SOURCE: “Gender and Structure in John Cheever's ‘The Country Husband,’” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 31, No. 1, 1994, pp. 57-68.

In the following essay, Dressner presents a deconstructive reading of “The Country Husband” concentrating on the comic structure, the contrast between the domestic and the wild, and the female versus the male role.

“He struck her full in the face. She staggered …” (Cheever, “The Country Husband” 340)

“A deconstructive reading is an attempt to show how the conspicuously foregrounded statements in a text are systematically related to discordant signifying elements that the text has thrown into its shadows or margins. …” (Johnson 17-18)

On more than one occasion, John Cheever described his short story “The Country Husband” (1954) with uncharacteristic satisfaction. In a 1973 interview, he spoke of the “seizure of lunacy when everything comes together. That is, of course, the most exciting thing about writing. I totally despair [and then] observations, emotions...