Written with a mixture of memoir and dramatic stories, this text is an exploration into what it means to be a wife, particularly a good wife, then and now, looked at through the lives and marriages of four extraordinary women in different eras. In 1848, Mary Moffatt became the devoted wife of the missionary and explorer David Livingstone in Africa - and it eventually killed her. In 1960, Margaret Foster married her school sweetheart Hunter Davies in a London registry office - and forty years later they are still married. Between these two marriages and their experience is a huge gulf during which time women's lives changed immesurably, and the notion of marriage evolved.