Before I got married, even before I went off to college, I read The Fascinating Girl by Helen Andelin. I liked a lot of it, although I disagreed with some of it. It’s about how to be feminine joyfully and attract a man to be your husband and then stay married. After I got married I could never quite do the “acting childlike” bit of pouting and tossing my curls saucily. It seemed so fake. I wanted to burst out laughing every time I thought about doing it.

I was reminded of the book again last year when Keri Tibbets listed the companion/sequel book, Fascinating Womanhood, in her bibliography at the end of her Headgates ebook. (http://headgates.org)

 This book arouses strong opinions in people. One of my homeschooling friends absolutely hates it, saying that it is bent. Some people love the book. I am eager to hear more about what people think of it. If i were to rename the book, I would call it The Womanly Art of Wifing. It has a lot of good points in it that will build a marriage because it acknowledges that men are supposed to be masculine and women should be feminine and a great marriage is made up of masculine and feminine. What is feminine and what is masculine can be very subjective however.

My Zion Finishing School is discussing the book online this Friday August 19 at 2 PM MDT and I am inviting everyone, even if you haven’t paid for the finishing school course, to join us in the free discussion. As a bonus, I have asked my dear friend, Leah, to join us. She used to teach the course based on the book. She has a unique perspective because the author of Fascinating Womahood, Helen Andelin, is her great aunt. She got mentoring over the phone many times with Mrs. Andelin on how to answer women’s specific questions for tough marital problems.

If you want to join the discussion, please email me at celestia_shumway at yahoo dot com and I will send you the link for the discussion on Friday. You can also read more about the book at http://fascinatingwomanhood.net