I bought a little book today  “Don’ts for Wives” written by Blanche Ebbutt and originally published in 1913.  It’s one of those fabulous little books designed to help the new housewife adjust to married life.  Full of ridiculous advice that is now so politically incorrect that it’d have Germaine turning in her grave (Oh, I know she’s not dead, but I can’t stand the annoying bitch, so I like to pretend… shrug).  Anyway, some of it is positively absurd, some of it strangely relevant, but here’s a couple of these priceless little tidbits of ‘timeless wisdom’  🙂  ….

 
Update: There’s one for ‘him’ too…have to get that!

Don’t forget to wish your husband a good morning when he sets off for the office.  He will feel the lack of your goodbye kiss all day.

Don’t refuse to entertain your husband’s friends on the ground that it is a ‘bother’.  Nothing pains a man more than finding only a cold welcome when he brings home a chum.

Don’t omit to pay your husband an occasional compliment. If he looks nice as he comes in dressed for the opera, tell him so.  If he has been successful with his chickens, his garden or his photography, compliment him on his results.  Don’t let him have to fall back on self esteem all the while for want of a little well directed praise.

Don’t talk to your husband about anything of a worrying nature until he has finished his evening meal.

Don’t open the door for yourself when you husband is present.  He would open it for a lady guest, let him open it for you.  Besides, your boys will not learn the little courtesies that count nearly so well by precept as by example.

Don’t hesitate to plan out large expenditures with your husband .  Usually a woman is very good at small economics, but a man has a better grip of essentials in spending large amounts.

Don’t pose as a helpless creature who can do nothing for herself; don’t drag your husband away from his office to see you across a street; don’t profess to be unable to understand Bradshaw, or to take a journey alone.  It is true that the weak clinging wife is often a favourite, but she is equally often a nuisance.

and this absolute pearler is my favourite…

Don’t let you husband wear a violet tie with grass green socks. If he is unhappily devoid of the colour sense, he must be forcibly restrained.  🙂

God bless your cotton socks, Blanche.
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When at last he drew away from her, he said, in a bitter, almost sneering little voice: ‘You couldn’t go off at the same time as a man, could you? You’d have to bring yourself off! You’d have to run the show!’

This little speech, at the moment, was one of the shocks of her life. Because that passive sort of giving himself was so obviously his only real mode of intercourse.  ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

‘You know what I mean. You keep on for hours after I’ve gone off…and I have to hang on with my teeth till you bring yourself off by your own exertions.’ 

She was stunned by this unexpected piece of brutality, at the moment when she was glowing with a sort of pleasure beyond words, and a sort of love for him. Because, after all, like so many modern men, he was finished almost before he had begun. And that forced the woman to be active.  ‘But you want me to go on, to get my own satisfaction?’ she said.

He laughed grimly: ‘I want it!’ he said. ‘That’s good! I want to hang on with my teeth clenched, while you go for me!’

‘But don’t you?’ she insisted.

He avoided the question. ‘All the darned women are like that,’ he said. ‘Either they don’t go off at all, as if they were dead in there…or else they wait till a chap’s really done, and then they start in to bring themselves off, and a chap’s got to hang on. I never had a woman yet who went off just at the same moment as I did.’

Connie only half heard this piece of novel, masculine information. She was only stunned by his feeling against her…his incomprehensible brutality. She felt so innocent.  ‘But you want me to have my satisfaction too, don’t you?’ she repeated.

‘Oh, all right! I’m quite willing. But I’m darned if hanging on waiting for a woman to go off is much of a game for a man…’

This speech was one of the crucial blows of Connie’s life. It killed something in her. She had not been so very keen on Michaelis; till he started it, she did not want him. It was as if she never positively wanted him. But once he had started her, it seemed only natural for her to come to her own crisis with him. Almost she had loved him for it…almost that night she loved him, and wanted to marry him.

Perhaps instinctively he knew it, and that was why he had to bring down the whole show with a smash; the house of cards. Her whole sexual feeling for him, or for any man, collapsed that night. Her life fell apart from his as completely as if he had never existed.

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Last week I put aside the book I am half way through reading to catch up with the rest of the world and find out where Harry, Ron and Hermione have ended up.   I have been in no hurry to read it, but am convinced that I am eventually going to inadvertently learn their fates whether I like it or not if I leave off reading the Deathly Hallows for too long.   Anyway, I am all of 194 pages into the book, and have to admit, that I am finding it a rather unremarkable thing thus far.  Not gripping enough to want to make you stay up and read long after you should have gone to bed, and certainly not engrossing enough to make me want to take it to work to read on my lunch break….  Then I read the following gorgeous sentence –

When trolling through classic literature, you find beautiful sentences like this all the time….  truly elegant phrases that have a precision and succinctness that somehow transforms a seemingly commonplace observation into a beautiful poignant sentiment.  And while you expect these moments to occur with regularity when reading a classic novel… I am assuming (and I could be wrong here :)…  that it occurs less often in children’s books!   I was quite taken with this eloquent phrase….  it made me stop, reread the sentence a number of times… and then put the book down and walk off to do something else, for I am certain whatever  follows will seem a disappointment in comparison.  :S
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I’ve been reading a book (very slowly during my 15 min lunch breaks at work) called “Sex with the Queen” by Eleanor Herman, and found this marvelous quote from an unnamed 15th century Florentine magistrate who, upon watching a particularly politically annoying moralist, Savonarola,  burn at the stake said…

“Ah well, i am glad that’s over…
        ….. now we can all return to our sodomy.”

Now, I think there’s a little something in that for all of us don’t you?  🙂

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