In this story, the characters are punished for their attempts to be clever rather than rewarded for them. It becomes clear that the fuller’s wife is not as clever as she thinks, and by forgetting the sulfur, she shows she has not thought of all possibilities. The wicker cage is perhaps meant to correspond with the jar from the pauper’s wife’s story, and this story’s negative view of infidelity provides a rebuttal to the celebration of infidelity in that earlier story.