What are three examples of satire in The Country Wife?

Satire exaggerates human moral failings or weaknesses in order to poke fun at them. In The Country Wife, Wycherley satirizes a range of sexual issues in upper-class Restoration society. Three of these issues are too much emphasis on sexual conquest, hypocrisy about sexual desire, and husbands going overboard in guarding their wives from the sexual perils of society.

Newly freed from the constraints of Puritanism after the restoration of the monarchy, upper-class people sometimes went overboard. Wycherley satirizes this through the figure of Harry Horner, a rake with a huge sexual appetite. Horner gets his doctor, the aptly named Quack, to spread the rumor that venereal disease has made him impotent, or as the plays calls him, "a eunuch." By doing this, Horner hopes husbands will feel safe leaving their wives in his company. Using such an exaggerated and comic plot device, Wycherley pokes fun at the lengths some upperclass men would go to to get women in bed.

Through characters such as Lady Fidget, Mrs. Dainty, and Mrs. Squeamish, who call themselves the "virtuous gang," Wycherley satirizes the hypocrisy of society women who pretend to be faithful and good wives on the surface while being out on the town looking for a good time. For example, Lady Fidget wants to have nothing to do with Horner when she hears the rumors that he is impotent. But when he is able to tell her that is all a ruse, she can't wait to be left alone with him. When the three women mentioned above get together with him, they act like bawdy men, drinking and singing off-color songs.

Finally, in Mr. Pinchwife we get a satiric portrait of an older husband who is so worried that his younger wife is going to be seduced that he becomes overly protective. For example, he keeps her practically a prisoner at home until she insists on going out, then forces her to dress as a man so that she won't be the target of rakes—a plan that backfires.

Analyze the types of satire in The Country Wife.

The types of satire found in The Country Wife are all forms of Horatian satire, which is to say comic social commentary. Wycherley satirizes licentious Restoration society, Puritan values, and matrimonial jealousy. However, the satire of his first target is fairly mild, because he shows no serious disapproval of the society he depicts.

Horner is not the romantic hero of the play (that role goes to Harcourt), but he is the most vivacious and memorable. Wycherley treats his seduction of other men's wives as a joke, and his duplicitous, libertine character is never reformed. The most ostentatiously immoral character in the play is therefore one of the least absurd. The same cannot be said of Lady Fidget and her associates, since the playwright takes feminine virtue more seriously than male probity (though still not very seriously).

Margery, the country wife herself, is not the object of much satire. It is the puritanical attempts of husbands to guard the virtue of their wives that come in for the most satirical treatment. Pinchwife is the most ridiculous figure in the play, and his jealousy is the principal object of Wycherley's disdain.