The Countess and Daughter-in-Law

The Countess and her daughter-in-law are two slender, stunning, aristocratic women who inhabit the apartment directly above the officers' rest-leave quarters in Rome, a building Major -- de Coverley had rented for the squadron. They are both described as having rich black hair and are consistently presented as a pair, their identities fused in the narrative's gaze. To Yossarian, they represent the pinnacle of erotic fantasy: he pictures them in filmy, smooth, clinging undergarments of deepest black or opalescent pastel radiance, with flowering lace borders fragrant with the tantalizing fumes of pampered flesh and scented bath salts. He dreams of having their nude milk-white female bodies lying stretched out in bed with him erotically at the same time. Yet they are utterly unattainable. They dote kittenishly on Nately and defer passively to Aarfy, but they recoil from Yossarian with distasteful contempt each time he makes an indecent proposal or tries to fondle them when they pass on the stairs. They have class—a quality Yossarian knows he lacks and that they know it too. Their presence in the novel crystallizes the intersection of class, desire, and the unattainable, serving as a recurring symbol of the eroticized privilege that Yossarian can observe but never possess.

Identity and Background

The Countess and her daughter-in-law are introduced as the beautiful, rich, black-haired residents of the landing above the officers' apartment in Rome. They are described as slender, stunning, and aristocratic, with pulpy, bright, pointed tongues and mouths like round warm plums—a little sweet and sticky, a little rotten. Their husbands have chosen to remain in the north with the family's business interests, leaving the two women alone in the apartment. They are never given individual names; they exist as a dyad, their identities fused in the narrative's gaze. This lack of individuation underscores their function as objects of fantasy rather than fully realized characters.

Relationships and Conflict

The Countess and her daughter-in-law maintain a strict hierarchy of favor among the American officers. They dote kittenishly on Nately, who is too shy to want them, and defer passively to Aarfy, who is too stuffy to take them and tries to dissuade them from ever putting out for anyone but their husbands. Aarfy confides earnestly to Yossarian that they are really a couple of good kids. In contrast, they think Yossarian is crazy and recoil from him with distasteful contempt each time he makes an indecent proposal or tries to fondle them when they pass on the stairs. This rejection is a source of profound frustration for Yossarian, who is madly in love with them and whose recurring dream it is to have both of them in bed with him simultaneously. Orr later teases Yossarian about them, asking if he ever screwed them, and Yossarian sighs honestly that he wishes he could, imagining the prurient, used, decaying feel in his petting hands of their teeny, pulpy buttocks and breasts.

Thematic Significance

The Countess and her daughter-in-law embody the intersection of class, desire, and the unattainable in the novel. They represent a world of wealth, elegance, and erotic privilege that Yossarian can observe but never enter. Their rejection of him is not personal but structural: they recognize that he lacks the class markers—the shyness of Nately or the stuffy propriety of Aarfy—that would make him acceptable. In this, they function as a mirror of the larger social hierarchies that govern the world of the novel, where even in the chaos of war, the old distinctions of money and breeding persist. Their presence also highlights Yossarian's own sense of inadequacy and his longing for a kind of intimacy that transcends the transactional sex he finds elsewhere. They are, in the end, a fantasy that can never be realized, a reminder that some desires are structured by their very impossibility.