The Qualities to Look for in a Wife

Reading One

Starter activity

Answer the following questions.

Before watching the video programme study the following vocabulary.

Answer the following questions.

Speech activities

1. Why, according to the text, do American girls grow up thinking that there are only four possible careers open to them?

2. What is the difference in the way boys and girls, men and women are presented in American schoolbooks?

3. Do you agree that a schoolbook can really have a serious impact on children’s perception of sex role stereotypes?

2. Analyse some schoolbooks used in Belarusian schools. In what roles are boys and girls depicted in them? Share your findings with the rest of the group.

Work with the video programme “A Woman’s Place”

victimization of women	преследования женщин (издевательства)
HIV positive	ВИЧ инфицированные
drudgery	тяжелая работа
to step out of the male shadow into the spot-light	выйти на свет из тени…
male-dominated world	мир, в котором правят мужчины
sexual harassment	сексуальные домогательства, угрозы
refugee	беженец
to champion freedom	бороться за свободу
obedience	послушание
child custody	опека над ребенком
submissiveness	покорность
from cradle to grave	с рождения до смерти
to trigger changes	вызывать перемены

1. What were the aims of the UN Conference in China?

2. What is the destiny of many girls from the third World countries?

3. What are the results of Women’s Liberation movement in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union?

4. Has the attitude to women changed over the years in Japan?

Section 2. Women in the Family

The family is a unit of society. What does family happiness depend on? How much has the role of a woman in the family changed over the years? What is more important for a woman: family or career?

What makes a good wife/husband? Read the text and try to find answers to this question.

Chastity, perfect modesty in word, deed, and even thought is so essential that without it no female is fit to be a wife. It is not enough that a young woman should abstain from anything approaching boldness in her behaviour towards men; it is not enough that she casts down her eyes, or turns aside her head with a smile, when she hears an indelicate allusion: she ought to appear not to understand it, and to receive from it no more impression than if she were a post. A loose woman is a.disagreeable acquaintance: what must she be then, as a wife? Your free and hearty girls I have liked very much to talk and laugh with; but never, for one moment, did it enter my mind that I could have endured a free and hearty girl for a wife. A wife, I repeat, is to last for life, she is to be a counterbalance to troubles and misfortune, and therefore must be perfect.

Sobriety. By the word sobriety in a young woman, I mean a great deal more than a rigid abstinence from the love of drink; I mean sobriety of conduct. The word ‘sober’ does not confine itself to matters of drink: it expresses steadiness, seriousness, carefulness, scrupulous propriety of conduct. Now sobriety is a great qualification in the person you mean to make your wife. Playful, frivolous, careless girls are very amusing, and they may become sober, but you have not certainty of this. To be sure, when girls are mere children they should play and romp like children, but when they arrive at that age when they begin to think of managing a house, then it is time for them to cast away the levity of the child.

If any young man imagines that this sobriety of conduct in young women must be accompanied by seriousness approaching gloom, he is, according to my experience, very much deceived. The contrary is the fact; for I have found that gay and laughing women are the most insipid of souls and are generally down in the dumps. A greater curse than a wife of this description would be somewhat difficult to find. I hate a dull, melancholy thing; I could not have

existed in the same house with such a thing for a single month. Whereas a sober woman is underneath joyful and contented.

Industry. By industry, I do not mean merely labour or activity of the body, for purposes of gain or of saving; for there may be industry amongst those who have more money than they know what to do with. Industry in the wife is always necessary to the happiness and prosperity of the family. If she is lazy then the children will be lazy; everything, however urgent, will be put off to the last moment, then it will be done badly, and in many cases, not at all: the dinner will be late, the journey or visit will be delayed; inconveniences of all sorts will be continually arising, there will always be a heavy arrear of things unperformed; and therefore a lazy woman must always be a curse.

Finally beauty... the last in point of importance. But the great use of female beauty, the great practical advantage of it, is that it naturally and unavoidably tends to keep the husband in a good humour with himself, to make him pleased with his bargain. Beauty is, in some degree, a matter of taste, what one man admires, another does not; and it is fortunate for us that it is so. But still there are certain things that all men admire; and a husband is always pleased when he perceives that a portion, at least, of these things are in his own possession. He takes his possession as a compliment to himself: there must have been, he thinks, some charm, seen or unseen, to have caused him to be blessed with such an acquisition.

Michael Swan. Understanding Ideas. 1976

Дата добавления: 2017-01-14