What makes a good wife/husband? Read the text and try to find answers to this question.

The Qualities to Look for in a Wife

Chastity, perfect modesty in word, deed, and even thought is so essential that without it no female is fit to be a wife. It is not enough that a young woman should abstain from anything approaching boldness in her behaviour towards men; it is not enough that she casts down her eyes, or turns aside her head with a smile, when she hears an indelicate allusion: she ought to appear not to understand it, and to receive from it no more impression than if she were a post. A loose woman is a .disagreeable acquaintance: what must she be then, as a wife? Your free and hearty girls I have liked very much to talk and laugh with; but never, for one moment, did it enter my mind that I could have endured a free and hearty girl for a wife. A wife, I repeat, is to last for life, she is to be a counterbalance to troubles and misfortune, and therefore must be perfect.

Sobriety. By the word sobriety in a young woman, I mean a great deal more than a rigid abstinence from the love of drink; I mean sobriety of conduct. The word ‘sober’ does not confine itself to matters of drink: it expresses steadiness, seriousness, carefulness, scrupulous propriety of conduct. Now sobriety is a great qualification in the person you mean to make your wife. Playful, frivolous, careless girls are very amusing, and they may become sober, but you have not certainty of this. To be sure, when girls are mere children they should play and romp like children, but when they arrive at that age when they begin to think of managing a house, then it is time for them to cast away the levity of the child.

If any young man imagines that this sobriety of conduct in young women must be accompanied by seriousness approaching gloom, he is, according to my experience, very much deceived. The contrary is the fact; for I have found that gay and laughing women are the most insipid of souls and are generally down in the dumps. A greater curse than a wife of this description would be somewhat difficult to find. I hate a dull, melancholy thing; I could not have

 

existed in the same house with such a thing for a single month. Whereas a sober woman is underneath joyful and contented.

Industry. By industry, I do not mean merely labour or activity of the body, for purposes of gain or of saving; for there may be industry amongst those who have more money than they know what to do with. Industry in the wife is always necessary to the happiness and prosperity of the family. If she is lazy then the children will be lazy; everything, however urgent, will be put off to the last moment, then it will be done badly, and in many cases, not at all: the dinner will be late, the journey or visit will be delayed; inconveniences of all sorts will be continually arising, there will always be a heavy arrear of things unperformed; and therefore a lazy woman must always be a curse.

Finally beauty ... the last in point of importance. But the great use of female beauty, the great practical advantage of it, is that it naturally and unavoidably tends to keep the husband in a good humour with himself, to make him pleased with his bargain. Beauty is, in some degree, a matter of taste, what one man admires, another does not; and it is fortunate for us that it is so. But still there are certain things that all men admire; and a husband is always pleased when he perceives that a portion, at least, of these things are in his own possession. He takes his possession as a compliment to himself: there must have been, he thinks, some charm, seen or unseen, to have caused him to be blessed with such an acquisition.

Michael Swan. Understanding Ideas. 1976

 

 

Functional vocabulary

abstain from v	воздерживаться
abstinence n	воздержание, умеренность
abstinence from drinking	трезвенность
cast v	бросать, кидать, терять, линять, сбрасывать
cast down v	опускать
cast away v	отбрасывать
chastity n	целомудрие; строгость, чистота
chaste adj	целомудренный
dump n	подавленное состояние, уныние
dump sb (on sb) v	бросать кого-л.; критиковать кого-л.
down in the dumps	в плохом настроении, в унынии
allude to v	упоминать, ссылаться на что-л.
allusion n	намек, упоминание, ссылка

 

disagreeable adj	неприятный
conduct n	поведение
conduct v	вести себя; проводить что-л.
levity n	легкомыслие, ветреность
romp about, around v	возиться, шумно играть
romp n	сорванец; возня
rompers n	детский комбинезон
insipid adj	безвкусный, пресный; вялый, скупой, бесцветный
insipidity n	безвкусие; бесцветность, безжизненность

 

 

Language focus

 

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