1930s Marital Scale

Ladies, do you comment on your “husband’s strength and masculinity”? React “with pleasure and delight to marital congress”? And men, do you give your bride “ample allowance” and “real movie kisses not dutiful ‘peck[s]’ on the cheek”? Being a good spouse is vital, and in 1939, Dr. George W. Crane created a questionnaire to rate spousal quality: Tests for Husbands and Wives. Some folks found a copy of the booklet, and through the magic of the Internet, it’s now an online quiz. There’s a version for wives and for husbands, each consisting of 100 weighted questions—including the queries above. You don’t need to be married to take the quiz to see if you’d be a “very superior” or “very poor (failure)” 1930s spouse, or to appreciate learning what some of social expectations were back in the day.