I found the following pieces when browsing the Queenslander of the late 1860s (it was for other research, and I have no life). Seeing a heading “Advice to Wives,” I prepared myself for a migraine-inducing eyeroll, only to read on, and find some surprisingly progressive sentiments being expressed. One can only imagine the feelings that this article would stir at colonial breakfast tables!
Advice to Wives
It is perfectly amazing the quantity of insulting advice volunteered in this day to women. Now there is an extract, I am happy to say, in this instance, from an English journal—the land, par excellence, of wife beating and kindred abominations in “high” and “low” life, in which the wife is advised if she would “wind her husband around her finger” —though why that location is particularly desirable I fail to see—if she would do this, “she must carefully study the cookery-book; so that his meals need not be monotonous.” How many of his children she must attend to during this interesting perusal, and while perfecting the results of such study, our writer does not state; nor does he throw any light upon the question—whether, when this delicate animal is gorged like the anaconda, he will, as does the anaconda, go immediately into a state of stupor, and be comparatively harmless until other re-enforcements are needed. Also, he tells the wife that “opposition and contradiction always make him furious; when he stamps and roars and becomes dangerous, she must by all means avoid that.”
It is so strange, this Solomon says, “that when a wife knows that a certain line of conduct is sure to produce this effect, she will do it, though victory is easy, provided” —well, in short, provided she allows him to stamp and roar and become dangerous, like his son Tommy, when he can’t have another stick of candy, and whom he himself would severely punish, for imitating his gentle papa. Are there no lines of conduct a husband persistently pursues towards his wife, though he ” knows they are sure to wound and give offence?” And would he think “stamping and roaring and being dangerous” any excuse for a dislike of it? Is the man who sends his dear little child for that which will intoxicate him, or takes that child to barrooms and drinking-places to obtain it, never to be remonstrated with by the mother, lest he should be “angry?”
Is the man who allows his relatives constantly to interfere with and slander his wife, and who never write him letters without containing sly insinuations, intended—howsoever they may fail—to disturb conjugal and family harmony, who institute a court of inquiry into family expenses, probable journeys, &c, location of residence, and insist upon all these things being settled according to their means and standard; is this husband never to be told that such interference is insufferable, “because he will be angry?” Is there a husband living who would permit a wife’s father or brother to insist on managing his business affairs in such a clandestine, downcellar, surreptitious manner through the wife? If he preferred going to spend the summer at one place rather than another, how would he like that matter settled by a conclave of his wife’s relatives, and determined by their probable locality? I do not say that the latter, too, has not happened. In either case it is a monstrous impertinence, and to be resented. I might multiply other instances of abuse to women, but these will suffice.
Let men, above all, ask themselves with regard to women—to wives— this question —and answer it in a manly, honest manner, whether it is condemnatory of their own “line of conduct” or the contrary: — Should I be willing to endure what I expect my wife to bear, were I a woman and a wife? If not —is it just, or right, or manly, then, for me to expect it of her? It is needless to say that this is the last question asked; and this is the root of all the evil. This making by men a broad, easy road of license for themselves, while women are clogged, fettered, penned in, worried, harassed, and unjustly treated, till even they—”become dangerous.” And though the author above quoted seems to entertain no such possibility, our lunatic asylums and tombstones, if they stated the actual causes of insanity and death, might convince the most sceptical.—Fanny Fern.
Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld.: 1866 – 1939), Saturday 13 June 1868, page 3.
An entry from the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum casebook E. They gave her back to the tender care of said husband, of course.
Lest one think for a moment that the Queenslander had become a bastion of early feminist thought, I found this snippet within 30 seconds ….
CURRICULUM FOR THE LADIES’ COLLEGE
Every girl who intends to qualify for marriage should go through a course of cookery. Unfortunately, few wives are able to dress anything but themselves.
Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld.: 1866 – 1939), Saturday 16 January 1869, page 3.
Sigh.
Illustrations by Phiz and Cruickshank.
Moreton Bay and More 