A good wife may be hard to acquire, but who asked to be defined always
By her bond to boy or brood? Why not boldly
Call her instead a woman of capacity, of competence, of character,
Defined by her decisions, her doings, her deepest
Existential question or, even better, her divine essence.
Forget for a few, the ancient fathers’ definition of the feminine:
Good, meaning governable, forgiving, unflagging —and let her gird
Her loins like a hero hot for battle, like the Hebrew
Insists, making us inquire if she is not more like the intrepid
Jael and her tent peg, more like Deborah, prophetess and judge
Knowing when to send the pikemen, and who’ll kindle victory’s fatal kiss,
Less like June Cleaver. Like as not, the “good wife” so delineated might up and leave,
Mansion or no mansion. Money or no money. Man or no man.
Not trying to negate the value of nativity or domestic labor—this is no
Overthrow of holy scripture either; I’m only offering other
Paradigms for a person of pith and possibility, who might be positively
Queenly in her calling, unwilling to always acquiesce or be quietly
Relegated to the realm of darning and gardening, retail and rearing.
Suppose she has a call beyond serving, and more than security, she seeks
Tenderness, truthfulness, tenacity, if she is to be so tethered.
Unwilling to enslave herself for appearance’s sake, perhaps she understands
Vows less like 401k investments, more like vocations to traverse the darkest valley
Walking hand in hand, weaving a life that can withstand
X-ray penetration by extremists, cynics. Here’s an unabashed xenophile,
Yielding to YHWH’s revelation in the other, faithfully yoked—YES!
Zealous for the God in whose visage she’s created, her Aperture and Zenith.
–
Emily Rose Proctor, a Presbyterian preacher and poet from south Alabama, currently works at a food pantry and resource hub for struggling families in Santa Rosa Beach, FL. She serves on the board of the Longleaf Writers Conference in Seaside, where The Truman Show was filmed.