This excerpt from an antique 1950s home economics textbook has been doing the rounds of the worldwide web. It has found its way into my e-mail at least twice in the past year.
http://www.j-walk.com/other/goodwife/images/goodwifeguide.gif
I first encountered the good wife’s guide back in university. I can’t remember which class it was for (I think it had “gender” in the title), but our professor read that daft piece of pseudo-education aloud to us one afternoon.
And we laughed. And mocked. A few gasped in horror, but then realizing that horrible chapter of history was, well, history, fell back into laughter and mocking.
This was a tutorial group (not a proper lecture in a big, echo-y hall). There were two men in this group, both black. The rest were women of all nationalities and upbringings. What really got to me was that few if any of us would actually be found in a university classroom back in 1955. We’d be enduring handy hints for dealing with husbands like:
-Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.
-Be a little gay (sic) and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it
-Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Encourage the children to be quiet.
-Make the evening his. Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner or other places of entertainment without you. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his very real need to be at home and relax
-A good wife always knows her place.
Alas, there was no mention of the best time for these goodly (future) wives to take their little yellow pills.
So why is the good wife’s guide rearing its ugly head in 2009?
Many are wondering if the whole piece is just a gigantic hoax. It is just that crazy.
If so, then it’s a long-running hoax if I knew of it back in the mid-nineties.
But alarmingly, there is a smattering of men out there (there? The universe, child) seem to think that it is a grand thing. Women have become far too selfish and career-oriented, they cry comment. These guys believe they are entitled to their very own fembot fetching their pipe and slippers every day.
These speshul snowflakes are also convinced they ought not to be bothered with his wife’s opinions or told what a nightmare their sprog was at the grocery store.
You’d think such men would lack the opposable digits required to access the internet, but no.
I’m not telling you where to find these losers. That would be giving them the attention they crave.
Plus some of them have dirt on me.
But that doesn’t mean I’m staying silent. Any man who really thinks he deserves that sort of slavishness from his wife, his life partner for Gob Smack, may do better being doted on by kindly old volunteers with the patience of angels. In the nut house.
I don’t expect such a man to be reading this, but on the off chance, an open letter:
Dear Gorak,
Get your head out of your arse! First of all, sad knuckle dragger:
1. The fifties are OVER, praise Merlin!
2. The version of the fifties that ridiculous rag presented of marital and family bliss, for the most part only existed on television. In the real world, things weren’t so clear-cut and rosy. Betty Friedan blew the whistle on it all years ago, didn’t you hear?
3. You are probably goofy-looking, frequently turned down for promotions at work (if you have a job) and have a pet rock for a brain. You would likely have to import such a woman from a very impoverished country, and that just might be beyond your means.
As for me, I will not be forced back into the Lace Ghetto. The fifties were not an aluminum sided heaven on Earth.
Stop stinking up my chat rooms.
Sincerely,
Lesly
Women have seen and learned far too much to tolerate men like Gorak. At its every inception, the F-word (“FEMINIST!”) has drawn ridicule from the mainstream.
When this textbook was first printed, a man could legally rape his wife. After all, she was his property. Women who managed to find their place in the job market could be fired for being married. Or pregnant.
I’m forever grateful to my foremothers for taking the worst of it. But as you can see, the battle isn’t quite over.
And the best way to put those trogs in their place is to laugh at them, the way you laughed at the good wife’s guide. And mock if you have the time and inclination. And eventually Gorak and his ilk will drag their knuckles back to their caves where they will scratch their slopey heads and try to figure out how to use the can-opener.
I’ll take my little flat where I only wait on myself and my cat over a bar to a “happy” marriage that could only exist in a textbook.
