My brother, Ted, brought a box full of books to our family dinner tonight. They were books from his in-laws that no one wanted. I found a real gem of a book published in 1964 (trust me, the date becomes relevant) entitled "So Well Expressed." It's a handy little thing, where one can find quotes on such subjects such as beauty, persistence, service, truth and war.
On Democracy:
"Be thankful that you are living in a land where you can say what you think without thinking." (George W. ring a bell?)
On Education:
"Too often a college education goes to the head rather than to the mind." (Didn't he graduate from an Ivy league school?)
And this is where the quotes get really good (note thick sarcasm)... like this one on men and women:
""A woman will always cherish the memory of the man who wanted to marry her; a man, of the woman who didn't."
or
"It is a woman's business to please... the woman who does not please is a false note in the harmony of Nature." (attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes)
and for the humdinger of them all... drumroll please...
"The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because the average man can see better than he can think."
The latter quotes reminded me of a document I had seen on the Internet that supposedly came from a 1950s home economic textbook that covered the topic of "How to be a Good Wife." Lest you think I'm just a raging feminist (you'd have it half right), I'm linking to a page that does question the authenticity of the article. Read Away
6 comments:
Those are intense and well enough.
I read that "Good Wife" paper a while back. Totally nuts, I'm glad things are better than they were, I could never treat a girl like that. Though I have to admit the whole neutering of males and females in our contempory writings is a little disturbing to me.
I'm all about women having their independence and opportunity but to see society trying so hard to establish diversity as a foundation of union seems a tad bit unstudied.
Meaning, that gender roles that have existed since the beginning are no longer effecacious to us; 200, 300 years as a western society gives us tons of authority right? I believe that originally the the relations between the sexes was complete and equal but man has his ways of screwing everything up.
Perhaps I'm a fool but we all, individually even, fit in to different facets of life and I truly believe that some of us are only capable of doing certain things. Ummm... Yeah, that's all I wanted to say.
Poor 50's house wives... Really I mean that...
I spelled efficacious wrong...
that reminds me of the article i once saw in good housekeeping from the 50's.
it had all these great tips on how to be a good wife, some of the ones i can remember:
1. try to put away the clutter when your husband comes home, the last thing he wants to see is a messy house.
2. speak to him in soft tones, he's had a hard stressful day (as if to imply child rearing is like a luxury resort vacation)
3. put on a fresh outfit and make up, look nice for your husband when he comes home.
4. always have a warm meal waiting for your husband when he arrives.
i love challenging gender roles, and i'm glad that we aren't so anachronistically dichotomized any more.
we sure have come a long way... well, not exactly, i think i read something to that effect in the Salt Lake Tribune two weeks ago.
ZING.
stepford wives, anyone?
i don't find that stuff offensive. i prefer institutional sexism to be out in the open anyway, where it can be confronted, laughed at or cried over, and then intentionally abandoned!
ZAP!
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