1. More talk about inferences 2. Conceptual connections 3. Reading the play as a comedy

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1. More talk about inferences 2. Conceptual
connections3. Reading the play as a comedy
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Margery Pinchwife her inclinations to vomit

• Working from our previous inference
• The plays comparison of sex to physical appetite
  is reductive in a specifically gendered way
  women are usually the food.
• ---what can we say about Margery Pinchwifes
  London disease speech at the beginning of Act
  IV, sc. iv?
• Discussion.

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Thinking with Hobbes What problem is Hobbes
trying to address? Conceptual connections

• The Leviathan, 1651 (date alert!)

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READING THE TITLE PAGE OF LEVIATHAN Leviathan
sea monster, any huge sea animal (e.g., whale),
or anything of immense size and power (Random
House Dict.) The body rising over the landscape
and composed of many bodies is the body
politic. All individuals contract with each
other to surrender their power to the sovereign
and are thus incorporated in his sovereign power.
The sovereign exercises power over both church
(see the pastoral staff or crosier) and state
(see the sword). See also the left and right
panels that extend the scenes and symbols of
state and church. The body politic constrains
motion. Why? What would happen to the image if
there were political rebellion?
Title page of Thomas Hobbess Leviathan (1651).
Abraham Bosse. Printed by Andrew Crooke, London.
http//www.wwnorton.com/nael/nto/17thC/politics/ho
bbesfrm.htm
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Nature has made all men equal. Lev. Ch. XIII
So whats the problem with equality?

• CHAPTER XI
• So that in the first place, I put for a generall
  inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and
  restlesse desire of Power after power, that
  ceaseth onely in Death. A man cannot assure
  the power and means to live well, which he hath
  present, without the acquisition of more.
• CHAPTER XIII
• Nature hath made men . . . Equall.

• CHAPTER XIII (cont.)
• Men have no pleasure, (but on the contrary a
  great deal of griefe) in keeping company, where
  there is no power able to over-awe them all.
• It may be perceived what manner of life there
  would be, where there were no common Power to
  feare by the manner of life, which men that have
  formerly lived under a peacefull government, use
  to degenerate into, in a civill Warre.

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The problem of equality

• Equality produces the condition for intense
  competition.
• Without some check on equality, men live in a
  state of war, a war of everyone against every
  other one.
• The contract through which individuals surrender
  their rights to everything relieves them from the
  unendurable equality of the state of nature.
• What is the state of nature?
• In such condition there is no place for industry,
  because the fruit thereof is uncertain and
  consequently no culture of the earth no
  navigation, nor use of the commodities that may
  be imported by sea no commodious building no
  instruments of moving and removing such things as
  require much force no knowledge of the face of
  the earth no account of time no arts no
  letters no society and which is worst of all,
  continual fear, and danger of violent death and
  the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
  and short (Ch. 13).

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Interpreting The Country Wife through a Hobbesian
lens

• Wycherley creates a device that allows Horner
  state-of-nature sexual privileges.
• Fundamental competitiveness is defined sexually.
  Whats at stake?
• But, unlike The Leviathan, the play works against
  any absolute solution. Wit undermines authority
  - and desire cannot be repressed.
• In the end, self-preservation requires a
  contract.

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A reductive treatment of psychology coincides
with Hobbess analysis but also belongs more
generally to a comic satiric tradition.

• Desire is a physical appetite - it is natural and
  cannot easily be restrained.
• Restraint increases desire.
• The virtue required of women by social codes is
  affectation.
• Marriage is a financial arrangement, an
  entrapment, etc.
• Jealous men will be cuckolded.
• Inattentive men (devoted to business) will be
  cuckolded.

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Disguises

• How many disguises occur in the play? What is
  the status of deception? Is it wrong? Is it
  smart? Is it necessary?
• Which disguises work? Which ones dont? What
  can we say about the play by noticing which ones
  work and which ones dont?

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Contract

• How can you describe the contract at the end of
  the play? Who are the parties to the contract?
  What do they contract to do? And what guarantees
  that the parties will not violate the contract?
• Is the contract a source of conceptual connection?

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Comedy and the Marriage Ending
If comedies conventionally end in marriage (they
do), what can you say about the ending of The
Country Wife? What are the implications of a
marriage ending? What kind of solution is
marriage? How do you balance the marriage of
Harcourt and Alithea with the statements about
marriage at the end of the play? How would the
play have been different if the Harcourt/Alithea
plot had been the main one, with the
Horner/Pinchwife/Margery/virtuous gang a
subplot? What do you think about Lucy? If we
identify characters who are the playwrights
stand-ins, Horner is one--his strategy at the
outset is the strategy through which the action
of the play takes place. But at the end, the
play, power is taken out of Horners hands. Lucy
begins to manage the plot. And shes the one who
arranges the contract of denial or appearance at
the end. What can you say about the play by
analyzing the role of Lucy?
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If you were writing a paper called Whats the
Problem?. . .

• What thesis could you imagine?
• Lets work together on this question.