Abstra ct Using the jokes published in a popular, middle-class Canadian magazine, this article examines the depiction of marriage and of spousal relations in the early twentieth century. The humour concentrated particularly on the wife or prospective wife, playing an increasingly prescriptive role for both male and female behaviour within marriage. Marriage humour acted as a social control mechanism in response to the changing public and private status of women. Marriage has long been the

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... y social institution structuring gender relations and behaviour. The public discussion of marriage and spousal relations can thus be viewed as addressing the issue of appropriate adult male-female relations and behaviour. When that behaviour alters (or is perceived to alter) over time, the public discussion of marriage can be used to examine the societal response to threatened change in the established norms. This paper examines popular humour concerning marriage over a thirty-year period in Canada with a view to revealing societal expectations regarding marriage and spousal relations. It argues that as pressures within marriage altered and as the public and private status of women rose in the early decades of the twentieth century, marriage humour operated as a social control mechanism, reasserting the traditional behav-ioural expectations and censuring "deviant" female activity.