wifedom

noun

1. (uncountable)The condition of marriage for a woman.

   “I have seen a procession of monks, with a nightmare of faces, wearied, dejected, purposeless, hopeless, when not brutalized with the traces of furious rebellion against their world, and in that woful panorama of debased human nature I see the figure of what we condemn women to, when we bid them grow old in listless idleness, if they fail to secure to themselves the privileges of wifedom.”

   “"In your view of wifedom,” I began, “is the wife to acknowledge having a personality and will of her own, or do you see her as simply being responsive to her. . .her husband?”

   “Wifedom is a job, she argued, and the only approved one available for half the population.”

   “As Winfrey recently told TVGuide, “Stedman and I have a great relationship that allows me to be me in the fullest sense, with no expectations of wifedom and all that would mean.”

   “As marriage is displaced by family, wifedom by motherhood and the support/dependency structures of the patriarchal family assume greater importance than the legal form, it is actually counterproductive to the real purpose of social policy to exclude from regulation a family type that is so obviously here to stay.”

2. (uncountable)A woman's devotion to meeting the needs and/or desires of another, as if they were a marriage partner.

   “We suspect that Mr. Dixon has exaggerated both the extent and intensity of the defiance of common sense as well as common decency which spiritual wifedom implies.”

   “There the motive for concealment was removed, and the apology of a spiritual wifedom ceased to exist.”

   “Help me to become a pure waterer, weeder, and deadheader of our little plot, to mature from manic bride and bonnarder to the calm, the jen, of deep and ancient garden wifedom.”