There were many poems and prose works describing ideal wives and husbands or providing advice on domestic relations, published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The following is a typical one.

You that intend the honourable life,
And would with joy live happily in the same,
Must note eight duties do concern a wife,
To which with all endeavour she must frame:
And so in peace possess her husband's love
And all distaste from both their hearts remove.

The first is that she have domestic cares,
Of private business for the house within,
Leaving her husband onto his affairs,
Of things abroad that out of doors have been
By him performed as his charge to do,
Not busy-body like inclined thereto

Nor intermedling as a number will,
Of foolish gossips such as do neglect,
The things which do concern them and...