num_pages: 343
description: Thomas Day an 18th-century British writer and radical knew exactly the sort of woman he wanted to marry. Pure and virginal like an English country maid yet tough and hardy like a Spartan heroine she would live with him in an isolated cottage completely subservient to his whims. But after being rejected by a number of spirited young women Day concluded that the perfect partner he envisioned simply did not exist in frivolous fashion-obsessed Georgian society. Rather than conceding defeat and giving up his search for the woman of his dreams however Day set out to create her.So begins the extraordinary true story at the heart of How to Create the Perfect Wife prize-winning historian Wendy Moores captivating tale of one mans mission to groom his ideal mate. A few days after he turned twenty-one and inherited a large fortune Day adopted two young orphans from the Foundling Hospital and guided by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the principles of the Enlightenment attempted to teach them to be model wives. After six months he discarded one girl calling her invincibly stupid and focused his efforts on his remaining charge. He subjected her to a number of cruel trialsincluding dropping hot wax on her arms and firing pistols at her skirtsto test her resolve but the young woman perhaps unsurprisingly eventually rebelled against her domestic slavery. Day had hoped eventually to marry her but his peculiar experiment inevitably backfiredthough not before he had taken his theories about marriage education and femininity to shocking extremes.Stranger than fiction blending tragedy and farce How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalismand deep contradictionsat the heart of the Enlightenment.
language: English
title: How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate
publisher: Basic Books