Marabel Morgan

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Marabel Morgan (* 25. June 1937 in Crestline , Ohio as Marabel Hawk ) is a US-based non-fiction writer.

Life

Marabel Morgan was born in Crestline, Ohio to a security guard and housewife who was married three times. After graduating from high school, she worked in a cosmetics store to earn enough money to study home economics. However , she later had to abandon her studies at Ohio State University for lack of money. She then worked as a consultant for the organization Campus for Christ , including at the University of Miami , where she met her future husband Charles Morgan Junior in 1962. They both married in 1964 and settled in Miami , with her husband working as a lawyer and as a housewife she raised their two daughters. The first marital crisis came after about six years, when Morgan became dissatisfied with herself and her husband and the failure of the marriage was in the room. She realized for herself that she couldn't change her husband, so she had to change herself. Contrary to her original will, she found the solution to her problems in absolute devotion to her husband, which in particular also included sexual extradition.

In the same year, in 1970, she founded Total Woman, Inc., a company that was supposed to take care of the marketing of this idea. From then on she gave seminars for Christian-oriented wives and how they should show themselves to their husbands in devotion. The seminars consisted of four two-hour sessions for $ 15. After a few years, she had trained over 100 instructors who were giving further courses in 28 states and Canada. By 1975 there were already over 15,000 graduates, including the singer Anita Bryant , the wives of Jack Nicklaus and Joe Frazier , as well as 12 player wives from the American football team Miami Dolphins , which just after completing the course became the first football team to have a season without a loss finished.

In the non-fiction book The Total , she wrote her four basic ideas of ignoring man's faults and thinking of his virtues, admiring him physically, appreciating him and adapting to the idea that the husband is the king and the wife the queen Woman down. This was published in December 1973 by the small publishing house Fleming H. Revell Company , which in turn was a subsidiary of the evangelically oriented publishing group Baker Publishing Group . The initial print run was 5000 copies and the book sold over 500,000 copies within the first year, making it the most successful non-fiction book in 1974 in the United States. The paperback rights were sold for over $ 600,000. The bestseller has been translated into several languages ​​and appeared in 1977 after a translation by Arnold Sperling-Botteron at the Swiss Leonis publishing house under the title Die totale Frau , although it has sold so much over the years that the book was published in 1994 with the seventh and so far last edition reappeared. To date, the book has sold over 10 million copies worldwide.

With the success came the book tours and frequent visits to the “ Phil Donahue Show” , a cover picture of Time magazine from March 14, 1977 and a lot of criticism from feminist groups. Not exclusively, however, the allegedly propagated enslavement of the wife was also criticized from the theological side, the theologian Martin E. Marty described the ideas of Morgan as "sick". Sexologists Masters and Johnson saw in the book "inaccuracies [...] clichés [and] old-fashioned dogmas".

Marabel Morgan has served as inspiration for several film and television productions. The September 23, 1977 episode Anger was based in Chapter 17 of the crime series Detective Rockford , in which bestselling author Anne Louise Clement, played by Claudette Nevins , believes her book about perfect wife behavior is the reason for the death threats against her family, which is why she hires Jim Rockford, played by James Garner, as a bodyguard. In the comedy Green Tomatoes , Evelyn Couch, played by Kathy Bates, tries to seduce her husband by wrapping herself in adhesive film. This method of seduction was suggested by Morgan in The Total Woman .

Works (selection)

  • The Total Woman (1973)
  • Total Joy (1983)
  • The Total Woman Cookbook (1980)
  • The Electric Woman (1986)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Morgan, Marabel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hawk, Marabel (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American non-fiction author
DATE OF BIRTH June 25, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Crestline , Ohio , United States