The woman should also have freedom I selecting her husband. Unfortunately in our society the woman has no say in this respect. Parents and guardians marry her to whomsoever they like. She is not even consulted. This is almost tyranny and oppression. Parents and guardians should understand that it is she who has to spend her life with her husband and not them. It is perfectly correct that as a purdah-observing lady she is not competent enough to select her spouse. Parents can do better selection. But it is essential that the girl should be told about her future husband and her consent obtained. Islam has given her right to claim particular privilege and demand for matrimony.
Regarding alimony both parents and the bride should be very careful and it should e fixed according to the status and financial position of the husband. After narrating everything if the girl does not agree, she should not be compelled for marriage. It is better if before the matrimony, relations of the boy and the girl visit each other for a few months so that they can be fully acquainted with behavior and social and financial status of each other. If the girl and the boy may have a look at each other or photos are exchanged, there is no harm. The Prophet has advised males to marry after having a look at her.
DUTIES OF WIFE
1. The wife should understand the habits of her husband and should try to cut herself to his pattern. Any habit in the husband which is not to her liking should not be pinpointed. She should observe them and keep silent. She should tolerate it but at appropriate moment, with love and respect, just point them out. Those women who act with patience and perseverance succeed in reforming their husband. Those men whose wives encourage them during distress they eventually get over their difficulties and succeed in their efforts.
2. The woman should consider the house where she has come after marriage her own home. She should forget the atmosphere of her parents’ house and try to adjust in the new surroundings. She should understand the conditions obtaining in the new place and should carefully and diligently manage household affairs.
3. Service to husband is the first duty of every woman. Every wife should here If manage the needs of her husband, for example, breakfast and lunch and dinner should be ready in time whether she does it herself or through the help of a cook. She should arrange water, cold or hot for bath and she should put soap, towel and dress in proper order. She should get his shoes polished and if the husband gets ill he should be looked after and provided with medicine and food in time.
4. After the day’s hard and strenuous work when the husband returns home he desires peace and rest. If after entering home he comes across fallen faces and grumbling voices or quarrel among family members and children uncared and unclean and dirty, instead of peace and rest he gets restless and oppressed. He cries, ‘O my God what should I do. In the office I have to put up with ill ill-behavior of officers and coaxing and cajoling from fellow workers. I get perspired after hard work and when I come home I find it consuming and hell –like. O my God death is better than such a life.’ Such persons lose their health very soon and do not live long. When the time of the coming of the husband approaches she should dress the children after proper bath. Also she should dress well and should be ready to receive her husband. When he comes in she should happily receive him. She should help him in changing his dress and should offer him some snacks. And whatever bad news which has to be conveyed to him should be done in the night after he gets sufficiently relaxed and, that too, in a proper way and in appropriate words. Those women who do not do like this and if the husband starts disliking her, she has no case for complaint as she is herself responsible for her fate.
5. It is the duty of every woman that she feels the responsibility for engagements in the house and manages them with love and pleasure. She should not do it as compulsion and extortion: cleanliness of the house, sweeping and brushing, care and cleaning of furniture and keeping them at a proper place and well arranged and decoration of the drawing room and general upkeep of the house are common things which should not be neglected otherwise the house will become a shop of a dealer in old and broken furniture.
(for detail pls read book)
