The Meaning of Wife : Feminism, Once a Relatively Mirthless Movement, Has Found Its Sense of Humor

“FAMILY VACATION: A contradiction in terms. You can have a family or you can have a vacation, but you can’t have both.”

That is from “New Wives’ Tales,”Stern / Sloan, $3.95) a “domestic dictionary” by Brenda Nell Davidson.

Having read Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” when it first came out, I have always supported the feminist movement, even when it wasn’t easy.

Every revolutionary movement is humorless to begin with, and for the first few years there wasn’t a laugh in a carload of feminists. I once went to hear Ms. Friedan speak and when an innocent male introduced her with that old joke about God being a woman, Ms. Friedan took the podium and publicly chastised the wretched fellow. “This is not funny,” she said.

In its early years, feminism was so militant, anti-male and unrelenting that every man felt guilty, if not superfluous. If you don’t let men open doors anymore, some of them haven’t the slightest idea what to do.

In her book “Ms.ery,” my friend Anne Wittels uses humor to dramatize woman’s lot; it is a biting but honest kind of humor:

“It’s time for women’s liberation when you apply for a job with your newly earned Ph.D and are asked, ‘Can you type?’

“It is women’s liberation when you hear yourself saying, ‘No, Harry, I’m not going backpacking again this year.’ ”

I think Erma Bombeck was the first woman to laugh out loud in women’s behalf. She once told me, “It’s just an honest reaction. If we don’t laugh at some of this stuff, hey, we’re going to go crazy.”

I know Brenda Nell Davidson slightly as Brenda Loree, a columnist for the Ojai Valley News. We have met, and we have corresponded on Ojai’s terrible crime problem, as noted on the Ojai police blotter (“Two dogs killed a rabbit on N. Drown Street”), and once she reproached me for calling the valley between San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay “Shangri-La.”

“This is a reminder,” she said, “that the only true Shangri-La still exists in Ojai Valley.”

I have met Brenda on a few trips to Ojai, but I hadn’t known that she was married, much less that she was the mother of a teen-ager, so I was surprised by her despairing if valiant quips about being a housewife in “New Wives’ Tales.”

Here are some sample definitions:

“ASSERTIVENESS TRAINING: What you take to get your husband to say ‘Thank you’ when you bring him another cup of coffee.

“CHILDLESS COUPLE: People with clean houses who take lots of trips.

“CONSCIOUSNESS RAISING: What you’re doing when you first realize your husband can butter his own toast. When it dawns on you that he can pick up his own socks, you are a radical feminist.”

I read that one to my wife. She was in the kitchen cleaning the top of the range. She doubled over laughing.

“Why is that funny?” I asked her.

“I guess,” she said, still laughing, “because it’s true.”

I think most of Brenda’s definitions are funny because they’re true.

“COMPULSIVE HOUSEWIFE: A housewife whose recipe file is in alphabetical order.

“EVERYDAY HOUSEWIFE: The only kind there is, unless there’s a country where they give you weekends off.

“HELP OUT AROUND THE HOUSE: What most men think they’re doing if they remember to put the TV Guide away.

“HOUSEWORK: The natural job of woman, until she can afford to hire someone to do it for her.

“WOMAN’S WORK: If someone isn’t paying you for doing it, it’s woman’s work.

“JOB BURNOUT: A condition that used to be known as being sick of your job. Mothers and typist-clerks are not allowed to have job burnout. You must make over $40,000 a year before you can go away to a weekend seminar on job burnout.”

Of course motherhood goes with the job:

“HYPERKINETIC CHILD: Anyone under 12 who isn’t sick.

“HOMEWORK: Something teen-agers do during commercials.

“FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL: Comes on the day you couldn’t have taken it anymore.”

And perhaps the bottom line:

“DINNER: Even if the world is about to end, someone will figure out a reason why you still have to cook dinner.”

I suppose my wife could write such a book if she had time, but she’s too busy doing the cooking and the dish-washing and the ironing and feeding the birds and cats.

I’m sure that over the years I have given her enough Ms.ery. But I am much reformed. My consciousness was raised long ago, not only by Ms. Friedan but by the obvious moral weight of the feminist cause. I not only butter my own toast but I also file the TV Times and change light bulbs. I even pick up my socks, at least on Saturdays.

Housewives can laugh, but women’s continuing subjugation in our society, as Ms. Friedan said, isn’t funny. They laugh only when it hurts.