Broadsheets documenting the battle between the sexes were widespread in sixteenth-century northern Europe, and the "battle for the trousers" was a popular way of representing the struggle. Here, the wife demands help putting on her husband’s trousers, "Put the trousers on us with goodwill. For they are mine as well as yours. And keep still, you knavish scum. Or, Jan, you’ll taste my fists." Her husband plaintively asks to keep his codpiece, "Ah wife, I’ll gladly pull up your trousers. But the breech-front, I can hardly do without." The fool comments on the man’s surrender of his pants, "One finds no greater fool in the world than he who pulls up his wife’s trousers." (Translation credit: Walter Melion)
The image is full of symbols of the wife’s laziness and vanity. Zoom in on the image to find:
• The pot engulfed in flames
• The mirror
• The brush and pan hanging unused on the wall
• The unmade bed
