It’s good to see that an actual anthropologist is studying the behaviour of some of America’s weirdest women. Wednesday Martin’s book The Primates of Park Avenue describes the exhausting lives of Manhattan’s most full-on wives: sci-fi beauty regimes, frenetic fund-raising, intensive mothering and military household management.
In 1832 when a farmer in Lancaster offered up his young wife for sale, he advertised a similarly energetic range of skills.
‘She can read novels and milk cows; she can laugh and weep with the same ease that you could take a glass of ale when thirsty; she can make butter and scold the maid; she can sing Moore’s melodies, and plait her frills and caps; she cannot make rum, gin, or whisky; but she is a good judge of the quality, from long experience in tasting them. I therefore offer her, with all her perfections and imperfections, for the sum of fifty shillings.’
The Spectator quoted this speech, which had been reported in a local paper.
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