How to Be a Good Wife

Don't think that your wife has placed waste-paper baskets in the rooms as ornaments.

Don't forget that very true remark that while face powder may catch a man, baking powder is the stuff to hold him.

Marriage can be a series of humorous miscommunications, a power struggle, or a diplomatic nightmare. Men and women have long struggled to figure each other out--and the misunderstandings can continue well after they've been joined in matrimony. But long before Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, couples turned to self-help booklets such as How to Be a GoodHusband and How to Be a Good Wife, two historic advice books that are now delightfully reproduced by the Bodleian Library.
The books, originally published in the 1930s for middle-class British couples, are filled with witty and charming aphorisms on how wives and husbands should treat each other. Some advice is unquestionably outdated--"It is a wife's duty to look her best. If you don't tidy yourself up, don't be surprised if your husband begins to compare you unfavorably with the typist at the office"--but many other pieces of advice are wholly applicable today. They include such insightful sayings as: "Don't tell your wife terminological inexactitudes, which are, in plain English, lies. A woman has wonderful intuition for spotting even minor departures from the truth"; "After all is said and done, husbands are not terribly difficult to manage"; or "Don't squeeze the tube of toothpaste from the top instead of from the bottom. This is one of the small things of life that always irritates a careful wife."
Entertaining and charmingly illustrated, How to Be a Good Husband and How to Be a Good Wife offer enduringly useful advice for all couples, from the newly engaged to those celebrating their golden anniversary.

Author: Bodleian Library
Publisher: Bodleian Library
Published: 01/01/2008
Pages: 96
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.20lbs
Size: 3.70h x 4.60w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9781851243815


Review Citation(s):
Time 07/14/2008 pg. 68

About the Author
Bodleian Library: - The Bodleian Library produces beautiful and authoritative books which help to bring the riches of Oxford's libraries to readers around the world. They publish on a very wide range of subjects, including catalogues and other titles related to their exhibitions, illustrated and non-illustrated thematic works and facsimiles, gift books, and children's books and stationery.