The Country Wife

A friend of Horner and also a rake, Harcourt meets Alithea and gives up his womanizing ways to woo and eventually marry her. Harcourt’s talent for trickery, such as his pretending to have a twin brother to pose as a parson, suggests that he has experience fooling others—as would be expected of a man who has been deceiving husbands and sleeping with their wives. Harcourt’s devotion throughout the play does not waver once he meets Alithea, contrasting Horner’s pursuit of Margery while bedding other women. Structurally, he is neither the protagonist nor the romantic hero, as he might have been in a play that was striving to teach a moral lesson about love, marriage, and infidelity. 

Another friend of Horner and Harcourt, Dorilant does not have a romantic plotline. He manages to benefit from Horner’s ruse by kissing Margery when she dresses as a man, but Jaspar denies his company (believing that the women are only safe in the eunuch Horner’s company) when Dorilant attempts to join Horner at the Fidget residence.

Pinchwife, a former rake, has reached middle age and chosen to marry Margery because she is young and from the country. He believes that she is not worldly enough to for infidelity. As his name suggests, Pinchwife jealously guards his new wife, terrified that another man will corrupt her and make him a cuckold. He is worried that someone will “pinch,” or steal, his wife and is also someone who pinches his wife. This jealousy manifests as anger and threats of violence, with Pinchwife even drawing his weapon upon Margery more than once as if he might kill her for being unfaithful. Having been a womanizer, Pinchwife is especially suspicious of both Margery and of other men. He has a low opinion of women and their ability to be faithful, and he seems to see all women as whores. To force Margery to write the letter he dictates to Horner, he threatens to carve the word “whore” into her forehead, a particularly graphic and violent image. Pinchwife turns his wife as a captive. He locks her up and attempts to forbid her from the exposure of any outside influence. Even if his fear of cuckoldry is founded, his egregiously insidious measures to keep Margery to himself make him entirely unsympathetic. He does not seem to want a marriage, but regular access to a woman who cannot refuse to give him sex.

For Horner, Dorilant, and Harcourt, Sparkish is the person who includes himself in social situations because he believes that his presence is desired when it is not. His name is ironic, since the word “spark” suggests intelligence and wit—two qualities that Sparkish brags about possessing that he, in fact, does not. While Dorilant and Harcourt offer sympathy for Horner’s supposed condition, Sparkish mocks him, along with other men who we never see but who seem to have similar personalities. More than anything, Sparkish cares about the opinions of other men. His interest in Alithea as a wife has less to do with love or the fact that she is attractive and smart and much more to do with possessing something that makes other men envious. Sparkish is not concerned with whether Alithea cheats on him, and the fact that she is morally opposed to betraying him or being unfaithful is wasted on him. He is completely oblivious to Harcourt’s advances and even facilitates them, refusing to believe Alithea’s insistence that the “parson” who is performing their wedding is actually a ludicrously disguised Harcourt. Sparkish also does not put much stock in marital love or marriage itself, and when he believes that Alithea has left him, he reveals that he did not have any feeling for her at all. Like Horner, Sparkish resolves at the end of the play never to marry.

Largely uninterested in his wife, Sir Jaspar seems glad to have a man who is willing to take an interest in her, particularly one who can do so without ruining her reputation. He constantly leaves his wife to deal with business matters and is all too willing to accept Horner’s claim of impotence at face value. Jaspar seems to enjoy Horner’s supposed affliction, perhaps because he is doing such an insufficient job of satisfying his own wife. Jaspar, as an emasculated character, takes pleasure in believing that Horner is as well. Like Sparkish, Sir Jaspar repeatedly arranges his own cuckolding.

The country wife of the title, Margery Pinchwife is young, possibly under the age of 20, and has been married to an older man with no regard to her wishes. She is humorously naïve and innocent, and Horner easily takes advantage of her. Pinchwife chooses to marry her because he believes that her lack of exposure to city life will mean that she will be easy to control. However, because she is from the country, she does not have the same respect for societal rules. Thus, when Horner coaxes her away from where she is waiting for her husband to return, she follows him. And when she decides that she’d rather be with Horner, she has no qualms about leaving her husband, even if it inspires gossip. She misconstrues Horner’s attentions and “love” as a proposal of marriage and does not understand that he sees her as a conquest. Margery bears Pinchwife’s abuse with patience, but she also does not hesitate to trick him. Margery’s ability to trick him suggests that she is wilier than she seems, particularly her complicated ruse to fool Pinchwife into taking her to Horner himself. However, her inability to find her way home shows that she is still a fairly vapid character. Although she, like her husband, resolves herself to a marriage she doesn’t want, it seems likely that she will take every opportunity to be unfaithful to Pinchwife in the future.

Alithea, who is engaged to marry Sparkish for most of the play, is beautiful, intelligent, and faithful. The fact that she is engaged to such a boorish fool shows how poorly her brother looks after her best interests. Pinchwife presumes that his sister’s morals are as questionable as he believes are the morals of all women who live in the city, but Alithea takes quite a lot of care to avoid betraying or hurting Sparkish, even when he deserves it. She is, however, a bit naïve about love, believing that Sparkish must love her if he plans to marry her, despite his obvious apathy towards her. In terms of social and financial standing, Harcourt is as good a match as Sparkish and is much better suited to marry Alithea, but Alithea refuses to end her engagement to Sparkish because she gave him her word. Her piety is rewarded at the end of the play when Sparkish ends their engagement and she is free to marry Harcourt.

Sir Jaspar Fidget’s wife, Lady Fidget, is a woman of the nobility and one of three women who happily sleep with Horner while preserving their reputations. She emasculates her husband by cheating freely and reverses traditional gender roles by expressing much more sexual desire than her husband. She has little interest in Horner as a eunuch and takes offense at his insults, but she very quickly forgives his rudeness when she learns that he is not. At the end of the play, when Mrs. Dainty Fidget and Mrs. Squeamish are upset to discover that Horner has been having affairs with all three of them, Lady Fidget is the voice of reason who convinces the other two to keep his secret. Like Horner, she is only interested in sex and has no emotional attachment.

Sir Jaspar’s sister, Mrs. Dainty Fidget, also sleeps with Horner. Her name suggests that she is dainty, or meticulous about following social rules and managing her reputation. She becomes offended that Horner has been having affairs with multiple women and only stays quiet because Lady Fidget points out that her reputation would be in jeopardy were the ladies to out him.

Like Mrs. Dainty Fidget’s name, Mrs. Squeamish’s name implies a similar fear of impropriety—or at least the appearance of impropriety. Mrs. Squeamish complains about the fact that their men ignore them sexually in favor of trysts with lower class women, so her infidelity seems to be, at least partially, motivated by revenge.

Mrs. Squeamish’s grandmother, Old Lady Squeamish, has an interest in guarding her granddaughter’s virtue and reputation. But like Sir Jaspar, she is easily convinced that Horner’s impotence is legitimate and all too happy to allow Horner to take Mrs. Squeamish off her hands. She even insists that Horner kiss her granddaughter to keep her quiet, operating under the assumption that all physical contact with a eunuch is by nature chaste and appropriate.