Putting the “Dog” in Dogma
The latest phenomenon to hit the literary world is Wendy Moore’s How to Create the Perfect Wife, which chronicles the real- life quest of the progressive yet eccentric Thomas Day to cultivate his perfect wife. To conduct this experiment, at the age of twenty-one, Day adopted two twelve- year- old orphan girls and took them under his wing. He provided them with both a formal education, and one that he believed was necessary to toughen them. Day is believed to have based his experiment on Jean- Jacques Rousseau’s political theories espoused in Emile, which is commonly misconstrued as child- rearing advice that promulgates harsh conditions as necessary for rearing strong children. Reading too much into the notion that it is necessary to ensure that one’s child is able to survive less than ideal conditions, Day goes so far as to drip burning wax onto one of the two girls he selected, whom he re-named Sabrina. After sending the other orphan away with a large monetary settlement, Day subjects Sabrina to treatments such as standing in cold water, and pointing his gun at her to fortify her character. Day, like the fictitious Humbert Humbert in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, believes that he has the ability to control the destiny and the sexuality of the orphaned girl who is left in his care.
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Tags: Daughter-wife, Lolita, Normal
