Sharing the housework in the <i>Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband</i> and <i>The Wright's Chaste Wife</i>

This essay asks what two understudied Middle English poems can tell us about the division of labor in late-medieval bourgeois homes. Both poems can be located in London at the end of the fifteenth century and both invite their readers to imagine men doing women's work, that is, work normally undertaken by women at home, including some manufacturing tasks (e.g., flax work) alongside childcare and other housework.1 Both poems are undoubtedly meant to raise a laugh. The husband in the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband seems likely to fail spectacularly at his novel chores whereas the would-be adulterers in The Wright's Chaste Wife make a surprisingly good job of the work that the chaste wife delegates to them. In their deliberate attribution of household tasks across gender lines, the poems reflect the complex realities of life in the late-medieval bourgeois home, in which men and women might share tasks that more normative texts allot to one sex or the other. In particular, their status as jokes allows for fresh consideration of the various ways in which women's work might have been perceived both by male householders and by the apparently mixed audience of the two manuscripts in which the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife are preserved. I will be arguing here that comedy is a mode capable of containing an especially wide range of attitudes to the matters of housework and men's implication in the day-to-day running of the home.Neither the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband nor The Wright's Chaste Wife has garnered much critical attention. The Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband awaits a critical edition and the unique critical edition of The Wright's Chaste Wife dates to the nineteenth century.2 As we will see, the few scholars who have addressed the poems have most often done so from the disciplinary perspectives of social and economic history. I propose to complement these studies with a literary approach that pays greater attention to the poems’ tones and to the full range of their potential interpretations. The method pursued is often comparative. In order to define their particular interventions in late-medieval discussions of household labor, I set the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife alongside a series of primary texts with which they may be more or less closely related. I also afford special attention to manuscript transmission with a view to considering the poems’ possible receptions.Much of what follows is descriptive and expository—one of my basic aims is to facilitate further work on the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife by collecting together what can currently be known about them. At the same time, I have deliberately avoided the temptation to commit the texts to a particular thesis or to make claims that might overstate their value as representatives of late-medieval culture. Both works survive in unique manuscript copies and the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband is incomplete. In many ways, these poems are unusual, and faced with such unusual poems, we do well to acknowledge what cannot be known about them as well as what can. With this last consideration in mind, I present the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife as an invitation to think again about who did what kinds of housework in late-medieval homes and how that housework was conceived.The analysis opens with a discussion of the treatment of women's work in the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband. While there is some uncertainty regarding the target of this poem's satire, I argue that it clearly works to valorize women's contributions to the day-to-day running of the home. Turning to The Wright's Chaste Wife, I highlight the unusual nature of the punishment visited upon the text's would-be adulterers—a tour of the poem's closest analogues helps to clarify this point—before going on to suggest that, where it shows men doing women's work, the poem profiles the odd-jobbing man as an ideal husband. From there I go on to consider the extent to which the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife at once manifest and surpass late-medieval discourses of bourgeois femininity. Where they show women playing an active role in household economies, they are thoroughly in tune with a range of texts both normative and more literary, but where they anticipate men undertaking women's work, they break new ground in the representation of bourgeois masculinity.The analysis concludes with a brief reflection on some of the challenges and opportunities associated with reading these late-medieval comic texts: what (if any) significance can be attributed to the narrowness of their circulation and/or incompletion? How can we pursue “straight” readings of the texts as evidence of late-medieval attitudes alongside readings that recognize their essential flippancy? What might these poems be able to show us that other texts can't?The Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband takes as its theme a debate between a husband and a wife about whose work is hardest. When the husband returns home one day to find his dinner unmade, he accuses his wife of gadding about on visits instead of tending to her housework. In her defense, the wife rehearses the long list of tasks that she must undertake besides the cooking. After a sleepless night looking after their children, she gets up before her husband to milk their cows and turn them out into the field (ll. 45–48); later she makes butter and cheese while trying to keep the children happy (ll. 49–52); then she feeds their chickens and ducks and tends to their goslings (ll. 53–56); then she bakes and brews, and prepares flax for spinning, all the while keeping an eye on the pot (ll. 57–59); and then she cards and spins wool and weaves linen and woolen cloth so as to avoid the expense of buying these things in (ll. 60, 65–68). Finally, the wife feeds the farm animals before her husband comes home and then she prepares their lunch (ll. 69–71). In reward, she says, she gets no thanks, only chiding (ll. 72–76).The roster of tasks that this wife claims to perform is representative of lists of women's chores found in a range of texts that pre- and postdate the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband. Thus, for example, while teaching the French vocabulary of estates management, Walter de Bibbesworth's mid-thirteenth-century Tretiz also advises its dedicatee, Dionisie de Montchensi, on housework, including the care of infants, baking, sowing and spinning flax, and roasting malt and Dionisie is to have undertaken all these tasks Walter on an he is the of from After and the flax, the must be and that is, a de a (ll. I that turn to the have done by the go to the and then up the and with a but the and the that then on to the of spinning and the of (ll. the of the of also has an of women's work that with the list of in the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband. and to male householders we that as well as keeping the milk the the and the the children and a day for the for to be to the and that the returns the same in make butter and the and the and up the and a flax and to be into and into make and out of wool or for a with the and the and the at and in what is and from the tasks that they example, that his of spinning is his no (ll. there are other matters about in I a to his discussion of women's be it that I of and a I what they to The Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband from the of on where it the list of women's chores in the of a who them well and their This allows for a fresh of the of housework and in particular of the in which this labor is The of her to her chores with the of childcare and a husband is a from the order by and of the Ballad is clearly comic but it is to the of the The a audience in its which a to its of women that to and they and with of that (ll. it is that women the of the work the on to an and regarding the of the text's the In the the at to with the The text's the (ll. and the of the in which she The to and she to then her (ll. the husband is to at one in their While the wife claims and as the husband accuses her of her these tasks be undertaken so the have nor in no good that with and (ll. the where she that many women are likely to have undertaken all the chores in the poem all the poem's may have to clarify its his the husband challenges her to with make I with my to the I be and at my as by and (ll. it in its unique manuscript the poem is a of the wife at the but the at are the and to her and to the they a here I I the a the for to (ll. it seems that must the and while it is that he has much to about the nature of his work, it is that he will be by the that he nor is it that the wife has to The of the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband a of What will the wife the and returns home will she also that her work is for what extent are we to her especially considering the that she has her How closely is the wife in this poem to the who in the late-medieval do the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband is The of the upon may have the Where in Middle English do we and looking after the the poem's may have a to The one that can be is that to the manuscript the poem is to for the of the The of the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband are the of the of that The who the might have more there and no of the poem has been from this and economic turn to the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband to their discussions of late-medieval women's has that, a of the poem a of the from a bourgeois This is the of the of who might have its of the Ballad of a Tyrannical the has a list of the and of in with the of the at work in other manuscripts from the this allows for the of the the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband out the home life of the for the of the we might imagine that its readers only to the that it is that the in the poem are of the The text's that they good to as they as we will see, the who at the end of The Wright's Chaste Wife can her housework with that of the wife in that might also that the of the of her at as well as before upon her all the in the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband to and a in the household might be with their The poem the of the of his work and for this seems to valorize that work, of the that its a bourgeois audience was to the value of the work is the in the the in the poem has no one to her as householders that will have been of the of and to it the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband asks its audience to imagine what of its husband might As a this into the nature of we are to be that the husband that he on his tasks and that she on the poem the of how the husband might at women's work, the of the apparently his his to his wife must work out as to the he says, no more for I can (ll. In The Wright's Chaste Wife shows men doing women's work What is as well as an of the tasks undertaken by in this a to out at home is as a of his masculinity.The Wright's Chaste Wife a takes a wife who is for her and of a her a her out with a that will as of her for as long as the new wife the will its After the that he will to from home and that his wife will be by the a special for his that is with a to a When he is on work, the takes with his which the of his who to its At the the the wife to go to after to she the but into the into the and a a of and by the who the men to work flax in for and When the returns home, he is to find his in this but his wife only to them at the end of the the wife comes to her husband. The men and the wife is to keep the that they of the closest analogues of The Wright's Chaste Wife helps to clarify this poem's particular to late-medieval of women's it will be that the in a in the later that the associated with the the of its and with a of other In The the with by them upon other at in for her the a is to a in a in the the a the and the a the as a With its the French the to the of The Wright's Chaste the is by a of in which the wife her would-be to while her husband their Finally, a that as of the has a in the husband a in the of a that will for as long as the wife is and a in which the would-be are of these is the flax work that is to the men who the wife to The closest that I have found is in the of the French the is an and the two would-be are set to the takes in a The husband is a and his from his wife is by a at seems to that, for the late-medieval English audience of The Wright's Chaste Wife, the flax of the would-be in the have been a good of the poem's as well as its from the special punishment that it visits upon the from Bibbesworth's of and the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband that flax work was to be women's work in the later Middle in an of gender we are how men on with The of the men's new chores is Both the and the are on which to their flax as well as a the to do the and that the flax from the of the This is work, as the to his I for to after my I and for to I my (ll. the wife that she to her (ll. is a at work in late-medieval flax for The at the of in de may be in and but makes the in When in a asks what the women do while they for to his cloth work to them to their the of the with have and to for to and and I and so with long for the flax and wool work is to and the and the to undertake labor, the wife their The of the takes a When he to the flax as his are the wife a and her to The good a I was I do to (ll. doing women's work the has been a job that might have been to a as much housework of all kinds will have been done by in in the the is to to the work that the men do more of the of flax in which they are (ll. men to is a that literary history. In as a punishment for must his with the of his and with her While this be as the of the was more his he to the of women and his spinning with them to his Middle English male with spinning When in to the that he for he his in a we are on his While the of the in is apparently that more on as the in the the of the to the at this attention on the nature of his at the of and of of the apparently that women's work In The Wright's Chaste Wife, the work to the men is undoubtedly as a of comic to the wife as well as the with which they approach their new chores to the The to the wife in which he out the of his work are especially I I all and no (ll. of the men's are where they other up on the of their The the to so that their flax will be to and the the that no he to that is, the that women's work is to men's is in The Wright's Chaste Wife where the shows the would-be adulterers into a of home from his the his at work on a of good and the did and and to (ll. of the men the flax, the other and the spins they are the men are by their The that he before such and the and the to to the (ll. The can that the men have a in the of the odd-jobbing at the of the poem by the the is as a man who that to his that he or man he no nor other what so they he and (ll. the Ballad of a Tyrannical The Wright's Chaste Wife but work of this as well as the who undertake a the as a role he with including and have the and the of this The Wright's Chaste Wife, it is the of the wife that about the of her work the home. an as well as When the to work for she the that to her the in her in to the a (ll. is also When the up to her from the she I here and (ll. then gets on with her work might also that the for which the wife the of her would-be the of was one of the more of the bourgeois In the that he for his the of the de the of a wife who her husband by the of this household of the wife in The Wright's Chaste Wife has to the that the out of a of women's the poem shows the wife the out of a faced by many late-medieval women in which their often the unique of the the poem to one of his work may have been to the poem's the of the text's which is but I to that the poem the happy of the as a In this both husband and wife are in the of their the special to and she its in his of the is at the end of the the is by his the men at work, the her I to do two or my do no be as to (ll. is of the to her husband in the work of their household into the that the bourgeois and his This is upon the in her will be that was one of the that the to his wife in the she was to be as well as of (ll. is what the The her that the The (ll. a wife on he can their in the in The Wright's Chaste Wife the visited upon whose less is by the of The Wright's Chaste Wife the poem into a debate regarding the nature of bourgeois and At this the from the to consider the of the was by the and most of all in the of and of the of (ll. to the poem to that is, the of whose was the of The that the is here into to which the English of the poem is of a in late-medieval that to the as a of the between and their The between the consideration of household management, and that at this also the manuscript the unique of The Wright's Chaste Wife, This London with including a of for and two poems that the of both for the and their the and The and the of the for its in London at the turn of the century a to that for its of its the is thoroughly of its a of normative and more literary late-medieval a new at the same as they about the potential of the The bourgeois wife so was a she be to and her while at the same a role In the the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband texts that to about women's and the on women's in that manuscript is so that it has been as a of has as well as two and at one that to have been or with women in Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife can both be into the of the that them and the discourses of bourgeois in which The wife can be as a of and bourgeois in the that I have and the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband might be as a of bourgeois and In this the and chiding are as of his and the poem's debate shows in the care and on which in this the husband that he and his wife a good that we have is he to his before that they the poems also from their In particular, the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife discussions about gender the household where they consider the to which male might be In the two poems, men's in women's housework is a comic that as a for or for the texts raise the of how much work of this men might undertake and the that this might have on their and was from evidence found in to English and that show men's in the kinds of housework that was most often done by including and While their evidence to the after less can be for the Middle where that their them perform such as or both the of a who is by his for one of his male and as well as in his and of a late-medieval male in the of a and of male who the by and that to a of his his the division of labor by gender was less at a and the same be to their out their where women from later in the fifteenth some more tasks that to women and will have been undertaken by male and When the in The Wright's Chaste Wife is and as well as we have an that with and of a in a that might have been done by women (ll. In keeping the is one of the tasks attributed to In the Wright's Chaste Wife, the to in with this work is as an of his the on the men's in the day-to-day running of the household was much addressed by late-medieval English texts male bourgeois on the of household and the and example, the of and to the of and work be in At the same as it for the life How the his a few on the care of they be with and (ll. the nor How the his further into men's In texts addressed to women are more on the work to keep the household from day to example, How the Wife her advises that, in the of her the make that her household is and on in an be to in with the and the with their tasks (ll. How the his and How the Wife her survive in these the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife, survive in unique copies as we have the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband is incomplete. What is the that do the poems in a to the with which they are The that the works are in of their and they are into that may have to the in both the and the the containing the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife are the last of manuscript to have been to the At a more likely to texts new it may be that the poems’ their of discussion of housework in the texts addressed to bourgeois men helps to clarify the of the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife but the with to more household is also this a reading of the poems as it their circulation the of their The poems’ status as jokes further their some the husband in the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and the would-be in The Wright's Chaste Wife might be as to an men's from women's household the texts might more or less regarding men's in some of running the home that more to considering the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife, it be to one of these we must for the that readers no less might in their to a this the for readers is so much to between possible of the for that they are or or or or to their in there is such a as a that in the text's to more one at and literary have to to it is to to the of that the of for their and their and manuscript the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife afford us to a in which of and the of women's as its of the work of social and economic who have the contributions to women's by the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste The an full list of tasks that might be attributed to women and the a in which a work often from his these I have an of the value that the poems to women's work as is the and the of the tasks that make the in the Ballad and the nature of the flax work is in The Wright's Chaste the cannot be it might be that these poems’ of housework as work with the treatment of chores in and are more often with a view to of and have also been to the value of my texts as of attitudes and housework that are and alongside and the for bourgeois The Wright's Chaste Wife out for its of men's in women's flax In this it a more deliberate is to the by and in which men and women some tasks the home. its The Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband also this where it its readers to imagine the husband looking after his children, the and butter and The that the men in these texts manifest in the of women's and to the or undertaking of that of a range of that to men faced with the realities of household life in late-medieval might be or by the poems’ late-medieval their to of household the Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband and The Wright's Chaste Wife can to only of who did what in the late-medieval home but also of the mixed and that with the division of household labor by