Marriage Quote by Earl Wilson

The punch here is the whiplash: one kind of sexism doesn’t vanish, it just updates its wardrobe. Earl Wilson sketches a timeline of male authority that shifts from prohibition to performance review. The old husband who “didn’t want his wife to work” is easy to boo; he’s blunt, retrograde, cartoonish. His successor is more socially fluent, the guy who “asks about her chances of getting a raise.” That sounds supportive, even enlightened, until you hear the control note underneath: he’s still managing her life, still centering his curiosity and consent as the deciding frame.

The line works because it’s not a celebration of progress; it’s a satire of how patriarchy survives by learning better manners. “Succeeded” is doing heavy lifting, implying a dynasty rather than a break. Wilson’s joke lands in the gap between intention and effect: a question that can be genuine encouragement also doubles as surveillance, a way to translate her labor into household status, male pride, and social optics. Her autonomy is still treated as a topic he gets to “ask about,” not a reality she owns.

Contextually, it’s a mid-to-late 20th-century snapshot of women entering and reshaping the workforce, and of men scrambling to keep up without surrendering the steering wheel. The target isn’t just the overt chauvinist; it’s the “good guy” who upgrades his language but keeps the same instinct: her work matters most when it reflects back on him.