ABSTRACT

The ballad describes the escalating argument: when Anne Wallen refuses to hold her tongue, her husband hits her in the head. "The Unnatural Wife" is a goodnight ballad about Alice Davis, who, the ballad reports, killed her husband on June 29, 1628, by stabbing him with a knife. As in the case of Wallen the husband murder in this ballad occurs in the context of a domestic dispute; in this variation, Alice's husband tries to borrow her money for his own use. If taking an oath is a precipitating factor that enables the act of spousal murder, then part of its work is in un-swearing the original marriage vow and, in doing so, disavowing the derivative status of coverture and allowing the wife to step into independent subjectivity. The murders, essentially, seal the deal. Therefore, so long as the speaker takes her oath, and means that oath in the moment of speech, it stands as a speech-act.