The Warped World of Marriage Advice Before Feminism
As a historian and a feminist, I dislike the easy humour we often use to talk about historical misogyny, because I don’t believe it’s dead and gone. The restrictive tone of the 1950s and ’60s-era ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?’ columns looks like a joke now, to be shelved alongside vintage ads and archived TV shows, occasionally trotted out to prove how far we’ve come. But while the disdainful prescriptiveness of the column’s early years is gone, the implication of its continued presence in the magazine is clear: a healthy marriage is ‘women’s work’. We’re getting somewhere, but we’re not there yet.
Aeon Magazine, September 8, 2014