Study Guide for "A Country Husband" by John Cheever
Themes
Dionsyian vs. Apollonian forces
Private desire vs. public duty
Suburban conformity and the loss of meaning
How to be a man
The shame and intoxication of clinging to delusions of eternal youth and perpetual adolescence
Fear of irrelevance and feelings of worthlessness in modern society
Impoverishment through substitution
Reading Questions for "The Country Husband"
1. What is the significance of Francis’ brush with death?
Irrelevance. Such a trauma causes us to question the meaning of our lives. We see this theme in Breaking Bad.
Dionysian shake up ruptures Apollonian calm. Or I should say apparent calm since a disease roils underneath this suburb, as we shall see.
Men facing death discuss their Bucket List, their "shoulds" and "I've always wanted to . . ."
We see men in a state of regret, lives of failed meaning and fulfillment.
Clearly, the crash happened long before social media. Twitter would have had a viral episode with it, but when he gets home his family knows nothing of it.
2. What is the contradiction of Francis Weed’s name?
The exquisite and the refined mated with the wild and the untamed. A major theme. Francis is the outer man. Weed is the Id, the inner demon that wants what it wants and "the hell with society."
3. How has Francis created a suburban Eden?
His is a false Eden of consumerism, conformity, and the worship of money disguised as "hard work." The USA enables you to be addicted to greed and consumerism by saying, "Your a good, hard working person."
In this Eden of Conformity we don't inconvenience people with tales of near death like a plane crash. The family is too self-absorbed for such unpleasant anecdotes.
No one cares about your pain, your angst, your emptiness, or your awkwardness. Chin up, man.
Stoicism is the key.
The wife at dinner "strikes a match and lights the six candles" while the children scream, whine, and cry. The theater or stage show of domestic bliss must go on.
Francis sees the farce that is his life. It's a stage, a show, and he's a two-bit player, part of the supporting cast. His ego is crushed.
He feels powerless to assuage the "battlefield" that has become his family. He is an emasculated father figure.
4. How does the story set up the conflict between the Cave and the Beehive?
The need for balance. The back garden is Francis’ cave, a refuge from the beehive.
Consider the house is full of Dionysian madcaps while the garden is a place of Apollonian repose and respite.
5. Why does the story contain war references and imagery throughout?
Battle of Marne; Scottish chieftains; analogous of interior battle, conflict; domestic battle; the maid from Normandy; Hannibal crossing the Alps; war represents vitality, strength and power; the battle of desire; the war within. What war? Public duty and private desire.
Moving through Jung’s 4 stages of life: athlete, warrior, statesman, spirit.
Francis stuck at the warrior stage, the egotism stage.
Francis is at war with his Inner Dog embodied in the story by Jupiter: He's an "anomaly" and "out of place in Shady Hill."
Francis is a Misfit with no sense of belonging.
Francis, like Zoe in "You're Ugly, Too," suffers from a crisis of belonging. Perhaps Francis' married life is proof to Zoe that marriage is hardly a cure for such a crisis.
6. What suggests that Francis is being eaten by the worm of self-pity?
He's lived the dream that America told him to live and he feels empty, betrayed, and disconnected from family and self. The result is anger alternated by self-pity.
Perhaps the maid who was shamed in Normandy for allegedly being a sympathizer with the Nazis is a metaphor for Francis' sense of shame and ostracism. We see there are penalties for not conforming to norms, for disobedience.
7. How does Francis react to the young woman he stares at.
He becomes intoxicated with a chimera like Lester in American Beauty. He dreams of living with the girl Anne Murchison in Paris. Clearly, staring at the babysitter Anne has awakened the Dionysian force inside Francis.
He is looking for an escape from the suburban hell that makes him feel like less than a man. Of course, he is his worst enemy, the cause of his misery.
8. Why is Francis’ rudeness towards Mrs. Wrightson a turning point in the story? What will the consequences of his trespass be?
They will be ostracized from the socialites like the maid was ostracized in France. Francis’ improprieties will make him a pariah.
9. When Julia rebukes her husband and says he “can’t live like a bear in a cave,” how do her words sum up the nature of most marriages?
Men are happier in marriage; women are not because they mother their husbands. Ouch.
10. What is Francis’ real war?
His subconscious passive-aggressive hostility and the war within himself, his Inner Child and his Inner Man.
Francis is so hostile he doesn't know when he's being hostile like when he's rude to Clayton, the aspiring theological student.
In other words, Francis doesn't try to be a jackass; he just naturally is one. The latter is worse because in the latter case we can't control what we do.
His wife must admonish him: "You don't have to meet everything head-on, like a child. Unless you're anxious to be a social leper. It's no accident that we get asked out a great deal."
11. How does Francis tame the beast within?
Sublimation. We must find some passion to sublimate our beastly energies.
Part Two. Man-Child (Peter Pan Syndrome)
1. succumbs to self-pity; in fact, he spends time coddling and nurturing his self-pity.
2. marriage with wife is like a relationship with a mother and child
3. father never outgrows the habits of selfishness and self-centeredness
4. husband never tames his beast or Id; maturity is largely defined by self-control, a quality lacking in Francis Weed
5. The man-child retreats into the ego and severs ties with the community, becoming in essence a pariah or misfit.
6. He is the Eternal Boy who resents having boundaries in his life. Boundaries are essential for growing up, a moral lesson found in the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
7. The Man-Child sees himself as a victim of unfair persecution and as a result goes through life with a chip on his shoulder and resentment.
8. The Man-Child wants to be the center of attention or else he feels sorry for himself.
9. The Man-Child wants his family to love him and dote on him even though he does nothing to show his love for them. He fails to understand the social contract of reciprocity because he is essentially a narcissist.
10. The Man-Child is an "unfocused rebel," as we read in Karen Bernardo's essay.
Commentary
Thesis Statements for “The Country Husband”
Cause and Effect Analysis Thesis
While Francis Weed is evidenced to be a self-centered, rude Man-Child, he turns out to be a sympathetic character, in spite of himself, because he’s played by society’s rules to embrace the American Dream only to come up empty-handed, he lacks the stomach for putting up appearances, and he seems to lack the savvy and metacognition to help him navigate the natural conflicts of suburban life.
In the above example, the writer is analyzing the causes that make us sympathetic toward Francis.
Also, we should not that the above example is also an argument for sympathizing with Francis.
Thus, the example teaches us that a thesis can be BOTH argumentative and cause and effect analysis.
Argumentative Thesis
While some would paint Francis Weed as a sympathetic character overwhelmed with the complexities of suburban life, the story shows him to be his own worst enemy, shackled by self-centeredness, rudeness, narcissism, and moral incontinence.
Another Argumentative Thesis
While “The Country Husband” is unflinching in its critique of Francis Weed’s self-centeredness, its larger, more significant criticism is of the American Dream itself because the story paints that Dream has a fraud wrought with phony appearances, vacuous consumerism, soul-killing conformity, petty social codes, and a scarcity of healthy outlets for our natural Dionysian impulses.
Extended Definition Thesis
Francis Weed is what we would call the consummate Man-Child characterized as someone whose default setting when confronting difficulty is to succumb to self-pity, has an unhealthy reliance on his wife as a coddling mother figure, engages in the habit of excess and self-indulgence, and suffers delusions of perpetual adolescence.
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