The drowned woman and her husband

One of the earliest appearances of the story is in the 12th century, when it was included in Marie de France's rhymed fables, the Ysopet, under the title "The man who had a contrary wife" (tale 96).

[4] In Italy there had been the elegant Latin verses of Gabriele Faerno's influential Centum Fabulae (1554)[5] and the Italian rhyming version by Giovanni Maria Verdizotti (1570).

La Fontaine begins his account by protesting that he is not among those who use the contemporary French idiom, 'it's nothing, just a woman drowning', referring to those who lazily subscribed to such societal attitudes.

Poggio's jest book and the English 'Merry Tales', on the other hand, avoid drawing a moral and end on the popular idiom of 'swimming against the current',[8] used of just such characters as the contrary wife is said to be.

[14] These follow in the wake of sympathetic treatments of the subject like the "Ophelia" (1852) of John Everett Millais[15] and "A Christian martyr drowned in the Tiber during the reign of Diocletian" (1855) by Eugène Delacroix.