We laugh today at magazine/TV/whatever advertisements (see here) that show housewives dressed up to the nines, waiting hand and foot on their menfolk, and sobbing ecstatically when given a Hoover or new iron for Christmas. Oh, he’s so thoughtful! Like…y-e-s…. 😏Just let him try it today!
Well I have just come upon an item from circa 1393, in which a Parisian (male, naturally) gives his idea of the model wife. The following extract is from Chaucer’s World, compiled by Edith Rickert. She is quoting Le Ménagier de Paris, ed. by Pichon, I, 168-169.
“….Take pains to cherish the person of your husband, and I beg of you to keep him in clean linen, for that is your business; and since men have the trouble and pains of outside matters, so must a husband taken pains to go and come and the run from one place to another, through rain, through winds, through snow and through hail, wet one day, dry the next, sweating one day, shivering the next, ill-fed, ill-lodged, ill-warmed, ill-bedded. Yet no real harm is done him, because he is consoled by the confidence in the care which his wife will take of him upon his return, and in the ease, the joys, and the pleasures which she will give him, or cause to be given him in her presence: to have his hose taken off before a good fire, to have his feet washed, and fresh hose and shoes, to be well fed and given good drink, to be well served and cared for, to be put to sleep in clean sheets and clean nightcaps, to be well covered with good furs and solaced with other joys and entertainment, privities, loves and secrets, about which I will not speak. And the next day, fresh underlinen and garments…Therefore I advise you to prepare such comforts for your husband whenever he comes and stays, and to persevere therein; and also to keep peace with him and remember the country folk’s proverb that three things drive a goodman out of his home: a leaky roof, a smoking chimney, and a scolding wife.”
The above omits the joys of de-lousing the goodman’s head!
Hmm. I think I get the picture. While he’s out hard at work (read—with the other lads, having a whale of a time eyeing up anything female), she’s at home slaving over all the mountains of housework, caring for the screaming kids, fending off the unwelcome attentions of a randy neighbour, dodging tradesmen demanding overdue payments, and (if she has a few minutes left), mending the leaky roof and fixing the soot in the smoking chimney. She’s hardly put the ladder and sweep’s brushes away than someone yells that her dear lord is on his way. Oh no! She has to wash and change at the speed of light in order to morph from an exhausted slave into a veritable Delilah so that she can “entertain” him through the night.
But—get this—first she has to undress him like a baby, clean him (and de-louse him!), put him in his fluffy blue onesie and carry him to the bed?
O-N—H-I-S—B-I-K-E-! The modern me is incandescent with outrage.
For we women, living alone has a lot going for it! Right?
murreyandblue 
😉
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