This is the story of how Thomas Day a young man of means decided he could never marry a woman with brains spirit or fortune. Instead he adopted two orphan girls from a Foundling Hospital & set about educating them to become the meek docile women he considered marriage material. Unsurprisingly Days marriage plans did not run smoothly. Having returned one orphan early on his girl of choice Sabrina Sidney would also fall foul of the experiment. From then on she led a difficult life inhabiting a curious half-world
- an ex-orphan & not quite a ward; a governess & not quite a fiancee. But Sabrina also ended up figuring in the life of scientists & luminaries as disparate as Erasmus Darwin & Joseph Priestley as well as that pioneering generation of women writers who included Fanny Burney Maria Edgeworth & Anna Seward. In HOW TO CREATE THE PERFECT WIFE Wendy has found a story that echoes her concerns about womens historic powerlessness & captures a moment when ideas of human development & childraising underwent radical change.