wifedom

I have seen a procession of monks, with a nightmare of faces, wearied, dejected, purposeless, hopeless, when not brutalized with the traces of furious rebellion against their world, and in that woful panorama of debased human nature I see the figure of what we condemn women to, when we bid them grow old in listless idleness, if they fail to secure to themselves the privileges of wifedom.

1869, Josephine Elizabeth Grey Butler, Woman's Work and Woman's Culture: A Series of Essays, page 359

"In your view of wifedom,” I began, “is the wife to acknowledge having a personality and will of her own, or do you see her as simply being responsive to her. . .her husband?

1991, The Winged Dancer, page 159

As Winfrey recently told TVGuide, “Stedman and I have a great relationship that allows me to be me in the fullest sense, with no expectations of wifedom and all that would mean.

2004, People - Volume 61, page 56

As marriage is displaced by family, wifedom by motherhood and the support/dependency structures of the patriarchal family assume greater importance than the legal form, it is actually counterproductive to the real purpose of social policy to exclude from regulation a family type that is so obviously here to stay.

2012, Alison Diduck, Felicity Kaganas, Family Law, Gender and the State: Text, Cases and Materials, →ISBN

Specifically, I argue that twentyfirst-century American wifedom is emblematic of the identity formations actively encouraged by postfeminist entrepreneurial regimes.

2018, Suzanne Leonard, Wife, Inc.: The Business of Marriage in the Twenty-First Century, →ISBN

We suspect that Mr. Dixon has exaggerated both the extent and intensity of the defiance of common sense as well as common decency which spiritual wifedom implies.

1868, The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, Art, and Finance

Help me to become a pure waterer, weeder, and deadheader of our little plot, to mature from manic bride and bonnarder to the calm, the jen, of deep and ancient garden wifedom.

2011, Marjorie Sandor, The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction, →ISBN