How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

by Wendy Moore

Hardcover, 2013

Status

Available

Call number

823.6

Genres

Biography & Memoir

Biography

Mind and Body

Collection

Your library

Publication

Basic Books (2013), Edition: 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 360 pages

Description

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.

Media reviews

Salon.com

“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.

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Wall Street Journal

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.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member akblanchard

I loved this book. It's a wonderful combination of skillful narrative and exhaustive research into the 18th century lives of Thomas Day and his protegé, Sabrina.

More's depiction of Thomas Day brought to my mind Sylvia Plath's memorable condemnation of the 18th century's literati in The Bell Jar :

"all those smug men writing tight little couplets and being so dead keen on reason." Day was born in to wealth and privilege, but nonetheless longed for a simple life of austerity and good works. He trained as a lawyer but made his name as a poet, children's book author, and early supporter of abolition.

Despite his wealth and accomplishments, Day was unkempt and socially awkward. He wanted a wife, but couldn't find a woman of his social class who would agree to live with him on his terms: severe conditions, isolation and total subservience to his wishes. After reading Rousseau's Émile, or On Education, he came up with an interesting "experiment": he and his friends arranged to sponsor two girls from the local foundling home for training as "apprentice" housemaids. Once removed from the orphanage, the girls were reared according to Day's exacting specifications with an eye toward his marrying one of them.

One of the girls turned out to be totally unsuitable and was dismissed. She was the lucky one. The other, Sabrina, grew up under complete financial and emotional dependence on Day, all the while never knowing that he was grooming her to be his wife. Eventually Day's "tests" of his intended bride grew abusive, even sadistic. Day's "experiment" in molding the perfect woman, fortunately came to an end when Sabrina stood up for herself. Both Day and Sabrina moved on to other destinies, with varying degrees of happiness.

Wendy Moore does an excellent job of breathing life into these long-dead characters, who lived in a place and time very different from our own. I highly recommend this book.

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7 more

LibraryThing member VeritysVeranda

What a strange man Thomas Day was, as I am sure you have already read in other reviews. Having worked in a male-dominated field and having been on a variety of dates, Day's views are not so infuriating as to toss the book aside, unlike my Mom who could not get passed chapter 2.

The only thing that

bugged me was the chapter 10 title "Virginia, Belinda and Mary" as you only briefly hear about a Mary in the first couple of pages whilst the fictional characters Virginia and Belinda are in the last 5 pages of the chapter (nearly 20 pages in)! ...Oh, and that there wasn't a bit more information about Day's second foundling after her marriage, even if to say that subsequent research into the historical records or genealogy yielded no results.

Fictional books listed as being influenced by Day's educational experiment:
Maria Edgeworth's Belinda
Anthony Trollope's Orley Farm
Henry James' Watch and Ward

(Three more books I hope to get to within the next 10 years!)

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LibraryThing member wyvernfriend

Thomas Day is very particular about the woman he wants for a wife and he can't find one so he decides to educate one, to create a perfect wife from an orphan he finds. He doesn't expect that she will rebel.

It's a good read, with interesting characters, and it does sometimes read like a novel

rather than truth.

Interesting historical read.

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LibraryThing member Emma_Manolis

Why did I pick up this book?
I had read through the summary and was really intrigued that someone had actually tried to create their ideal mate. It almost seemed like it could be a real-life Frankenstein of sorts. I wanted to see what it was Day was looking for and how he planned on achieving that

being. a

How far into the story did I get?
Really not far at all. I got approximately 4 percent (14 pages) into the book before I realized that I just needed to put it down.

Why did we break-up?
It's never a good sign when you keep putting off reading a book once you have already started.I didn't look forward to picking it back up. It wasn't poorly written or even all that boring. It just turned out that we don't quite mesh at this point in my life. Maybe I'll try to pick it back up again at some other point.

Who might enjoy this book?
I think anyone who enjoys strange aspects of history would enjoy this book as well as someone who loves memoirs. I'm currently at the point where I'm enjoying more dialogue in my books, which is probably due to reading too many textbooks.

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LibraryThing member Iambookish

I happened to see the cover of this book sticking out of my library's shelves and thought it looked very interesting, and for once I correctly judged the book by it's cover!
A fascinating tale about a, or maybe THE, real life Henry Higgins who tried to create the perfect wife. Unable to find any

one woman to conform to his strict guidelines for wifey material, Georgian gentleman Thomas Day comes up with a scheme to mold a 12 year old orphan into his ideal spouse.
A fascinating piece of well-known history I knew nothing about!

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LibraryThing member Laura400

Well-written but such a creepy subject it was not enjoyable.

LibraryThing member fionaanne

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.

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LibraryThing member jennybeast

Absolutely fascinating biography of both Thomas Day, his many love-interests and his brilliant social circle. I'm not sure what is more disturbing to me about Thomas Day's attempt to adopt an orphan child to raise up to be his wife -- that his society found this behavior eccentric but acceptable

(to a degree anyway) or that so much of what we currently accept as educational theory grew out of the same ground. That's fairly inarticulate, but I really appreciated the wonderful depiction of an historical era that I'm fairly unfamiliar with, the straightforward narrative, and the somehow non-intrusive reality check offered by the author at regular intervals (remember, he's looking for someone to live in a miserable hovel and cater to his every whim, who wouldn't want that?). Ultimately, I think Thomas Day was a misguided sadist, but I'm fascinated that he was also an influential anti-slavery advocate and a man beloved by his friends for his virtuous life.
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.

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