Findeth Yourself a Good Wife

Join us for another episode of Daryl’s Back Pages, “Findeth Yourself a Good Wife”.   Podcasts with thought-provoking insights about life in around 5 minutes.  
 
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"The play begins in the 1920's and is set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As it starts to unfold, the audience learns that Aram's whole family has been slaughtered by the heartless Turks and that Seta, his new mail-order bride, has also been orphaned by the genocide." 

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Transcript

Findeth Yourself a Good Wife

Some friends of ours took my wife and I down to the B Street Theatre the other night to see "Beast On The Moon", a wonderful little play about Aram and Seta, two young Armenians who somehow managed to escape the horrible genocide which took place in their beloved land around the turn of the century.

The play begins in the 1920's and is set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As it starts to unfold, the audience learns that Aram's whole family has been slaughtered by the heartless Turks and that Seta, his new mail-order bride, has also been orphaned by the genocide. Although Aram is consumed with demons too terrible to share with anyone, he is determined to begin a new and better life in America, and he is convinced that the first step in that process is to properly instruct young Seta on some of the finer points of being a good, obedient wife.

"Did you know that my mother wasn't even allowed to speak to my father for the first year of their marriage?" Aram tells Seta.

"Now, how can that be?" asks Seta in disbelief.

To further explain how a good wife should behave, Aram breaks out his Bible and begins quoting scripture after scripture. "The husband is the head of the wife," he reads from the Bible, "and wives, be in subjection to your husbands."

"Hey, did you know that?" I whispered over to my wife.

"Know what?" she whispered back.

"That the husband is the head of the wife?"

"Just be quiet and watch the play, okay?"

Later that night, after my wife and I had been home for about an hour or so and agreed that "Beast On The Moon" was a fine play with just the right mixture of drama and humor, and that we had both been moved by the way Aram and Seta were able to create a good life for themselves out of the ashes of their youth, I decided to go in search of my copy of a book entitled The Complete Book Of Bible Quotations.

"What are you doing now?" asked my wife with a puzzled expression as I sat down on the foot of our bed and began  thumbing through some of the most memorable phrases and sayings  from both the Old and New Testaments.

"You know, dear," I said with sincerity, "I think maybe we've been going about this relationship of ours all the wrong way."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well," I explained, "it says right here, `Wives, submit yourselves unto your husband', and `As the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands in every thing'." Getting no response, I quickly added, "And Genesis 3:16 says, `Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee'."

"Would you please just go to sleep?" my wife finally said, her voice slightly agitated.

"Do I detect a slight bit of anger, dear?" 

"I am not angry," she replied emphatically.

  "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure." 

"So, then you probably wouldn't mind hearing a couple of these quotes which talk about how women are the weaker vessel?"

   "No thank you," she said, glaring at me.

"Then how about this one, `If they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home'?"

  "Stop it!"

"See, you are too getting angry.

"I am not angry, Daryl! Now go to sleep!"

"Well," I said, "that's good, because Proverbs 21:19 says `It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with an angry woman'."