"You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?"
About this Quote
Franklin packages marital advice as a gentle shrug, but the shrug is doing a lot of work. “You can bear your own faults” is a sly reminder of self-incrimination: if you’re honest, you already live with a daily inventory of shortcomings. The punchline “and why not a fault in your wife?” turns tolerance into a kind of moral reciprocity. It’s not romance; it’s civic-minded pragmatism applied to domestic life, the same temperament that prized compromise in public affairs.
The intent is partly prophylactic. Franklin is talking to men who feel entitled to appraisal and correction at home, men trained to see themselves as rational managers of a household. He flips that posture: your “standards” aren’t neutral; they’re preferences backed by power. If you demand perfection from a spouse while granting yourself indulgence, you’re not virtuous, you’re merely comfortable.
The subtext is also Franklin’s signature anti-martyrdom. Don’t dramatize minor imperfections into moral crises. A wife’s “fault” might be an annoyance, a habit, a mismatch in temperament - the everyday friction of intimacy. Franklin’s point is that marriage isn’t a tribunal. It’s a long negotiation between flawed parties, and the only sustainable currency is forbearance.
Context matters: this is an 18th-century voice in a world where wives had few legal rights and plenty of social blame. Read today, the line lands uneasily in its gendering. Still, its sharpest edge cuts toward the person most likely to lecture: start with your own defects, then decide how loudly you need to police someone else’s.
The intent is partly prophylactic. Franklin is talking to men who feel entitled to appraisal and correction at home, men trained to see themselves as rational managers of a household. He flips that posture: your “standards” aren’t neutral; they’re preferences backed by power. If you demand perfection from a spouse while granting yourself indulgence, you’re not virtuous, you’re merely comfortable.
The subtext is also Franklin’s signature anti-martyrdom. Don’t dramatize minor imperfections into moral crises. A wife’s “fault” might be an annoyance, a habit, a mismatch in temperament - the everyday friction of intimacy. Franklin’s point is that marriage isn’t a tribunal. It’s a long negotiation between flawed parties, and the only sustainable currency is forbearance.
Context matters: this is an 18th-century voice in a world where wives had few legal rights and plenty of social blame. Read today, the line lands uneasily in its gendering. Still, its sharpest edge cuts toward the person most likely to lecture: start with your own defects, then decide how loudly you need to police someone else’s.
Quote Details
| Topic | Husband & Wife |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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