##plugins.themes.academic_pro.article.sidebar##

Download
pdf
Statistic
Read Counter : 495 Download : 238

##plugins.themes.academic_pro.article.main##

Abstract

The paper analyzes the fierce moralist William Wycherley's perspective on the mistreatment of women by the Restoration era's aristocratic class. To get there, Wycherley divides the characters in The Country Wife into four camps: the abuser, the victim, the self-made victim, and the role model. The first category consists of rakes like Horner and company, the second of Margery and other good ladies, the third of self-made cuckolds like Pinch wife and Sir Jasper Fidget, and the fourth of Wycherley's mouthpieces like Alithea and Harcourt. The dramatist sees parallels between these two sorts in the female characters' flaws. In contrast, Wycherley shows extraordinary compassion for all female victims. Margery is portrayed as a helpless victim of her obsessive and overprotective husband and of the corrupt culture in which they live. This also applies to the lovely girls out there. They were entirely ignored by their husbands, leading them to adultery and extramarital affairs. Despite his compassion for the victims, Wycherley supports exemplary characters' behavior over the victims' flirtation.

Keywords

Wycherley the country wife

##plugins.themes.academic_pro.article.details##

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

How to Cite
Hatem Ghanim Yaseen. (2023). Women’s Function in William Wycherley’s Play the Country Wife as a Critical Analysis. Texas Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 21, 79–86. Retrieved from https://zienjournals.com/index.php/tjm/article/view/4167

References

  1. Burke, Helen M. (Fall 1988). "Wycherley's 'Tendentious Joke': The Discourse of Alterity in The Country Wife," Eighteenth-Century Studies, 29, 3: 227–41.
  2. Canfield, Douglas (1997). Tricksters and Estates: On the Ideology of Restoration Comedy. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky.
  3. Dixon, Peter (1996). William Wycherley: The Country Wife and Other Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  4. Dobrée, Bonamy (1924). Restoration Comedy 1660–1720. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  5. Green, Graham (1989). Lord Rochester’s Monkey: Being the Life of John Wilmot. New York: Penguin Books.
  6. Holland, Norman N. (1959). The First Modern Comedies: The Significance of Etherege, Wycherley and Congreve. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  7. Howe, Elizabeth (1992). The First English Actresses: Women and Drama 1660–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  8. Hunt, Leigh (ed.) (1840). The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh and Farquhar.
  9. Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve (1985). "The Country Wife: Anatomies of male homo-social desire". In Between Men: English Literature and Male Homo- social Desire, pp. 49–66. New York: Columbia University Press.
  10. Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1841). Review of Leigh Hunt, ed. The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, in Critical and Historical Essays, Vol. 2. Retrieved 6 February 2005.
  11. Ogden, James (ed., 2003.) William Wycherley: The Country Wife. London: A&C Black.
  12. Macaulay, Thomas Babington (2005). The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, in Critical and Historical Essays, Vol. 2.
  13. Pepys, Samuel (ed. Henry Benjamin Wheatley, 1880). The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Retrieved 14 March 2005.
  14. Potts, James (1975). Comedy of Manners. New York: Richard West Publishing.
  15. Righter, Anne (1966). William Wycherley, in Earl Miner, ed. Restoration Dramatists. New York: Prentice-Hall.
  16. Stone, George Winchester and et al (1975). British Dramatists: From Dryden to Sheridan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
  17. Wilson, John Harold (1969). Six Restoration Plays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
  18. Zimbardo, Rose A. (1965). Wycherley's Drama: A Link in the Development in English Satire. Yale.