The Bad women 1.
(1) A bourgeois woman has strayed into a circle of aristocratic ladies, the result being unequivocal unease and embarrassment.
The initial twelve illustrations of “bad women” were to be countered by the ensuing six illustrations of “good women” and “corrected” by an accompanying novella by Goethe.
(Johann Friedrich Cotta’s Taschenbuch für Damen auf das Jahr 1801 (Tübingen 1801). (See letter 290).
The Bad Women 2.
(2) A woman interrupts two fisher wives and creates an argument through inappropriate gossip.
The Bad Women 3.
(3) A married couple at the dinner table after an argument.
The Bad Women 4.
(4) While a husband cozily sips wine, his wife secretly entertains a soldier at the window.
The Bad Women 5.
(5) “And he shall be your master”: the parson and his wife pass by a shoemaker’s shop in a telling snapshot positioning him directly beneath a slipper (evoking the German idiom for the “hen-pecked husband), her beneath a heart (Goethe took exception to the insinuated slight against the emperor as well, i.e., to the word Kaiser beneath the slipper).
The Bad Women 6.
(6) In a well-known scene from a play by Iffland, a husband’s knees begin buckling after having to hold his wife’s yarn properly for an excessively long time.
The Bad Women 7.
(7) A hypocritical housekeeper tries to influence her lord’s last will and testament.
The Bad Women 8.
(8) A poor barrel maker must listen to his wife’s tirades echoing his beating on the barrel slats.
The Bad Women 9.
(9) A princess has fallen asleep while translating French poets, while her maidservant anxiously (and tearfully) holds her inkwell in front of her lady as ordered lest the princess awaken and find the inkwell not in the accustomed place.
The Bad Women 10.
(10) A woman meditates amid nature while the obedient man holds her garment train.
The Bad Women 11.
(11) The wife of a minister of war, formerly his cook, half-dressed in a negligée, rests nonchalantly on a sofa, caressing her daughter while kicking her crippled son.
The Bad Women 12.
(12) A Jew indelicately interrupts a couple during their walk that he might more easily pressure the husband to pay up his wife’s enormous bills.
The Good Women: Lucretia at home with her maids.
Wilhelm Ihne, The History of Rome, vol. 1 (London 1871), 75–76:
Now when Tarquinius had reigned twenty-four years, it came to pass that he besieged Ardea, the town of the Rutuli, in Latium; and one evening, when the king’s sons were supping with their cousin, Tarquinius Collatinus, who lived in Collatia, they talked of their wives, and each praised the virtue and thriftiness of his own wife. Thereupon they agreed to go and see which of the ladies deserved the highest praise. Without delay they mounted their horses and galloped quickly to Rome, and then to Collatia to take the ladies by surprise. They found the daughters-in-law of the king enjoying themselves at a feast, but Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, they found sitting up late at night with her maids busy with spinning and other household work. Therefore Lucretia was acknowledged to be the matron most worthy of praise.
The Good Women: The young woman and bride.
The Good Women: The wife.
The Good Women: The mother.