Weddingbee Blog

This is one of those nerdy/crazy times when archival research intersects with wedding/wedded life. Are you rolling your eyes yet? Bear with me. What follows, for your reading pleasure, are portions of an article written in The New-England Weekly Journal (Containing the Most Remarkable Occurrences Foreign & Domestic) on February 15, 1731. It is part one of a two-parter called “A Letter to a Lady on her Marriage.” I think we’ll all learn a thing or two about how we ladies ought to govern ourselves after we’ve snagged that husband. No need to thank me.

Source: Early American Imprints Database

I excerpt:

Madam,

…You are beginning to enter into a course of life; where you will want much advise to direct you from falling into many Errors, Fopperies, and Follies to which your Sex is Subject… It must be therefore your Business to Qualify yourself with those Offices wherein I will not fail to be your director, as long as I think you shall deserve it, by letting you know how you are to Act, and what you ought to Avoid: and beware of despising or neglecting my Instructions, whereon will depend not only your making a good Figure in the World, but your own real Happiness, as well as those of the Person who ought to be the dearest to you.

Tip #1, Do NOT Bring Sexy Back: I must therefore desire you in the first place, to be very slow in changing the Modest Behavior of a Virgin… if the Votes of Wife Men were gathered, a very great majority would be in favour of those Ladies, who after they were enter’d into that State, rather choose to double their Portion of Modesty and Reservedness.

Tip #2, No Canoodling In Front of the Help!: I must likewise warn you strictly against the least degree of Fondness to your Husband before any Witness whatsoever, even before your nearest Relations, or the very Maids of your Chamber.

Tip #3, While Your Husband is Away, You are Allowed to Stay in Jammy Pants and Watch Real Housewives while Eating an Entire Box of Mac and Cheese for Dinner. But Don’t Bug the Servants. And No Nagging! : …I should likewise advise you to differ in practice from those Ladies who Affect abundance of uneasiness while their Husbands are abroad, start with every knock at the Door, and ring the Bell incessantly for the Servants to let in their Master; will not Eat a bit at Dinner or Supper is the Husband happens to stay out, and receive him at his return with such a Medley of Chiding, and Kindness, and Catechizing him where he has been, that a Shrew from Billingsgate would be a more easy and eligible Companion.

Tip #4, Take a Shower, Smelly:…the Satyricial part of Mankind will needs believe that it is not Impossible to be very fine and very filthy, and that the Capacities of a Lady are sometimes apt to fall short in Cultivating Cleanliness and Finery together: I shall only add, upon so tender a Subject what a pleasant Gentleman said concerning a silly Woman of Quality: that nothing could make her Supportable but cutting off her Head, for his Ears were Offended by her Tongue, and his Nose by her Hair and Teeth.

Go forth, friends, and be upstanding wives!

What marriage advice have you received? And I wonder… what advice would you give to young gentleman, on his marriage?