Marriage was all a woman’s idea and for man’s acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.

In this epigrammatic, lightly ironic sentence, McGinley plays with mid‑century gender conventions by casting marriage as a social institution driven by women’s desire for stability, legitimacy, and domestic order—while men are imagined as reluctant participants who nonetheless benefit. The phrase “pretty yoke” fuses attraction (“pretty”) with constraint (“yoke”), suggesting that marriage is both appealing and binding. The closing turn—“it becomes us to be grateful”—reads as mock-formal gratitude, implying that men should acknowledge the civilizing, structuring, or emotionally sustaining work women are presumed to bring to marriage. The wit depends on exaggeration and stereotype, inviting readers to notice the power dynamics and cultural scripts embedded in “traditional” matrimony.