Know, dear sister, that if you wish to follow my advice you will have great care and regard for what you and I can afford to do, according to our estate.  Have a care that you be honestly clad, without new devices and without too much or too little frippery.  And before you leave your chamber and house, take care first that the collar of your shift, and of your blanchet, cotte and surcotte, do not hang out one over the other, as happens with certain drunken, foolish or witless women, who have no care for their honour, nor for the honesty of their estate or of their husbands, and who walk with roving eyes and head horribly reared up like a lion (la teste espoventablement levee comme un lyon!), their hair straggling out of their wimples, and the collars of their shifts and cottes crumpled the one upon the other, and who walk mannishly and bear themselves uncouthly before folk without shame.  And if one speaks to them about it, they excuse themselves on the ground of their industry and humility, saying that they are so diligent, hardworking, and humble that they care not for themselves.  But they lie; they care so much for themselves that if they were in an honourable company, never would they be willing that men should wait less upon them than upon the wiser ladies of like lineage with themselves, nor that they should have fewer salutations, bows, reverences and speech than the rest, but rather they desire more.  And they are unworthy of it, for they know not how to maintain their own honourable fame, nay, nor the fame of their husbands and of their lineage, which they bring to shame.  Therefore, fair sister, have a care that your hair, wimple, kerchief and hood and all the rest of your attire be well arranged and decently ordered, that none who see you can laugh or mock at you, but that all the others may find in you an example of fair and simple and decent array....  When you go to town or to church go suitably accompanied by honourable women according to your estate, and flee suspicious company, never allowing any ill famed woman to be seen in your presence.  And as you go bear your head upright and your eyelids low and without fluttering, and look straight in front of you about four rods ahead, without looking round at any man or woman to the right or to the left, nor looking up, nor glancing from place to place, nor stopping to speak to anyone on the road.[6]

Such was the model of female deportment in the Middle Ages.

Let us pass from the lady to the wife.  On the attitude of wife to husband the Menagier’s ideas are much the same as those of the rest of his age.  They may be summed up as submission, obedience, and constant attention.  She must be buxom at bed and at board, even in circumstances when buxomness hides a heavy heart.  The good sense of the burgess does not prevent him from likening the wife’s love for her husband to the fidelity of domestic animals towards their masters:  ’Of the domestic