The Country Husband by John Cheever is a short story, but it is so emotion-packed that even those 10 pages leave a tremendous impression. The author proves that little communities and a suburban life are not that quiet and peaceful as they might seem to be. It is true that a theme of a hidden skeleton in the closet is often used – to be frank, even overused – in the modern culture (the Stepford Wives and Desperate Housewives are examples of it), but the most interesting thing is that people don’t get bored with it. Why are we, readers, so fascinated with this kind of story? The answer is quite obvious; it is so because we can relate ourselves with them. More often than not, there is no a flawless character at all, they are all complex, thus they are just like us. To read such a story is like to take a calming tablet and to repeat one more time that nobody is perfect and everyone has a right for a mistake.
Francis Weed seems to be a perfect hero. He doesn’t freak out when a chance of dying increases and behaves in a friendly way. It could be possible that John Cheever gives such a positive description to make the readers like Francis, so that the later disappointment in him would have a stronger effect on us. As it soon turns out to be, Francis is not just a friendly fellow! He is perfectly capable of cruelty if it helps him to achieve what he wants. The scene in which he thinks about pros and cons of adultery shocks with its cynicism, for he doesn’t really care about his wife’s feelings or his children. The only one thing the man is interested in how his love adventures are going to influence the social status they have. He does realize that Sandy Hills is not the best place for keeping secrets, for it is too small and everyone knows each other. Francis starts regretting his decisions and often dreams about different life scenarios.
John Cheever knows how to portray everyday routine so that to make his readers shudder. For instance, the party the Weeds attends looks like any other social gathering in the very beginning, but soon enough readers learn that the party waitress is a woman whose chastisement Francis saw in France after the war. He remembers her walking naked down the dirt road and here she is now! Isn’t it strange? For Francis, the party stops being just a cheerful gathering, his mind drifts to the events that happened to him years ago and – as it turns out to be – the horrors of the war are not forgotten at all. The scene with a naked woman sitting at a train window and combing her hair is like a recreation of old myths about nymphs. The author uses 2 sentences but it is absolutely enough to immerse readers into surreality.
How does this story end? The author gives us a right to come up with any ending we like. However, the last scene in which everything looks like always and the Weeds’ neighbors behave in their own peculiar manner except one couple, which makes love fervently in a backyard, gives us a hint that sooner or later something terrible or at least scandalous might happen there.
