Make Your Home a Paradise

At last the marriage bond has been blessed, and you have become a wife. However long the honeymoon may last, your wedding day marks the opening of a new era — with new hopes, new duties, new tasks, and an effort such as you have never known before, for the new responsibility demands a new personality. However much your mother advised you at home, however many useful lessons and rules she recounted to fit you for this era, however much your beloved painted the future in glowing colors while you were engaged, and however much readiness and competence you showed at that time — none of this guarantees that the new life will not seem strange to you. The days of the engagement are poetry and dreams; but today, the second day after the wedding, is the putting of those dreams into practice. And that comes about only through your will, through the measure of your readiness to accept the great new responsibilities, and through the measure of your fitness to carry out what your will and your readiness demand.

Therefore we advise you to face your new era as the queen of the house, not its slave. And this is an easy matter if you know well how to conduct yourself with your husband, for this conduct of yours is necessary to secure the happiness you seek. Here are some counsels:

1 — Keep your attentions away from your husband's desk except at his request. Even if your husband seems to work in disorder, the likelihood is that he knows where his things are; so it is better not to earn his vexation by turning them over and changing their places while you claim to be making his affairs easier — he understands it as a mistake and a muddle.

2 — Learn his taste in food. If you are not good at cooking, roll up your sleeves at once and learn this great work, and you will see that cooking is the only art that is perfected in the course of its practice. But you will see something more astonishing and stranger still:

when you take an interest in his food, your husband understands that you are really taking an interest in him personally. So the preparing of everything according to the rules — with precision, elegance, and speed — he counts as a debt he is bound to repay.

3 — Beware of pressing him. If some anxiety or care shows on your husband, leave him be, for the cause may be a matter essential to his life and his position in society, or it may be the consideration of a change in the manner of living, or of moving from one country to another.

4 — Be serious with your husband. If you see your husband despairing, do not suppose that joking will dispel despair. Just as you hope that he will consider your feelings in everything, take care not to leave his feelings out of account. If you enter into affairs he considers his own, proceed with deliberation and gravity, and refrain from disparaging what concerns him or absorbs his attention.

5 — You are not obliged to love all your husband's friends. Marriage does not oblige either spouse to be bound in affection to the other's companions; just as it is a mistake for a woman to try to turn her man away from the company of his acquaintances and the brethren of

his youth. You must not forget that your husband enjoyed the companionship of friends who were a solace to him before he came to know you, so you may not stand as a barrier between him and those who carry pleasant memories of his past. Nor is it asked of you to be fond of them, especially as most of them may possess only qualities that do not please you.

6 — Preserve your attractiveness after marriage:
Your power to hold his heart for yourself alone is your capital, and it yields the greatest returns. So keep up those appearances that delight his eyes and captivate him. And do not suppose that the marriage contract is enough to secure the bond of affection between you: what was true in the days of your girlhood, the day he first came to know you, remains in force after marriage.

7 — Broaden your mental horizons:
The thinking powers must not be neglected, or they will rust as many of your kitchen vessels rust if they are not treated with the necessary means. How like the mind is to flint, which gives no spark unless it is struck! And there are forms of striking for knowledge that cannot be dispensed with: among them the company of literary women and people of experience, and the reading of useful books. It must be said that keeping pace with the age is a binding necessity, so it is fitting that you read the weekly or monthly magazines that concern themselves with the sciences, the arts, and letters, and bring you the latest in the world of thought and invention.

So, O bride newly returned from the honeymoon — nay, O lady in whatever era of your life: reconsider your position toward your little kingdom, and try always to make it the paradise of whose happiness and bliss you have so long dreamed.