Word: morgans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Many of the women assigned to the project had mixed emotions about Total Woman when they began. Chicago Correspondent Anne Constable, who talked with several TW teachers in the Midwest, "went into it feeling skeptical that TW worked and hostile toward people who would follow Morgan's advice. I came away with a different attitude. I was struck by the need that TW is apparently filling for many women in America who want to keep their families intact...
Although Reporter-Researcher Anne Hopkins discovered that Morgan's books actually contain some "very basic and uncontroversial advice," she still has many grave reservations, for example, "about the idea that a man should be the center of everything." New York Correspondent Marion Knox, who traveled to Florida to interview Morgan and her family, agrees. "The problem with the concept of submission is that, while it may lead to a more peaceful union, it might easily lead to second-class citizenship for the wife." But, adds Knox, "I would very much like to see a third book by Marabel Morgan...
...name is Marabel Morgan, and her sole transgression is that she is the author of two treacly and wildly popular books, Total Woman and its newly released sequel Total Joy, which argue that every housewife can find happiness by pampering and submitting to her husband. Total Woman, with one pink rose on its cover, had few ads or reviews when it appeared in 1973 from the venerable religious publishing house of Fleming H. Revell, but a housewives' grapevine spread its message until sales reached a phenomenal 3 million copies (and still climbing). Total Joy is already moving...
Housewives not only buy huge quantities of Marabel Morgan's books but also write her fervent letters to tell her their difficulties. The letters (100 per day) are a cross section of "housewife blues" in the age of liberation. She answers all these pleas, which provided the basis for her second book. Furthermore, she has some 75 Morgan-trained disciples now giving Total Woman courses to thousands of women in 60 cities. Four two-hour sessions cost $15, of which Marabel gets $5-helping to bring her take so far to nearly $1.5 million...
This is all somewhat more complicated, to be sure, than anything contained in the wit and wisdom of Marabel Morgan, but Marabel's subsequent evolution, too, is part of the story. "I haven't had a bubble bath in years," she admits. "The costumes-well, we have had an awful lot of company recently, so I've fallen down on that." In other words, the advocate of domesticity has acquired what she probably was destined to have from the beginning, namely a career. And she enjoys that: "I should be a philosopher and walk across the country...