Constant Wife Somerset Maugham

I went to the Gate Theatre, Dublin, and enjoyed a performance of “The Constant Wife” by Somerset Maugham.  It was an attractive “well-made play”, with an interesting theme, good acting, charming costumes and set design.  Kudos to the cast and director, who managed to do accents, and who managed to make the characters sound a little affected, but not to the point where they become overdone and irritating.  I find the older I get, the more I prefer  a “middle range” play – something that is not full of intellectual discussion or “deep and meaningful themes” but  a play that covers a subject, has some witty and clever lines but does not  pretend to be more than it is.
“Constant Wife” is quite a daring play for its time.  Constance, the wife of a well to do and successful Harley Street doctor, has time on her hands.  She hasn’t got much to do, with her servants running the house.  Her husband is frequently unfaithful and his latest affair is with one of her friends.   Well-meaning friends and relatives nag at her, advising her to confront her husband - but she doesn’t wish to do so.  An old boyfriend of hers has just returned to England, after living abroad for some time. Constance has a platonic friendship with him, which her husband does not mind about. 
 She does not feel able to confront her husband because she does not feel she is on an equal footing with him.  She is depending on him financially.  While in theory, as a wife, most people would say that her work of running his home and rearing children gives her the right to consider herself his equal, and to speak up to him, but, she does not feel that it does.
Constance is willing to admit that for a modern middle class wife, there isn’t much to do. Servants run the house, labour saving devices make this much easier than it used to be. Nurses and schools take care of the children and helping to run her husband’s social life is not really that demanding.
Maugham had a rather ambiguous attitude to women and sometimes was hostile to daring and sexually free ones, but in Constant Wife, he has Constance bravely acknowledge her lack of “equality” within the marriage. 
When her girlfriend’s husband finally gets suspicious that his wife is having an affair with Constance’s husband, the resourceful “constant wife” cleverly covers up, explaining away the suspicious circumstances and allaying his fears.   She suggests that the couple go away for a while to mend their marriage.
While they are away, Constance makes a decision, and having refused a friend’s offer to give her a job in interior decorating, she now decides to take up the work.  Over a year or so, she earns money at the job, and begins to feel that now she is on an equal footing with her husband.  She tells him that she has put money in his bank account, from what she has earned and that that is paying for her keep for the past year.  So now, she gives him a polite hint that she’s going away with her old admirer.  They will be discreet about it, but she means to engage in an affair.  And he can’t really say anything.  She has supported herself for the past year, with the money she made on her job... (Syrie Maugham, Maugham's wife was a very successful interior designer).

Constance tells her husband that she is not surprised that he has grown bored with her sexually.  Just because he wanted to sleep with her years ago, that does not mean that he is going to feel the same sexual passion for the rest of his life.  The final scene where Constance tells her husband that she will be a “constant wife” if not a faithful one, where he is rather annoyed but in fairness, can’t say very much, is funny and very sharp.  Maugham is insistent that if women want independence, they have to work for it... Then they can have the sexual freedom and general independence that men have usually had….a refreshingly sensible moderate point o of view which does not lean towards feminism or “male chauvinism”!!

I enjoyed the play very much and would love to see more Maugham plays being done.