In the following essay, Dessner explores domesticity and gender roles in Cheever's "The Country Husband."

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, and so forth all of a sudden calcify." A moment later Cheever called to mind an instance of this apogee of his experience of his art:

There is a short story of mine called "The Country Husband," which closes with something like seventeen images, including a dog with a hat in his mouth, I believe, and a railroad train, and a star, and a cat wearing a dress, and a man and his wife, and so forth. They are all sort of thrown together...