Marital Power Dynamics Quotes

Though Hillary Rodham married Bill Clinton 11 years after Camille Hanks married Bill Cosby, and after having earned her own law degree, the terms of her marriage were also shaped in their own way by a presumption of a husband's centrality and a wife's subsidiary nature.

The notion that the husband ought to have the headship or authority over his wife, is the root of all social evils… Husband and wife should be co-equal. In a happy marriage there is no question of ‘obedience’.

The prince exults whomever he selects as his consort, but the queen, rather than elevating the subject of her choice, humiliates him as a man. By all that is right, a man is not intended to be the husband of his wife, but a woman is to be her husband's wife.

I married beneath me—all women do.

It is of public concern in many instances to merge their identity and give dominance to the husband.

People say I'm henpecked. Well, let them say it.

When I come home, my wife is the boss.

We were an ill-matched pair, my husband and I, from the very outset; he, with very high ideas of a husband's authority and a wife's submission, holding strongly to the 'master-in-my-own-house theory,' thinking much of the details of home arrangements, precise, methodical, easily angered and with difficulty appeased.

I never want to have to ask my husband for money. Never! That's incomprehensible to me. Would he have preferred that I change my name? Probably. But that's OK!

A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.

Being managed by your wife means you just get told what to do all the time as opposed to some of the time.

The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.

The only danger is, that he will attempt to suppress polygamy in that country be marrying all of the women himself.

The guardianship of the weaker sex has survived in the family law which still states, 'And he shall be your master.'

When you're a man, you want to make decisions for your family, and sometimes the lady doesn't see what you see.

Every man, they say, 'oh my wife is my boss.' So why can't they be bosses at work?

Marrying Cal, the scion of a family whose wealth dated to the Industrial Revolution and had multiplied through every turn of the American economy since, ought to have eased her worries about failing to climb as high as she believed she deserved. But the money was his, not theirs. The unspoken power this gave him kept her from asking: Why don't you stay home?

Fathers and husbands! do ye not also understand this fact? Do ye not see how, in the mental bondage of your wives and fair companions, ye yourselves are bound?

Today in Saudi, women are either at the mercy of their husbands or at the mercy of judges who tend to side with the husbands. The only circumstance that a woman can ask for a divorce or a 'khali' is when her husband is in total agreement with her or if she comes from a very powerful family who decide to back her up.

For centuries, divorce in the West was a male tool of control - a legislative chastity belt designed to ensure that a wife had one master, while a husband could enjoy many mistresses. It is as though, having denied women their cake for so long, the makers have no wish to see them enjoy it.