Reviews for Men's Wives

The average rating for Men's Wives based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-07-18 00:00:00 Christopher Mcbride Three satirical advertisements for bachelorhood by Thackeray (who was himself a pretty good advertisement for spinsterhood). 'The Ravenswing' is Morgiana Crump, 'a tulip among women, and the tulip fanciers all came flocking round her,' basically a Victorian dolly bird, beset by two unlikely suitors until she is stolen from under their noses by a pseudo-gentleman called Captain Morgan. Thackeray's aim here is on the industry behind celebrity, a theme as relevant today then as it was then. The humour is gentle ('Why need there be a reason for laughing? Let us laugh when we are laughy, as we sleep when we are sleepy.'), the snobbery frightful; at one point the narrator took a potshot at The Morning Post for labelling his story as 'vulgar.' In the second story, 'Mr. and Mrs. Frank Berry', an old schoolfriend of the narrator, winner of the most notorious fight at Slaughter House (Charterhouse) which lasted two and half hours and went one hundred and two rounds, is later domesticated by a "a regular Tartar." Lastly, and on reflection leastly, 'Dennis Haggerty's Wife' is another argument in favour of bachelorhood as well as a typical piece of nastiness aimed at the Irish, a speciality of Thackeray's during his days at Punch All you really need to know about Thackeray's comic intent is that his narrator goes by the extraordinary name of George Fitz-Boodle.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-01-24 00:00:00 Chen Wei Just found this hard going