Female dreams end when wed

Wednesday, 02 June 2010 05:00

June 2, 1879. The Winnipeg Times examines the tendency of women to idealize the men they are about to marry.

Every experienced woman who takes getting married in the natural way, marries a being created by her own fancy from all sorts of kaleidoscopic materials — from the romances she has read, and the idealization of her own rapturous conceptions.

In due time she finds him a commonplace being, made up chiefly of petty animal wants; a person of a small stock of ideas and of no ambition to enlarge it; narrow-minded, occupied in small pursuits, much given to the little things of his own comfort, and easily losing his temper at any deprivation of them, and altogether a common clod compared to the spirited being which her enchanted fancy created.

What does a good woman do? She accepts the situation, makes a duty of that which she expected to be a delight, and keeps up the same manner of love and worship as if he were still the sovereign of her bosom, and all her fancy had painted him.