For the source text click/tap here: Ketubot 59
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Our Mishnah lists a wife's obligations: grind grain into flour, bake the bread, do laundry, cook, nurse her child and work with wool. However, the more maidservants she brings into marriage, the less she has to work, and with four maidservants she just sits in an easy chair.
Rabbi Eliezer says that she always needs to work, at least with wool, for idleness leads to unchastity, while Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says that idleness brings to insanity.
Rabbi Chiya disagrees and says that a wife is only for beauty, and she should not do any work that diminishes her beauty.
We explore the concept of beauty in Talmud and Midrash comparing to Platonic ideals of beauty in the west.