rather than let me make love to thy wife—“ (Wycherley V.ii ln 53-56). Horner has brought the Pinchwifes’ low with his deceit, tricking Margery into thinking that he loves her and is worth ruining her marriage for, and Pinchwife into savaging his wife with violence and cruel words ultimately pushing her toward the man that is her downfall.

The play ends on what is a bad note for Margery. She has been morally corrupted, and unlike others in the play she is not rewarded for her low morals. The secret of Horner’s potency is kept, Margery is stifled because she is the only one that wants it known that Horner is potent. She must return to the husband that she now despises, and Pinchwife, the husband the most effected by Horner’s deception has to be content with a spoiled wife, one that was previously innocent and pure. “P: For my own sake, fain I would all believe: Cuckolds, like lovers, should themselves deceive. But—(sighs) His honor is least safe(too late I find) Who trusts it with a foolish wife or friend.” (Wycherley V.iv ln 455-59)

Wycherley’s play is a bounty of moral corruption stemming from one fount…Horner, the supposedly impotent man, made that way through a disease most foul. The moral corruption is displayed through the moral despoliation of Margery Pinchwife, her fall from an innocent, though naïve young wife, to an pseudo-town woman steeped in vice. Its said that Venereal Disease spreads through sexual contact with an infected person with out using precautions. With in the realms of this play, moral disease spread from Horner just as if he really did have syphilis. In the case of the moral disease that spread through this play like a venereal disease. Everyone that came into contact with Horner was afflicted in the spirit, his lies eating away at the souls and integrity of those that he lied to. Women and men were brought to new lows on the moral scale. Those, like Lady Fidget, who already had an immoral bent were hustled into even lower rungs of unrealized self-disrespect. Men were the agents of their own cuckolding, delivering their wives to be despoiled unbeknownst to the deliverer.

But the greatest tragedy is the lost heart of Margery Pinchwife, who took her heart from her husband and gave it to a man who wished nothing for nothing more than to heap humiliation upon humiliation on her head…and she helped him to do it. The fact that she and the others help in bringing about their own disgrace bespeaks of the level of the slippage of their moral fiber. Wycherley delivers a play with many moral dilemmas that his cast of characters fail to solve in a satisfactory manner. But it seems that the moral, if one strives to find a moral, is that one shouldn’t woo ones wife for another man.