Marriage Quote by W. C. Fields

Fields doesn’t lob this line to diagnose actors; he uses them as a convenient stage for his real target: marriage, respectability, and the supposedly “proper” roles men and women are meant to play. The first sentence lands like a barroom punchline with a built-in moral: greatness in performance must come from some private deficit. The “lousy husband” tag flatters the audience’s suspicion that art is a kind of scam or indulgence - fun to watch, risky to live with. It’s the classic Fields move: make vice sound like common sense, then let the laugh do the dirty work.

The second sentence is where the period’s misogyny stops hiding behind the joke. “Great actress” doesn’t become “lousy wife”; it escalates to “the devil,” a theological overreaction that’s funny precisely because it’s so disproportionate. Fields is weaponizing an old cultural reflex: when a woman masters public performance, she’s not merely unreliable, she’s threatening. The subtext is that female ambition and erotic power are indistinguishable - and therefore must be demonized. It’s a gag that depends on the audience recognizing the bias, maybe even sharing it, then enjoying the relief of saying it out loud under the cover of comedy.

Context matters: Fields’ persona was the misanthropic, anti-domestic crank, a comic who made “the home” feel like a con. This is vaudeville-era cynicism sharpened into a two-line worldview: applause costs you intimacy, and women who can command a room must be punished for it - if only with a laugh.