I Want a Wife

In Judy Brady's "I Want a Wife", she is writing from the point of view of a wife and mother. Because of that, she has certain expectations, assumptions, and views about the world. She wants people to see what a wife REALLY does. Through her satire, she suggests that SHE would like to have a wife to do all of the things for her that she is doing for her family. She gives many instances of what life would be like if she could take the role of the husband and have a wife "who will work and send me to school"(p. 427). Through this role-reversal, she explains what it is like to be a wife who takes care of the physical and mental needs of her family before her own needs. Overall, I think she has a good idea for what the context of the essay is and what the rhetorical situation is.

At first I believed her target audience was women, because they would really enjoy the satire of the essay. But then, I wonder if she doesn't intend for men to read this and feel ashamed?

Where I do feel like she has missed the target is in the assumptions that:

1) all women do all of the things listed

2) husbands don't do any of these things

For that reason, I think the success of the essay would depend on the audience and making sure it was read by who it was targeted for in the first place. Being a very involved husband and father, I didn't quite appreciate the satire as much as I appreciated the humor of the essay.