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Bezig met laden... How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate (2013)door Wendy Moore
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. A very readable tale of a rich Victorian chap who was likely autistic and fixated on finding a wife who met his list of stringent criteria. The narrative drags at times (the last few chapters could have done with some condensing) and the frequent judgey statements about the obvious hypocrisy of the main character seem unneeded and condescending but, overall, a solid read. I picked this up via Netgalley; it is a documentation of a case in which a picky young bachelor decided to rear a couple of orphan girls as potential mates. Inspired by writings of the day which described the ideal rearing of male children, after a fruitless search for the virtuous woman of his ideals, Thomas Day decides to apply his skills and theories to selecting and rearing a wife from childhood years. There is, of course, no happy ending, unlike the many fictional spin-offs inspired by this story, but only a somewhat sad chronicle of what happens when a man tries to create what he thinks is the perfect future wife. I found the writing style to be a little dry, though highly readable. This leans more towards the historical than the psychological or sociological, the latter of which are my interests, which is probably why I didn't find it nearly as interesting as I had hoped.
“How to Create the Perfect Wife,” as delectable as any good novel, is also the best remedy for wrongs done long ago. It takes a girl who was plucked from obscurity to become an experiment, a paragon, a symbol and a legend, and it has made her a person once more. How to Create the Perfect Wife aspires, not always successfully, to novelistic vividness. There are moving descriptions of life in the Foundling Hospital, and of the contrasting marriages—not to one another, in the end—of [protagonist Thomas] Day [1748–89] and his erstwhile ward Sabrina. . . . Ms. Moore has done an especially fine job of tracking Sabrina in archives and across England, even locating her previously unrecognized grave. How to Create the Perfect Wife is to be relished by those who enjoy slices of 18th-century life. Onderscheidingen
Wendy Moore's exploration of British writer Thomas Day's mission to groom his ideal mate captures the radicalism--and deep contradictions-- at the heart of the Enlightenment. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)823.6Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Later 18th century 1745-1800LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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I'm glad that Moore took the time to flesh out Sabrina's story, and acknowledge her -- this is equally her story, and that is always apparent. ( )