Judy Brady

As a woman in the 1970s, it’d be difficult to avoid the peaking second-wave of feminism sweeping the nation. Specifically, in 1973 when Judy Brady penned her famous feminist essay, ‘I want a wife’, women were beginning to acquire more of a voice than ever before. However, what Judy Brady conveniently and methodically avoids throughout her essay are the words ‘equality’ and ‘feminism’. She knows that by naming her cause, she limits her audience. Brady understands that the only way to make these ideas accessible to both men and women is to approach it with logic, emotion, and most importantly humor. TALK ABOUT TONE AND TIMING? Almost immediately Brady establishes her credibility by saying “I belong to that classification of people known as wives. I am A Wife. And, not altogether incidentally, I am a mother” and claims ‘wife’ and ‘mother’ as her identity. This creates a foundation for the essay to build on because it implies that she has lived the experiences she’s mocking, and she may have done so silently as women of that time were expected to. Not so coincidentally, because of her status as ‘wife’ and
Brady adopts what, from her perspective, is the male logic. This allows her readers to easily recognize the unfairness between spouses especially towards the end when she introduces the idea of sex. “I want a wife who will remain sexually faithful to me so that I do not have to clutter up my intellectual life with jealousies. And I want a wife who understands that my sexual needs may entail more than strict adherence to monogamy. I must, after all, be able to relate to people as fully as possible” highlights the most intimate inequality between man and wife, and also plays on sarcasm and irony to enhance the overall point of the essay. The irony being, a man considers sleeping around as ‘relating’. It poses the question, then, why would a man refuse to give his wife the same freedom to relate