Lexicon ·
surrendered wife
noun phrase
- Stated meaning
- A wife who gives up control of the marriage to her husband, and receives instead of directing.
- Operating meaning
- Control of the joint account handed to one party, in exchange for that party's continued willingness to run it.
- Origin
- From Laura Doyle's The Surrendered Wife, self-published in October 1999 and reissued in paperback by Simon & Schuster at the turn of 2001.
Doyle printed 2,000 copies in October 1999 (opens in a new window), “and by November we’d sold them out.” Simon & Schuster reissued it as a paperback original at the end of 2000, and in January 2001 TIME (opens in a new window) reported the book already in Amazon’s top 10.
The instructions are specific, and they are mostly financial. TIME summarized them: if she slips up, “she should apologize for being ‘disrespectful.’ She should give him the checkbook and leave the bills, investments and purchases to him.” The principles on the author’s own site (opens in a new window) say a surrendered wife “Relinquishes inappropriate control of her husband” and “Relies on him to handle household finances,” and one more on the list sets the exchange rate for what comes back: she “Receives his gifts graciously and expresses gratitude for him.”
Under load, the surrender is a transfer of the books. One party gives up the checkbook, the other takes on every decision in it, and the handover is sold as relief to the party making it. The terms are drafted entirely on one side, and so is the apology for any breach. The men’s shelf sells the other half of the same contract under the name provider energy, and each half is marketed to its buyer as the better end of the deal.