ABSTRACT

Violence by wives against husbands would have dramatically called into question the masculine honour not only of the victim but also of the other men in the community. Eventually the women in the play come to the conclusion that most of their husbands' aggression was their own fault: it was due to the wives' bad behaviour and especially their 'continuous shouting', which would drive the men first to the pub and later to violence. For centuries, women's speech and men's physical aggression have been considered to be strongly linked, following on from each other. It is worth noting that more moderate physical aggression and, to some extent, psychological pressure were criminalized. Women are only rarely mentioned as perpetrators of physical violence against men. Women behaving aggressively caused confusion in the first place, because they called into question the gender expectations of their time.