FIONA McCANNon being a good wife
'IMAGINE,' ASKS BLANCHE EBBUTT in her 1913 handbook Don'ts for Wives, "a girl called upon without a single lesson to produce a tune . . . from the most difficult instrument in the world." Ooh, Blanche, one dare not imagine such things! Yet Mrs Ebbutt, while speaking metaphorically about wifely duties, is not, as it turns out, speaking about that particular duty. It's not your husband's instrument she's on about, ye ladies of a wifely persuasion: rather your husband is the instrument, and Blanche Ebbutt is gonna show you how to play him
.As a new convert to wifedom – three months now, and I’m finally referring to my “husband” without choking or instantly ageing 40 years in my head – I am curious to see if Blanche has some tips for me on the subject. After all, I’ve been let loose on matrimony without any experience or training in the area. Who knows what makes a good wife in this day and age? Surely a bit of guidance wouldn’t go astray.
Blanche to the rescue. She breaks down her guide to a happy marriage into various subsections of marital bliss, each containing pithy points of wisdom for the blushing bride. Under “Personalities”, for example, I get this sage advice: “Don’t vegetate as you grow older if you happen to live in the country. Some women are like cows but there really is no need to stagnate. Keep both brain and body on the move.”
Nothing like the old bovine simile to get the sisterhood behind you, eh Ebbutt? I make a note not to grow older nor live in the country. But the “don’ts” don’t stop there, alas. Because woe betide the wife who lets her husband sharpen lead pencils all over the drawing-room carpet. “He will be none the happier for it, and the carpet will suffer as well as the maid’s temper.”
It is with grave concern that I realise that I am much more likely to sharpen lead pencils over the drawing-room carpet than is my husband. In fact, drawing rooms, lead pencils and ill-tempered maids aside, I come to see, over the course of this short book, that my husband is in fact a better wife than I am.
This is disturbing, if not altogether surprising news. I am no domestic deity. In my defence, I can clean the hell out of a bathroom and make close to perfect popcorn, but my home-making skills more or less stop there, and as every Blanche Ebbutt reader knows, the requirements of a wife go ever so much further. Meal preparation, for example, would seem to be the pillar that props up a good marriage, and according to Blanche, it’s filed under wifely duty. This is unfortunate, given that I’ve never quite mastered all those fizzing pots and precarious timings of cooking, which is why I am perturbed to hear how much depends, according to Blanche, on the state of my husband’s digestion. “Cold mutton has wrecked many happy homes,” she warns. I’ll relay it to my husband at once, who does all the cooking in this place.
Rest assured, though, Blanche has tips on how to get creative in the kitchen, and here she is on the potato. I think. Unless she’s being metaphorical again. “Don’t despise the domestic potato. There are hundreds of appetising ways of cooking it; but unless you take it firmly in hand, it will arrive at the table with the consistency of half-melted ice – mushy without, stony within. The boiled potato is the rock on which many a happy home barque has foundered.”
That my marriage barque remains afloat at all may well be down to my prowess in the area of household management, at least if Blanche is to be believed. Because this is where I come into my own.
“Don’t keep the house so tidy that your husband is afraid of leaving the newspaper lying about.” Ha! No fear. “Don’t have a spring cleaning any oftener than your special nature renders absolutely necessary.” Many, many a spring has sprung since my special nature deemed a spring cleaning necessary, a fact that has me feeling somewhat smug. “Some women have at least four every year.” Finally, some wives I can look down my nose at.
Yet, although Blanche might seem quaint in her terminology, and her concept of a wife may appear a little out of date – she who warms the slippers and makes the home a comfortable place to which the bread-winning can retire after a day at the office or on the golf course – there’s some sound advice in there about not sleeping on an argument, about not brooding or dwelling on “trifles”, and about generally getting a life. All of which make sense. Sure, the vocabulary around human relationships may have changed somewhat – few people these days would know what a termagant is, let alone place it alongside a sulky wife as the least desired of the species – but the basic counsel is to develop your own interests while respecting those of your husband. And where common sense fails, Blanche appeals to vanity: jealousy, she reminds her readers, makes them look old and worn, while eating too much meat can have similarly disastrous effects.
Once I’ve flicked to the end, I’m feeling a little better about my qualifications for marriage, even as I acknowledge that my inability to fold things and my lack of interest in home decor leave me a few scrubbed sinks short of a good wife. In fact, the more I read about the cross, sulky, mirthful for no comprehensible reason husband who wears an old coat in the house for comfort and seems fierce hung up on birthday celebrations, the more I can relate. Which is not as disturbing as it sounds.
After all, if Blanche is to be believed and read in the light of a little cultural relativism, a little bit of role reversal – even role removal – poses no great risk to a marriage. No, the real risk lurks instead in an unexpected place: the teapot.
“Don’t forget if he is ‘nervy’, to watch if the tea habit is getting too strong in him,” she warns. A good wife, then, has her eye on the teapot. Now that is something even I can get a handle on. fionamccann@irishtimes.com
