Nor did Anne wish it otherwise; the little room was sacred to youth and girlhood--to the past that was to close today before the chapter of
wifehood opened.
Everything seemed hallowed to her: this was to be the home of her
wifehood, and she looked up with eyes full of confidence to Mr.
Wifehood was a scheme designed to ensure that there was never time to unravel yourself from the threads of obligation.
Hermione, the very type of noble womanhood,
wifehood and motherhood, and a woman who has generated violent sexual jealousy, is an entire contrast to Gwendolen at this stage.
The seclusion and segregation of women and the prevailing standards of morality that stress values and norms associated with traditional ideas of femininity, motherhood,
wifehood and sexuality continue to marginalize women in political, social and economic organizations.
The discourses on
wifehood, motherhood, and domesticity that penetrated the 1950s provided few alternatives for women outside of marriage and family.(18) This renewed focus on women's domesticity also shone through in the narratives of the German immigrant women, at a time when most of them had not even thought about marriage.
TYPICAL EXTRACT: "Let them be pure wheat loaves of maidenhead/ And let us wives be known for barley-bread/In
wifehood I will use my instrument/As freely as my Maker me it sent."
We know, however, that this same Aristotle is most dubious about the communality of wives, children, and property precisely because of the strong likelihood that this same communality will diffuse and destroy the meaning of
wifehood, parenthood, and one's proper care of property.
Here was the blossoming of a woman who clearly felt trapped and frustrated by
wifehood.
It gave to those who could wear it " the virtue of chaste love and
wifehood true, " but if any woman not chaste and faithful put it on, it " loosed or tore asunder.
This was because society's views on a woman's fitness for
wifehood or motherhood very often turned on her 'reputation,' on her public identity as a sexual creature.