The Pain of Proverbs 31

said no honest man, ever.
Just kidding!
When all's said and done,
the best men are
looking for much more
than beauty...but they
still like it. Let's be
clear about that. The
problem with Prov. 31
is that Lemuel's mother
listed all the things SHE
wanted to see in a
daughter-in-law. She
didn't consider what
her son wanted, sounds like,
anyway. I want my son
to marry a woman who
makes him laugh and
loves him completely
and makes his head spin
but it's not up to me.
Wasn't up to Lemmy's
mom either! Women
of the world: be free
of this impossible
standard of wife-ness!

"A good wife, who can find?" In my mind,
I always hear the question posed in Proverbs
with a Yiddish lilt, instilling words with air
that's almost comical, the mom's unspoken
answer there implied: "No one can! There's
no girl good enough for my son." But if
there were...and then she lists requirements
of a woman who not only has the attributes
to do it all, she finds the time to cook and
sew and buy a field, sell things she's made
and help the poor and see that hubby has
it all as well. Her household operates with
clock-like regularity, apparently her husband's
bowels, too. (No good thing is he without,
and that would be included.) Superwoman,
goddess, love slave, beauty, grace, she laughs
while she is spinning cloth to drape across
the bed. Women have enough to deal with,
juxtaposed against the ads with women half
our ages and our sizes, without also getting
guilt-tripped by acrostic poem penned by
Lemmy's mother many hundred years ago.
My question's this, just where is
detailed check list for the husbands of
these perfect wives so they can also
measure manliness against someone who
frankly, does not, never will, exist?


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2013