The Women and the Secret

The women and the secret is a sly fable by La Fontaine (VIII.6),[1] based on a piece of Late Mediaeval misogynistic humour relayed by Laurentius Abstemius.

[2] The title given by Abstemius to his story was "The man who told his wife he had laid an egg" (De viro qui uxori se ovum peperisse dixerat), with the moral that one should not tell a woman anything one wishes to keep secret.

In 1763, Rowland Rugeley went on to intensify the irony of the ending in his paraphrase of La Fontaine's later version, shifting from the simplicity of village life to an urban emphasis on credulity.

"[5] However suited to the end of the 15th century may have been Abstemius' bare anecdote, it needed La Fontaine's seasoned craft as a fabulist to adapt it to the spirit of Renaissance France.

[13] Book illustrations of the fable often picture one woman talking to another, or to a group, with a finger raised to her lips to indicate that the story should go no further, as in the 19th century engraving by Tony Johannot.