Although it might sound like the last thing a married woman wants to hear, an Italian housewife named Costanza Miriano wrote a book entitled Marry Him and Be Submissive which has turned into an international bestseller.

The National Catholic Register is reporting on the amazing success of Miriano’s book which urges women to be submissive to their husbands. Written as a collection of letters to family and friends, she never expected anyone outside of her circle of friends to take an interest in the book and was surprised by its warm reception by women - in spite of its off-putting title.

Once one opens the book, however, they quickly discover that Miriano’s take on “submission” is not what first comes to a woman’s mind when she hears that word.

“This is not a weak attitude,” she explains on her website, “but the contrary, as women are strong and stable; welcoming and easygoing; they are capable of creating good relations with people.”

In an interview with the Register, she referred to the explanation of submission given by her spiritual director who used to tell her to be like Mary in the Miraculous Medal.

“She has her hands opened, and she gives graces. He said that I had to have my hands open to receive what I was receiving from my husband, but my hands had to be open; I didn’t have to check first if they were good enough. I just had to receive without looking, with hands open.

“Also, just as Mary, with her feet, kills the serpent, so must I kill my tongue — because I don’t always have to comment, to criticize my husband. So he said in that way I could be a good wife — not that I had to be submissive for the sake of being submissive, but because I had to stop being so critical, so unbearable, as I was at the beginning of marriage.”

She took his advice and found that it worked. As she describes in the first chapter of the book:

“ . . . [A] man cannot resist a woman who respects him, recognizes his authority, who makes a sincere effort to listen to him, to let aside her own way of seeing things, who tramples on her ever-biting, teasing, failure-highlighting tongue (we’re very good at that, no doubt), who accepts to walk on paths that are extremely different from those she would naturally choose, just out of love.

“Day by day, he will start asking you what you think, what to do, which way your family should go. And this respect you achieve through respect, this devotion through submission. This is why, having finally won my husband’s respect, I now feel ready to calmly explain to him how greatly beneficial it would be to build a walk–in closet in our bedroom . . ."

In her candid and playful way, she shows that true submission is not about meaningless servitude, but all about love, humility and support. Rather than belittling women, it empowers them – but not in the way modern feminists describe that empowerment.

“ . . . [F]eminists chose the wrong ways to affirm women, to empower women, because we adopted the masculine way,” she told the Register. “We tried to become like men, and we are not men, so we don’t need power, strength or independence. We are different. But we are not happy [because of feminism]. I know of many women who have power, success in their careers, but at the end of the day, they’re not happy, deep down.

Even though feminism seemed good at first, because it drew attention to the beauty of the woman, it quickly went off the rails. “But then we adopted men’s strategies, and we lost our path," she says, "because we call abortion a ‘right’, the right of killing our children, to kill through using contraception. We have given men the right to use our bodies without taking responsibility. It’s not a victory. We lost.”

Instead, her book gives women a reason to celebrate who they are and to let their femininity be a source of healing and strength in their marriage.

“ . . . [T] the main problem for men is selfishness," she writes. "They don’t want to die [to self] for the family, they want to have a part of life that’s separate, to save something [for themselves]. So they have to be in a path of conversion, too.

"But I just ask women: What can we do to help the relationship? What we can do is to learn to watch them with eyes of great fullness. We have to see the good aspects of the man; we have to be like a mirror that gives him a beautiful image of himself. We have to give that good image. When a man feels he’s looked upon in that way, he wants to die, to give his life. If we stop complaining, stop criticizing, stop saying: ‘You’re not worth my life,’ I have seen miracles.”

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