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The Family We Know
Gilman grounds the argument in an ordinary household — "Mrs. John Smith" — to show how marriage is popularly mistaken for a business partnership, how mothers fail to prepare daughters for what marriage actually holds, and how love and economic gain have become tangled into what Gilman calls "a hideous paradox."
The familiar, unexceptional household as evidenceMarriage is not a business partnershipMothers' silence with daughters about marriageGetting economic gain through loveWhy ordinary domestic life still displays the sexuo-economic pattern