Confessions of an Angry Wife

A wife  is denied the forthright expression of her healthy anger. Her attempts at confrontation is ridiculed.  She can smolder inwardly until the anger had burned down to a bitter resentment or becomes such a pressurized force that it could only come out in a rage so uncontrollable that it can be dismissed as irrational. 

It's unseemly, aesthetically displeasing, and against the sweet, pliant feminine image to be angry. A wife is the great conciliator, the steadier of rocked boats, moves, out of her fear, to quiet not only others' anger but also her own. Small wonder that when the vacuum-sealed lid bursts off, the angry wife seems either like a freaked-out nut or a psycho on wheels. Her frenzy is intensified by the shakiness of her commitment to her own cause. She doubts herself. Or worse, she starts believing in the deficiencies falsely attributed to her. So shaky is her self-image that every criticism is seen as an indictment of her person. She is a living, walking apology for her own existence.

Why is the wife not allowed an outlet of her contained anger? Why do those around her find it so abnormal to get angry that they demoralize and deflate her into a degraded, inauthentic calm? Healthy anger says "I'm a person. I have certain rights which you can't deny. I have a right to be treated with fairness and compassion. I have a right to live my life as I see fit, I have a right to get what I can for myself. If you deprive me of my rights, I'm not going to love you, thank you, I'm going to say 'Back Off' and I am going to stand up for myself." 

A wife's anger puts her at the centre stage. It claims attention for her and demands to take her seriously, or else. (Or else she won't respect you, she won't cooperate with you with you or patiently wait for you, or else, ultimately, the association is over.) The traditional wife is the polar opposite of this description. Lacking confidence in herself and in her own perception, she backs away from a fight. 

Anger takes the wife out of her earth mother role as bastion of peace and calm, out of her familial role as peacemaker, out of her political role as preserver of the status quo, out of her economic role as cheap labor, out of her social role as second-class citizen. It takes her out of roles altogether and makes her a man!

If a wife was a man her anger would be received very differently.