This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ...should have gone to cultivating and developing it has gone in admiring it; it has been frittered away in little exhibitions, and has dwindled for want of pains to make it more. Bystanders, seeing no signs of it, believe it never was but as an hallucination of demented vanity; but it did once have its place as a rational prompting to the exercise of a faculty, and it is possible that the faculty may have been worth exercising. The chattering sciolist, the half-skilled superfluous clilettcmte, may have had in them so much instinctive ability as, with the plodding zeal of humility, goes to make sound philosophers and competent artists. They were right, perhaps, in thinking they could get over the race-course, but they kept stopping on the way to pat their heads and give themselves sugarplums, and so they never got near the goal. Unhappily, such runners are apt to believe in their capabilities for the extremest prowess, just because they have never at any time tested their strength to the full. What they have done they have done with such ease that surely a little efiort would make them a match for the best. Something in them, they know not what--a genius which cannot bear harness, a nobility of nature which forbids descent into the arena of competition, a divine indolence, an ethereal carelessness--so1nething, in fact, whatever it be, which is unpractical but exceedingly superior, has hindered them of craftsman's excellence. These superlunary beings descend not to the menial steadiness of a Whewell, a Tennyson, a Huxley, a. Millais: they are comets, air-plants, all sorts of erratic wild flowers, uncatalogued stars, anything that cannot be calculated upon and goes its own way uselessly. Nobody is so possessed of a lyre, a soul, a...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A raucous, whip-smart collection of stories featuring retro-feminist ladies who lunch.” —Elle Meet the women of American Housewife. They wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it’s cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies from the oven. Taking us from a haunted pre-war Manhattan apartment building to the unique initiation ritual of a book club, these twelve delightfully demented stories are a refreshing and wicked answer to the question: “What do housewives do all day?”

From The New Yorker's most entertaining and acerbic wit comes a controversial reassessment of the rituals and events that shape women's lives: weddings, sex, housekeeping, and motherhood.

Says former desperate housewife Darla Shine to stay-at-home moms everywhere: What have you got to complain about? A modern-day guide to keeping house, raising kids, and loving life. Darla Shine was once a desperate housewife. Being at home with two small children and a husband who was rarely home was enough to drive her crazy. She left her high-profile job as a television producer after her son was born, while her husband continued to move up the corporate ladder. Like many of her stay-at-home-mom friends, Shine employed a housekeeper and baby-sitters so she could spend her time running to the salon, the club, and out to lunch. Then one day she was whining to her mother about how terrible her life was, and her mother yelled at her to wake up and stop being so selfish. It was just the wakeup call she needed! The desperate housewife craze of today is sending the wrong message to women and their children everywhere, says Shine. When did being a good mom and being proud to stay home with the kids go out of style? When did it become acceptable to cheat on your husband? When did mothers start dressing like their teenage daughters? Shine finds the standards of today's desperate housewives astonishingly low, and she has set out to teach women how they can be good mothers, look good, and feel good about the choices they make. Being a housewife does not mean you are on house arrest or can't be satisfied in your marriage. So step up, realize that you want to be home with your children, and embrace your life.

Lies of a Real Housewife: Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil By Angela Stanton