← All chapters

Household Tales · Chapter

The Lazy Spinner explained

A lazy wife avoids spinning by tricking her husband with a false prophecy from the forest and a deceptive boiling of tow instead of yarn, ultimately silencing his complaints.

What happens

A lazy wife avoids spinning by tricking her husband with a false prophecy from the forest and a deceptive boiling of tow instead of yarn, ultimately silencing his complaints.

Themes in this chapter

  • Virtue Rewarded and Vice Punished

    The lazy wife's vice is not punished; instead, she successfully evades work through deceit, subverting the typical moral outcome.

  • Family Dynamics and Betrayal

    The wife betrays her husband's trust through repeated lies and manipulation, highlighting dysfunctional marital dynamics.

Characters to notice

  • the man

    The husband who is repeatedly tricked by his wife into abandoning his demands for her to spin and wind yarn.

  • the wife

    The lazy and cunning wife who uses deceit to avoid work, including pretending to be a prophetic voice in the forest and substituting tow for yarn.

Key passages

  • “He who cuts wood for reels shall die, And he who winds, shall perish.”

    Anyone who makes a reel or winds yarn will die.

    The wife's fabricated prophecy to scare her husband from making reels.

  • “if the cock should happen to crow, and you are not attending to the yarn, it will become tow.”

    If the rooster crows while you're not watching the yarn, it will turn into waste fibers.

    The wife's false warning to avoid being caught substituting tow for yarn.

Read this chapter freeBook page