For anyone needing a heavy dose of reality from a gone-by era. The modern day comentary makes a good laugh!
1. Don't Talk
Oh, did Mavis from next door insult your prize winning squash? Did
little Timmy get sent home for starting fires again? That shooting pain
in your left arm just keeps getting more intense? Keep it to yourself!
Your man works all through his day and the last thing he needs to hear
about is
yours. Refer to the first four commandments on “How to be a Good Wife” Edward Podolsky gives in his 1943 book,
Sex Today in Wedded Life:
Don’t bother your husband with petty troubles and complaints when he comes home from work.
Be a good listener. Let him tell you his troubles; yours will seem trivial in comparison.
Remember your most important job is to build up and maintain
his ego (which gets bruised plenty in business). Morale is a woman’s
business.
Let him relax before dinner. Discuss family problems after the inner man has been satisfied.
In his 1951 book, Sex Satisfaction and Happy Marriage, Reverend Alfred Henry Tyrer has more to add to that. Do not ask for things. This is called "nagging":
I verily believe that the happiness of homes is
destroyed more frequently by the habit of nagging than by any other one.
A man may stand that sort of thing (nagging) for a long time, but the
chances are against his standing it permanently. If he needs peace to
make life bearable, he will have to look for it elsewhere than in his
own house. And it is quite likely that he will look.
Unless your husband wants you to talk. Then don’t you dare disappoint him. Says Reverend Tyrer:
“If [the husband] is intellectually inclined, and
from time to time seeks to explain little things to her so that she may
have at least a bare knowledge of what it is that interests him, and,
without the slightest comment, she takes up again the fashion magazine
she laid down when he commenced to speak, we may be pretty sure that
there is going to be a ‘rift in the lute’ sooner or later in that
house.”
2. Bad cooking will drive your man to seedy saloons
My god woman, this turkey tastes like wet toilet paper stuffed inside
a burnt basketball. Have you no pride? Oh, you had a late shift at the
hospital and then went straight to Timmy’s intervention? No excuses!
Heed Reverend Tyrer!
A social service meeting, an afternoon tea, a
matinee, a whatnot, is no excuse for there being no dinner ready when a
husband comes home from a hard day’s work.
Housekeeping accomplishments and cooking ability are, of
course, positive essentials in any true home, and every wife should take
a reasonable pride in her skill. Happiness does not flourish in an
atmosphere of dyspepsia.
Or listen to the even more plain-spoken Dr. William Josephus Robinson:
Bad cooking is responsible for dyspepsia, dyspepsia
is responsible for grouchiness and irritability, grouchiness and
irritability lead to quarrels and squabbles. And bad cooking, which is
the usual thing in the average American home, has been responsible as
much as any other factor for driving the husband to the saloon, and to
other places. And when she does cook, she should cook, and not be, as
somebody said, a mere can opener.
If you didn’t want your husband to become a syphilitic alcoholic, you should have learned to make a damn pot roast properly.
3. Be the Hot Steak, Not the Cheap Pork
Speaking of cooking, Reverend Tyrer has a metaphor for you.
Picture a woman preparing a fine meal for her husband.
“She
remembered his choice of meat and was careful to get an extra-fine
cut…her best cutlery and dishes and finest linen are all in evidence,
and a little colorful decoration has been tastefully displayed…and as
he comes into the house she greets him with a smile of welcome and a
touch of manifest love.”
Now, say that linen was a bed sheet, the colorful little decoration was fuzzy handcuffs, and
you had the privilege of being that extra fine cut of meat. What does all that equal? A husband who doesn’t cheat on you!
But say that same wife "
is constantly setting him down to
indigestible meals, cold and unappetizing, with nothing properly cooked,
set out on a kitchen table with a dirty cloth, she need not be
surprised if her husband frequently telephones from the office that
business will prevent him from being home for dinner."
All because you weren’t properly cooked when he was hungry!
4. But don't be a Sexual Vampire or a Frigid Franny
Of course, as Dr. Robinson
tells us, it is possible to be
over-cooked. Then you become a “sexual vampire” and you will drive your
husband to his grave, feasting on his life force.
Just as the vampire sucks the blood of its victims
in their sleep while they are alive, so does the woman vampire suck the
life and exhaust the vitality of her male partner—or "victim."
It is to be borne in mind that it is particularly older
girls—girls between thirty and fifty—who are apt to be unreasonable in
their demands when they get married; but no age is exempt; sexual
vampires may be found among girls of twenty as well as among women of
sixty and over.
The opposite of that is to be frigid, of course. That means you take
no particular pleasure from the sexual act with your husband. Oh, "we
should talk it out openly and honestly," you say? Maybe see a doctor, a
therapist?
You disgust me. What do you think that will do to your husband’s ego? Listen to Dr. Robinson and save your marriage!
Now, if you are one of those frigid or sexually
anesthetic women, don’t be in a hurry to inform your husband about it.
To the man it makes no difference in the pleasurableness of the act
whether you are frigid or not unless he knows that you are frigid. And
he won’t know unless you tell him, and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt
him. Heed this advice. It has saved thousands of women from trouble.
5. Pink Panties are a must
And while we’re on the subject of you performing convincingly in the boudoir, you better be costumed correctly, too.
That the underwear should be spotlessly clean goes
without saying, but every woman should wear the best quality underwear
that she can afford. And the color should be preferably pink. And lace
and ruffles, I am sorry to say, add to the attractiveness of underwear,
and are liked by the average man.
6. Let him have a little fun now and then
What if your man strays after marriage? Well, Dr. Robinson is here
for you again. He says that ultimately, a wife will react to infidelity
as her heart dictates. But he still offers some advice.
Get over it.
But in case of an occasional lapse on the part of
the husband—there a bit of advice may prove acceptable. And my advice
would be: forgive and forget. Or still better—make believe that you know
nothing. An occasional lapse from the straight path does not mean that
he has ceased to love you. He may love you as much; he may love you a
good deal more.
7. Your Husband is The Boss Of You
It is fitting to close with a simple truism from the renowned Eugenicist Prof. B.G. Jefferis, in his
Searchlights on Health, The Science of Eugenics:
The Number One Rule. Reverence Your Husband.—He
sustains by God’s order a position of dignity as head of a family, head
of the woman. Any breaking down of this order indicates a mistake in the
union, or a digression from duty.
Stop talking, slap on some pink drawers, and start worshiping!
