Book Description
Originally serialized in "PUNCH" in 1845, Mrs. Caudle's incessant petty lectures to her unfortunate husband--enacted in the matrimonial bed at the close of each day when he is compelled to lie and listen--are as hilarious and familiar today as when first penned. Introduction by Peter Ackroyd.

Download Description
Puddings, indeed! Do you think I'm made of puddings? Didn't you have some boiled rice three weeks ago? Besides, is this the time of the year for puddings? It's all very well if I had money enough allowed me like any other wife to keep the house with: then, indeed, I might have preserves like any other woman; now, it's impossible; and it's cruel--yes, Mr. Caudle, cruel--of you to expect it.

From the Publisher
The quintessential hen-pecked husband, Job Caudle leads a quiet and well-intentioned life, looking forward to his few modest pleasures. But he is never allowed to savor them for long. In Mrs. Caudle's eyes, he can do no right. With a melodramatic talent for turning molehills into mountains, she lays the blame for all their ills squarely at his feet. The lectures are a war of attrition between the irresistible force of Mrs. Caudle's tongue and the stamina of her poor husband's tortured ears. With no means of escape, the doomed Mr. Caudle's only means of defense is to alternate between mustering the odd rejoinder and feigning sleep. Resistance, however, is always futile.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The quintessential hen-pecked husband, Job Caudle leads a quiet and well-intentioned life, looking forward to his few modest pleasures. But he is never allowed to savor them for long. In Mrs. Caudle's eyes, he can do no right. With a melodramatic talent for turning molehills into mountains, she lays the blame for all their ills squarely at his feet. The lectures are a war of attrition between the irresistible force of Mrs. Caudle's tongue and the stamina of her poor husband's tortured ears. With no means of escape, the doomed Mr. Caudle's only means of defense is to alternate between mustering the odd rejoinder and feigning sleep. Resistance, however, is always futile.

SYNOPSIS

Originally serialized in Punch in 1845, Mrs. Caudle's incessant petty lectures to her unfortunate husband—enacted in the matrimonial bed at the close of each day when he is compelled to lie and listen—are as hilarious and familiar today as when first penned. Introduction by Peter Ackroyd.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

The year's Prize for Political Incorrectness (Reprint Division) goes to this bundle of three dozen monologues, first serialized in Punch in 1845, which the sublimely middle-class Mrs. Margaret Caudle directs toward her aptly named husband Job every night as he lies in bed praying to escape in slumber. Embroidering a different text each evening, Mrs. Caudle, noting that she has had no opportunity to speak to her husband all day, belabors Mr. Caudle about his friends, his spending habits, his staying out late, his practice of Freemasonry, his resistance to a seaside holiday, and his alleged flirting with his unsuitable friend Mr. Prettyman's minx of a sister. On occasion, by way of variety, she forgoes her scolding for cajoling"Caudle, love" (a truly ominous phrase) on behalf of celebrating their anniversary properly, inviting her mother to live with them, or retreating to France or a country cottage—though she's equally capable of yearning for home and London when Mr. Caudle relents. As Peter Ackroyd observes in his brief Introduction, Victorian humorist Jerrold's shrewish heroine displays not only a remarkable tenacity in bringing her prey to book, but a prodigious inventiveness in bulldozing the twists and turns of his every defense. Her 150-year-old voice is as fresh as ragweed, and so is her husband's, heard only refracted through her own plaints ("A nice place too, to be called the Turtle-Dovery! Didn't I christen it myself? I know that—but then I knew nothing of the black-beetles") or in brief final comments on each night's agon ("I was resolved to know nothing, and so I went to sleep in my ignorance"). Taken one a night, these raucousharangueswould make perfectbedtime reading for their obvious target audience—even though, consumed in volume, their satiric hectoring becomes hard to distinguish from Mrs. Caudle's own. (Illus. throughout with period line drawings)