The good obedient wife

Posted by: fracas on July 30 @ 9:13 am

This is about to become a really boring blog. I shall only write about shopping (which I never do), work (that I don’t have, but to make myself seem important write about anyways), and my sessions at the gym (which are surprisingly at a frequent ratio of about 4 times per week). Further, I shall take cute little family pictures a la yesterday’s entry and share it to the world. I try to say to my husband that no one reads what I have to say. There is zero interest, nada. But he’s not entirely convinced, besides my warped thoughts will stay on Internet FOREVER. This means I can never marry into the royal family, nor run for president, but the chances of both are as good as nil.

All of a sudden I am a liability and need to be restrained. It got me thinking of an opera I once saw when I was about 10 with my mum, the taming of the shrew (which is in fact a play by William Shakespeare) , where the bride Katherine is tamed to become an obedient wife. I remember this play making a serious impact in my young psyche, as it was clearly so at odds with the freedom that girls and women had come to expect. Of course the context of Elizabethan times made it more understandable, but yet for a 10 year old girl this was somewhat of a leap.

I have always hailed strong women that have taken their own paths. I need someone (in fact a few) to relate to. Interestingly enough a few of those, and perhaps not unsurprisingly given my interest for the past, are historic characters that despite the times they were living in refused to subject themselves to the norms men (and women, by their silent support) had laid down. Queen Elizabeth is one (taking on the great Spanish armada and refusing to marry), a virgin queen that in fact had many lovers; Marie Antoinette, who mounted up her own defence in the Assembly despite the horrid accusations she was facing. Gone from riches to rags, she refused to have her spirit broken right up until the end. The Marquise de Merteuil from the the classic eighteenth-century novel Les Liaisons dangereuses, states in reply to her lover “Revenge my dear, is a dish best served cold”….brilliant!

Last but not least, Coco Chanel, who freed us from corsets, and is credited to many sublime quotes one of which I am particularly fond of “the most interesting thing about love is making love…too bad you need a man for that”…. hear hear to that I would say!

Those women, and millions of others like them, make lives so much more interesting. And with that I shall defy pressure to be a good obedient woman and only write about the safe and mundane. Fuck it!