Living in a golden age: 1807

HOW TO TAME A TURBULENT HUSBAND

A TALE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

In 1807 they were looking back to the 15th century for helpful advice and inspiration. It sounds like a typical anti-male article, but sometimes when we look back in time we see the origins of things. This is how the story starts:

A Tradesman who lived in a village near St. Albans, had been twice married, and ill-treated his wives so as to cause their death. He sought a third, but as his brutality was well known in the place where he dwelt, he was obliged to go fifty miles off for a wife.

He obtained one, and after he brought her home, all the neighbours came to visit her, and acquaint her in what manner her husband used to treat his former wives. This somewhat surprised her, but she resolved to wait patiently till her lord and master might take it into his head to beat her. She did not wait long, for her husband was a terrible fellow.

--From La Belle assemblée--

Attack on the modern male: 1807

This lady composed the following vocabulary to express the character of a husband, from her own experience, and which proves how copious our language is on that article:—He is, said she, an abhorred, abominable, acrimonious, angry, arrogant...

...ireful, jealous, keen, loathsome, maggotty, malevolent, malicious...

...wrathful, yarring, yelping dug in a manger, who neither eats himself nor will let others eat.

--From La Belle assemblée--

I know it's fashionable in certain circles to decry society's seeming attack on all things male, but it doesn't seem that new. It may even be toned down a bit.

(I'm not saying it's healthy, just that it's not a modern problem.)