Spinelloccio’s wife shows remarkably little resistance to participating in Zeppa’s revenge plot—although his intent to possess her carries a latent threat that he will do so either with her cooperation (in which case, she also gets to pay her husband back for his infidelity) or by force—demonstrating her limited capacity for action in the context of the plans of the men around her. Another way in which the vulnerability of women—whose sexual chastity is a proxy for their husbands’ honor—is in play here is the fact that the original sin was committed by her husband and her friend, yet she is the one paying a price for it now. The wives, in this “revenge” tale, become objects of civil and friendly exchange between their husbands.