The Country Husband

Content Warning: This section alludes to rape, as well as domestic violence and alcohol addiction.

From the moment in which a plane crash upends Francis’s orderly existence, the story critiques the conformity and artificiality of suburban life. The Weeds’ home is beautiful but generic, lacking any imperfections that would render it distinctive. Likewise, as Francis grows increasingly disenchanted with his life in Shady Hill, he reflects on how bland his neighbors truly are: “[M]any of them, also, were bores and fools, and he had made the mistake of listening to them all with equal attention” (42). Here, the problem of conformity is twofold: The apparent homogeneity of suburban life weakens Francis’s ability to perceive any differences that do exist, rendering existence all the more uniform.

The story’s critique of suburban life most strongly intersects with its examination of Francis and Julia’s marriage. This is no accident: The 1950s idealization of suburban life was inseparable from its promotion of the nuclear family as the norm to which everyone should aspire. Throughout the story, Francis’s wife, Julia, represents the conformity that Francis chafes against. She refuses to acknowledge the profundity of the plane crash, concerns herself primarily with social functions, and works hard to establish the family’s facade of happiness. Indeed, as the stereotypical suburban wife and mother, her primary job is to ensure the social position of the family, and she takes the job extremely seriously. Francis, however, no longer cares about their social position in the wake of his existential crisis, believing it to be meaningless. The simmering conflict between their two points of view comes to a head after Francis insults Mrs. Wrightson. They have an ugly fight in which Francis strikes Julia, and Julia threatens to leave him. When Francis pleads with her, however, Julia quickly changes her mind. The sudden return to the status quo after their intense conflict shows how entrenched they both are in their roles. The demands of suburban conformity have imprisoned them both in a union that often leaves them feeling unfulfilled and unheard, yet they struggle to imagine a different reality and break free from its confines. This is made explicit when Francis, pondering the possibility of running away with Anne, realizes just how far beyond the norm such an action would be: “Looking back over the recent history of Shady Hill for some precedent, he found there was none. There was no turpitude; there had not been a divorce since he lived there; there had not even been a breath of scandal” (43).

However, there are happy couplings in Shady Hill, which shows that authentic connections—and authenticity broadly—are possible in suburbia. The host and hostess of a party that Julia and Francis attend speak in vivid terms about their enduring love, with the host saying his wife makes him feel like he’s “Hannibal crossing the Alps” (44). While this could be performance, a second couple, the Babcocks, reveal their feelings for another in the private setting of their backyard, where they chase each other naked. These brief images of romance contrast starkly with the Weed marriage and suggest that the erosion of respect, passion, and individuality that Francis and Julia have experienced are not necessarily inevitable outcomes of their environment. While conformist environments do impact social dynamics and set the parameters of the all-American “pursuit of happiness,” the definition of such happiness is fluid, and the complexity of individual human psyches will endure no matter their environment.