Between 1704 and 1713, novelist and journalist Daniel Defoe produced the Review (its full title, A Review of the State of the British Nation), one of the earliest literary and political periodicals in England. In the issue of October 4, 1707, he offered this forthright response to the question, "What is the worst sort of husband a sober woman can marry?"
The Worst Sort of Husband
by Daniel Defoe
It is but seldom that I have taken up any part of this paper with answering questions, and that is now and then to divert you. But I think the following question, as it was most seriously proposed, so it may be of very good service to abundance of good people to have it answered. As to the ladies who are concerned in it, if they are not pleased I am sorry for it. The question, in short, was not proposed in a letter, but in conversation, and is promised an answer in this paper for the good of others, viz.:
What is the worst sort of husband a sober woman can marry?
I confess this question has led me a long way about, into the great, great variety of bad husbands of the age, with which many a poor lady is intolerably plagued throughout, as the wise man calls it, the years of her pilgrimage under the sun, the best of which kinds are bad enough. As
- There is the Drunken Husband, whose picture it would take up a whole volume to describe; his drunken passions, his drunken humours, his drunken smell, his drunken bed-fellowship, and above all, his drunken love. O! An amorous drunkard when he comes home fully gorged and staggers into bed to a modest, a nice, and a virtuous wife must needs have many great charms in it such as my pen cannot bear the stench of relating.
- There is the Debauched Husband who, having a sober, young, pleasant and beautiful wife, slights and abandons her to take up with an ugly, a tawdry, nasty, and noisome strumpet, and convinces the world that lust is blinder than love. This sort of wretch has but one act of kindness to his wife which distinguishes him from other brutes of his kind, and that is that coming home laden with vice and rottenness, he gives his honest wife an ill disease that lifts her out of the world, putting her out of his reach, and out of her torment all together.
- There is the Fighting Husband. I confess this is a strange creature that, when anything has put him in a passion abroad, comes and vents his thunder and lightning at home; that having not a heart to fight with a man, for generally speaking such fellows are always cowards, must come home and fight with his wife. These are excellent sort of people, and ought all to come to the same preferment one lately did in these parts who, beating his wife a little too much the poor woman took it so ill that she killed him for it. That is, she died, and he was hanged for the murder, as he deserved.
- The Extravagant Husband. This is the ill husband, properly so-called, or as the word is generally received. This is a blessed fellow too, and his way is that he spends his money in roaring, gaming, and drinking, when the poor woman sits quietly at home, waking and sighing for his company. If he is poor, as 'tis a wonder he should be rich, he feasts himself and his gang at the taverns and ale houses while the unhappy wife wants bread at home for his children. If he is an artist, he won't work; if he has a shop, he won't mind it; if business, it runs at random; the sot dreams away his time, ruins himself, and starves his family. The end of this wretch is generally to run away from her into the army or navy, and so dies like a rake, or perhaps takes up his lodgings nearer home in a gaol.
Well, good people, here are four sorts of ill husbands, and take one of them where you will, the best of them is bad enough, and hard is that woman's case, especially if she be a woman of any merit, whose lot it is; but yet I think my first-rate is behind still; there is yet a bad husband that is worse than all these, and a woman of sense had better take up with any of these than with him, and that's a Fool Husband. The Drunkard, the Debauched, the Fighting, and the Extravagant; these may all have something attendant, which in the intervals of their excesses may serve to alleviate and make a little amends to the poor woman, and help her to carry through the afflicting part; but a Fool has something always about him that makes him intolerable; he is ever contemptible, and uninterruptedly ridiculous--it is like a handsome woman with some deformity about her that makes all the rest be rejected. If he is kind, it is so apish, so below the rate of manhood, so surfeiting, and so disagreeable, that, like an ill smell, it makes the face wrinkle at it; if he be froward, he is so insufferably insolent that there is no bearing it. His passions are all flashes, struck out of him like fire from a flint: if it be anger, 'tis sullen and senseless; if love, 'tis coarse and brutish. He is in good, wavering; in mischief, obstinate ; in society, empty; in management, unthinking; in manners, sordid; in error, incorrigible; and in everything, ridiculous.
Wherefore upon the whole, my answer is in short, that the worst thing a sober woman can be married to, is a FOOL. Of whom whoever has the lot, Lord have mercy, and a cross should be set on the door, as a house infected with the plague.
