The Good Wife's Guide Gender Roles

In the 1950’s women’s role in the household was very different from what it is now. This can be read in The Good Wife’s Guide from 1955. In this guide, a summation is made of how a woman should act around her husband. Because a lot has changed since 1955, especially in the field of gender roles, a text like this would have a very different effect on the reader from 1955 compared to a reader of today. If a text like The Good Wife’s Guide were to be written nowadays, the audience or the purpose of the text has to be adjusted to get a positive response from the reader, because of the shift in gender roles.

The text The Good Wife’s Guide was originally published in the magazine ‘housekeeping monthly’. The main audience of this magazine were middle

Sentences like “catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction” makes the reader believe that the suggested action helps not only their husband, but also themselves. However, if this text would be read by somebody from this time, the effect would be very different. As a popular, newlywed blogger put it, “At first glance, most women like me would throw up in their mouths a little bit after reading the article” (Cheryl Duivesteyn, On 1955’s Good Wife’s Guide). Few, if any at all, women nowadays would take this text seriously. This is largely caused by the changed perception of gender

Men and women are as good as equal within their marriage, and household tasks are often shared between wife and husband. As a result, a text like The Good Wife’s Guide would certainly be frowned upon by the average reader, and perhaps be regarded as sexist. If a text similar to this guide would be written, it could end up in two categories. The first category is entertainment. The text would no longer have the purpose of informing, but rather to amuse. Giving the guide a humoristic twist is exactly what was done by Cindy Devane, who, instead of the original “Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have be thinking about him and are concerned about his needs”, wrote “ask him to pull through Chick-Fil-A and remind him to bring an assortment of sauces and get the waffle fries home while they’re hot. This will let him know that you were thinking about him” (On 1955’s Good Wife’s Guide). Here the writer exaggerates the laid-back behavior of modern couples and mocks them. The second category however is a text with the same purpose of the original guide, but another audience. Instead of aiming the text exclusively at females, the writer could choose to make the guide for both husband and wife. This guide would aim to inform the audience on having a good running