Not that long ago I quoted from a 1970s guide for couples preparing for marriage. Apparently such guides are nothing new:
in the sixteenth century manuals of various sorts [...] began to be published in large numbers. These early versions of the 'how to' format covered an astonishing range of skills. Noblemen could read about how to improve their hunting, including specialised treatises on catching birds and fish. The young nobleman, or not-so-noble-man, could refine his fencing skills or learn to box. There were accounting books for buisinessmen, books on all matter of craftsmen's practices, surveying manuals for estate managers, and books on winemaking for both the householder and the professional vintner. One of the bestsellers of the period was a manual that explained how to make a sundial in your own garden. [...] There were manuals aimed specifically at women readers too. Cookery books are already, in the sixteenth century, best-selling. (Jack 133)
There were also manuals which explained how to have a good marriage:
Heinrich Bullinger, the Swiss reformer, was author of The Christen state of matrimony, moost necessary and profitable for all of them, that intend to live quietly and godlye in the Christen state of holy wedlocke newly set forth in Englyshe (1541), translated by Miles Coverdale. It was enormously popular and went into eight editions. Although one of the first rules states the almost universally recognised necessity that 'The husband is the heade of the Wyfe', Coverdale's translation also stresses the need for husband and wife to be friends, as well as lovers, and the rewards of caring for each other particularly at the outset of marriage.
Women and men were repeatedly preached to about the duties of wedlock. Joannes Oecolampidius's A sermon ... to young men and maydens (c. 1548) warned both 'yong wemen and maydes' in equal measure against 'wanton and incontynent' behaviour and inappropriate dress. Books on marriage, principally of a practical kind, sometimes proposed new and (for the times) more subversive models of relations between a man and a woman. Economicus, the dialogue on household management by the ancient Greek polymath Xenophon, was translated into English in 1532 by Thomas Lupset as Treatise of Householde. It is even-handed in its own way. It is more 'honestie' for a woman to keep her house, and for the man to apply his mind to 'such thinges as muste be done abrode'. Women should not 'walke aboute', and men should not 'abyde sluggynge at home'. (Jack 136)
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Jack, Belinda. The Woman Reader. New Haven: Yale UP, 2012.
The image of Heinrich Bullinger came from Wikimedia Commons.
The idea that men are public
The idea that men are public and women are private has held on longer than most people realize. Which reminds me ... I have a theory about why so many women in Appalachia have mild to severe agoraphobia. Since there was a great deal of social disapproval (and thus penalties) for women who would "run the road" or “kept that road warm" or other indicators that a woman was out of her house too much to be "good", many women have developed a fear of being "out" which is expressed as "having bad nerves" so that they cannot drive (especially to urban areas) or travel or be in big crowds. It is something I am working on. *sigh* I need more hands/time/focus for all the stuff I want to do!
Wow. I hadn't thought through
Wow. I hadn't thought through the implications of the idea that a woman's place is in the house. And that's despite having studied a Spanish film, Tristana, by Luis Buñuel and Julio Alejandro (based on a novel by Benito Pérez Galdós) which draws on 'the popular saying, "Mujer honrada-pierna quebrada y en casa" ("The honorable woman-at home with a broken leg")':
I suppose I took it metaphorically too, rather than thinking about the real effects on women of being expected to be (very literally) housewives.
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Higginbotham, Virginia. 'Feminism and Buñuel: Points of Contact'.