7 tips for keeping your man (from the 1950s)
All you have to do is shed that pesky identity!
Woman, you have no idea how lucky you are to have landed a man. But as the literature of the mid-century's greatest matrimonial minds tells us, he's one wrinkled shirt away from leaving you. Eyes open and mouth shut ladies. It's about to get real.
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 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:
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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":
Unless your husband wants you to talk. Then don't you dare disappoint him. Says Reverend Tyrer:
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!
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Or listen to the even more plain-spoken Dr. William Josephus Robinson:
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.
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!
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.
6. Let him have 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.
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:
Stop talking, slap on some pink drawers, and start worshipping!
More from Mental Floss:
Therese O'Neill lives in Oregon and writes for The Atlantic, Mental Floss, Jezebel, and more. She is the author of New York Times bestseller Unmentionable: The Victorian Ladies Guide to Sex, Marriage and Manners. Meet her at writerthereseoneill.com.
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