La Farce du cuvier

     La Farce du Cuvier is a short but biting family farce about a husband who is subjugated by his wife and her mother to do all the chores. The wife accidently falls into a vat of dirty washing, and when she calls to her husband to help her out, he responds "This is not on my list". Eventually he helps her out after she promises to do all the housework. This period in history is interesting in terms of marital relations in that there is a historical understanding that women had few rights and often suffered under their husbands, but at the same time in popular literature we see the opposite dynamic, where women are seen as the agressors to their poor husbands. We might think of the Quinze joies de mariage as an exemple of this relationship. This popular representation of women as the "old ball and chain" exists today, making the farce both antiquated and contemporary from a feminist perspective.