Poor Mrs. Pinchwife

Through Horner’s exposure of the true nature of “virtuous” women, the play criticizes hypocrisy—affecting virtue to uphold one’s reputation appears to be a greater sin than the act that threatens to sully that reputation in the first place. Why, then, is Mrs. Pinchwife ultimately punished for her attempts at honesty? Horner, for all his railing against affectation, forces her to “tell more lies” in the last scene and swear virtue to her husband. Doesn’t this simply reinforce the imprisonment Pinchwife imposes on his wife for which he is ridiculed throughout the play?

Would it have been possible for Mr. and Mrs. Pinchwife to get divorced? In V.iv, Mrs. Pinchwife notes that “every day, at London here, women leave their first husbands, and go and live with other men as their wives” (210-11). At the end of the scene, she laments, “I must be a country wife still too, I find, for I can’t, like a city one, be rid of my musty husband and do what I list” (389-91). Is this simply a sign of Mrs. Pinchwife’s “country” ignorance? Even Mr. Pinchwife states that he must be a husband “against [his] will, to a country wife”—what is keeping them together?