Horner and Marjorie Pinchwife in “The Country Wife”
Thursday
Donald Trump is in high dudgeon (but what else is new?) about (1) Bob Woodward’s reports of White House staffers sabotaging his impulsive actions and (2) an anonymous insider confirming as much in a New York Times column. In response, Never Trumpers are urging insiders and recent insiders to tell publicly what they know. If things are as bad as reported, then these people have a duty to break their silence. A courageous truth teller might expose the full extent of the corruption.
William Wycherley’s Restoration comedy Country Wife helps explain why no one has come forth yet.
Among those calling for the anonymous writer to go public are former Republicans Steve Schmidt of MSNBC and David Frum of Atlantic. Frum writes,
Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections.
Your service in government is valuable. Thank you for it. But it is not so indispensable that it can compensate for the continuing tenure of a president you believe to be amoral, untruthful, irrational, anti-democratic, unpatriotic, and dangerous. Previous generations of Americans have sacrificed fortunes, health, and lives to serve the country. You are asked only to tell the truth aloud and with your name attached.
Majorie Pinchwife, the country wife, is the potential truthteller in Wycherley’s play. Some plot background is necessary to understand why her society would implode if she tells what she knows.
Marjorie is in love with Horner, who goes around claiming that venereal disease has rendered him impotent. He does this in order to circumvent husbands’ defenses so that he can sleep with their wives. As his name suggests, he wants to put cuckold horns on as many husbands as he can.
Horner’s deception works. The husbands, thinking him a safe chaperone for their wives, allow intimacy that they would otherwise forbid. The wives are obviously in on Horner’s plot, cavorting secretly with him while outwardly proclaiming their virtue. If they were to be found out, then their reputations would be ruined and their husbands would be humiliated. In other words, catastrophe.
Marjorie, however, is an innocent from the country who doesn’t know the game. As she sees it, she loves Horner and wants to leave her husband for him. She doesn’t care who knows it.
But (here’s where the play becomes wonderfully complicated) proclaiming Horner as her lover would expose his deception. Suddenly the husbands would know their wives have been unfaithful and they themselves would be ridiculed. Everyone would be ruined.
It would be like Trump cabinet members revealing that they consider Trump unfit for office and that they have been talking amongst themselves about deposing him via the 25th amendment. (It takes a majority of cabinet members plus the vice president to bring this about.) In other words, full-blown constitutional crisis.
So how does the play explain why White House insiders aren’t stepping up? In the play, husbands have heard enough from Marjorie to figure out that they’ve been cuckolded. As a result, the wives see ruin knocking on their door. But if Marjorie remains silent, everyone can pretend that nothing has happened and this decadent society can continue to lurch forward.
Which may be what these White House officials want. They can continue running the country while distancing themselves from the scandal that is Trump. Like the wives, they can claim to be virtuous while having their fling with power.
In the play, the other characters pressure Marjorie, the play’s one innocent character, to lie about her affair with Horner. In the end, a chastened Marjorie surrenders, claiming that she didn’t in fact make love to Horner but was just trying to teach her overly jealous husband a lesson. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief and the play ends with a “dance of the cuckolds.” Technically, Wycherley’s very dark comedy has a happy ending but the audience feels as though it’s been slimed.
Which is how I feel about all those working in the White House. Figures like Chief of Staff John Kelly and General Mattis are pretending that they didn’t undermine the president or say degrading things about him, and he publicly pretends that he believes them. The Times’ anonymous columnist and Woodward’s anonymous sources pretend they care more about the country than their jobs. GOP members of Congress, fearing an implosion’s impact on the midterms elections, hunker down and say nothing, hoping that things will blow over. The same goes for state television Fox News. The cuckolds continue dancing.
When I teach Country Wife, I ask my class what would happen if Marjorie told the truth. We conclude that, while there would be unpleasantness, in the end truth telling would have a salutary effect. Husbands and wives could let go of their insecurities and begin to have honest conversations, which is what happens in a play written 25 years later. In Congreve’s Way of the World, Mirabelle and Millamant talk frankly about the kind of marriage they want to have. It sounds healthier in every way.
So enough with all this leaking and talking anonymously. If the president is imperiling the country, come out and say so. Yes, there will be unpleasantness, but the republic will emerge in better shape. And that’s what’s important, right?