A Rhetorical Analysis Of I Want A Wife By Judy Brady

In the text I Want a Wife, Judy Brady discusses all of the responsibilities that a wife is expected to undertake and how wives are placed in charge of the majority of household and family jobs. The author shares her perspective on the expectations of a wife and uses satire to criticize and attempt to promote a change in society’s way of seeing them. By using all three rhetorical strategies, Brady is able to properly relay her message to the audience and convey a sense of unfairness. By using her own personal experience as a wife, she is able to write freely and in a way that provides a sense of credibility. In the beginning of the passage the author writes about her thoughts and states, “It suddenly occurred to me that I, too would like to …show more content…

This is further proved by the way she portrays how husbands act towards their wives, including how they want someone who will not “bother” them with “rambling complaints about a wife’s duties” or “demand sexual attention” when they are not in the mood (Brady 252-253). Most content in the text, including these quotes, emphasize a very harsh and sarcastic tone, characterizing some of this essay under the pathos strategy. This harsh tone is very effective and can sway the reader’s emotions in favor of the author’s stance. Later the author mocks husbands’ decisions to divorce or “replace” their wives with new ones by stating, “If by any chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace my current wife with another one” (Brady 203). Brady writes this to illustrate and criticize the unjust truths as to why men might divorce their …show more content…

It states that the passage was written “after eleven years of marriage” and “just before divorcing her husband” (Brady 251). These minor details show that the author has had personal experiences that have prompted her to write this and that those same experiences provide an aspect of validity to her writing. This is an example of ethos, the device that refers to persuasion by credibility and legitimacy. Knowing that the author has had prior experience with what she’s discussing, makes her writing more persuasive and powerful, in terms of how believable or accurate it is. Another example of this would be at the very beginning of the essay when she tells the story of her male friend who was at that time, “fresh from a recent divorce,” and who was “looking for a new wife” (Brady 251). Since she personally knows the man, deciding to include her experience makes her stance throughout the remainder of the essay more believable and