The Woman Drowned by Jean de La Fontaine

Name: The Woman Drowned
Author: Jean de La Fontaine

La Fontaine rejects the cruel saying that a drowning woman is of little consequence, insisting that the loss of a wife brings profound grief. In the fable, a woman dies in the water, and her sorrowing husband searches for her body so that he may give her honourable burial rites. He asks men walking near the fatal place whether they have seen his wife or anything belonging to her. One tells him to search downstream, since the current must have carried her away. Another says he should search upstream instead, joking that her love of contradiction would have made her float against the stream. The speaker calls the joke badly timed and declines to decide whether such contrariness is truly a fault of women, while asserting that natural propensities persist to the very end and, if possible, beyond it.

By Jean de La Fontaine · First published 1668 · Genre: Fable, Satire, Narrative Poetry · 347 words

First lines

I hate that saying, old and savage, / "Tis nothing but a woman drowning. " / That's much, I say. What grief more keen should have edge / Than loss of her, of all our joys the crowning? / Thus much suggests the fable I am borrowing. / A woman perish'd in the water, / Where, anxiously, and sorrowing, / Her husband sought her, / To ease the grief he could not cure, / By honour'd rites of sepulture. / It chanced that near the fatal spot, / Along the stream which had / Produced a death so sad, / There walk'd some men that knew it not. / The husband ask'd if they had seen / His wife, or aught that hers had been. / One promptly answer'd, 'No! / But search the stream below: / It must nave borne her in its flow. ' / 'No,' said another; 'search above. / In that direction / She would have floated, by the love / Of contradiction. ' / This joke was truly out of season; -- / I don't propose to weigh its reason. / But whether such propensity / The sex's fault may be, / Or not, one thing is very sure, / Its own propensities endure. / Up to the end they'll have their will, / And, if it could be, further still.[1]

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Genres

Fable — The poem explicitly presents itself as a borrowed fable and uses a brief illustrative narrative to deliver a pointed moral observation about human character.
Satire — Its conclusion satirically generalizes about women’s supposed contrariness, using the drowning woman’s imagined movement upstream as a cruel comic premise.
Narrative Poetry — The work tells a complete story in verse: a woman drowns, her husband searches for her, and bystanders offer conflicting directions.
Didactic Poetry — Like many fables, the narrative is structured to imply a lesson about enduring personal dispositions, stated directly in the closing lines.

What this Textopian page supports

The Woman Drowned is listed on Textopian as a fable by Jean de La Fontaine, dated 1668 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Work type: Fable
Author: Jean de La Fontaine
Date: 1668 CE
Language: English
Genres: Fable, Satire, Narrative Poetry, Didactic Poetry, Comic Verse
Length: 347 words
Structure: 1 section, 2 paragraphs
Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)

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