How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Line). We used the line numbering found on Librarius's online edition.
Quote #10
'Dooth with my lyf and deth right as yow lest.'
[…]
And she obeyed hym in every thyng
that myghte doon hym plesance or likyng.
(1254, 1261 – 1262)
The knight's yielding of mastery to his wife prompts an even more extreme yielding of it on her part, with her offer to let her husband "dooth with my lyf and deth right as yow lest" and our narrator's assertion that, from that point forward, she obeyed her husband in everything. We can't help but feel this is something of a cop-out when it comes to the moral the story has supposedly been pushing; the ending seems to be saying that women only want their husbands to be willing to yield mastery to them, but don't actually desire it.
Quote #11
[…]. –and Jesu Crist us sende
Housbondes meeke, yonge, fressh abedde,
And grace t'overbyde hem that we wedde;
And eek I praye Jesus shorte hir lyves
That nat wol be governed by hir wyves.
(1264 – 1268)
Alleviating our discomfort at the ending in which the wife actually ends up yielding mastery to her husband, the Wife's familiar cry for sovereignty rings out at the end of the tale in asking for grace to overrule our husbands and the shortening of the lives of all those husbands who won't be ruled. The Wife, we know, would never give power back to her husband once he had yielded it!