Tentamina – The Test
From The Seven Sages of Rome
AdulteryViolent punishmentDogBloodMother/daughter relationshipsAge versus youthNature tale: treeTreesOld manRevengeViolenceWomen committing violence
The Test
A young woman who is sexually unsatisfied by her old husband wishes to take a lover. Before she does so, however, her mother counsels her to test her husband’s patience and depth of feeling. The young wife first cuts down her husband’s favourite tree, then kills his beloved dog, and receives no punishment – this, she reports to her mother, encourages her to take lover. But the final test – disrupting a dinner and shaming her husband before guests – results in her husband losing patience, and ordering her to be blood-let to within an inch of her life. She tells her mother she no longer desires a lover.
[From Brunner, The Seven Sages of Rome (Southern Version) (1933). Added by Jane Bonsall.]
Note
Nishimura notes the motif index code for this narrative (TU1159: complaisance of old husband), and also relevant analogues and reference stories, including: Vincentius Bellovacensis, Speculum Morale, 3.9.5; Gesta Romanorum, 121 ‘Die zwei Ritter’; Decameron, 7.9; Wickram, Das Rollwagenbüchlin, 16 ‘Von einem Schneider'; English Folktales, p. 340, ‘The Domineering Husband’; French Folktales, 26 ‘The Handless Girl’; Rakugo, ‘Umaya Kaji (Stable on Fire)’.