bewife

To marry (a woman).

She glowed into love, smiled, kissed him, fondled him like a mother. The male resents this mothering in his depth. It shields the home. The conquered woman turns back as a mother to draw him in, more and more into herself, to her warm quiescent hearth, to the unborn. The hunter rebels. It is then that brutality begins. He essays violence, cruelty, because he senses himself weak before the indrawing suction of the bewifed woman.

All of the hidden frustration and difficulties of the beleaguered American woman were brought front and center in Betty Freidman’s^([sic]) “Feminine Mystique.” There we were presented with the poor thwarted creature of American culture — the bewifed, child-bearing female living in suburbia.

To be or become a wife to (someone); to provide (someone) with a wife.

Þæt wolde ðyncan wundorlic ælcum men þe on Englalande wæs, gif ænig man ær þam sæde þæt hit swa gewurþan sceolde, for ðam þe he wæs ær to þam swyðe up ahafen swylce he weolde þæs cynges ⁊ ealles Englalandes, ⁊ his sunan wæron eorlas, ⁊ þæs cynges dyrlingas, ⁊ his dohtor þæm cynge beweddod ⁊ beæwnod.

The only balance to be found in all the marriage license records here was the 50-50 equality between men and women. There were 387 white men wed to 387 white women and 256 Negro males bewifed by 256 Negro females.