Warm feet and no red nail polish – two key ingredients of the ideal 1930s wife

Published on Wednesday 14 May 2008 22:14

PSYCHOLOGISTS have unearthed a "Marital Ratings Scale" from the 1930s that allowed husbands to evaluate their wives, it emerged yesterday.

In the chart, designed by an American academic, wives would lose points for being slow in getting into bed at night, failing to sew on buttons and darn socks, or for wearing red nail polish.

Also in the minus column were categories marked "flirts with other men at parties" and "goes to bed with curlers on her hair or face cream".

A wife could also lose points for putting her "cold feet on (her] husband at night to warm them". In the plus column, however, women were rated well for their conversation, delivering meals on time and for being a "good hostess – even with unexpected guests".

Having a tidy house and putting the children to bed "personally" were also deemed to be the wife's responsibility.

Also worthy of merit was the wife who "never goes to bed angry".

The test also included categories on sex and swearing. A woman would lose five points for using "slang or profanity".

But if she "reacts with pleasure and delight to marital congress" she would gain ten points.

By adding up the totals, wives would be rated from "Very Poor (Failures)" to "Very Superior". The test was designed by Dr George Crane, who wrote an agony-aunt style newspaper column called The Worry Clinic. He also ran a matchmaking service, which used the wife test as a guide to measure how compatible men and women were.

The test is published in Monitor Online, the journal of the American Psychological Association.