- description
- # Wife's "Holofernes" Accusation and Narrator's Reflection
## Overview
This segment, titled "Wife's 'Holofernes' Accusation and Narrator's Reflection," is an excerpt from the short story "[I and My Chimney](arke:01KG6YFYGCYAYC9GHGT2Z086S9)". It spans lines 747 to 763 of the source text and was extracted from the file "[i_and_my_chimney.txt](arke:01KG6YDDFE1YJ2Q37Q9JT1AJVB)". This segment is part of the larger "[Melville](arke:01KG6YCG626JN4FCG8QK17CQCF)" collection.
## Context
The narrator recounts a morning conversation at breakfast where his wife, in a characteristic didactic and reproachful tone, refers to him as "Holofernes." This nickname is used by his wife to denote any "fell domestic despot." The narrator explains that when he resists her "ambitious innovations," she likens him to the biblical figure and reads aloud newspaper accounts of domestic tyranny, often culminating in violence and suicide. This segment follows "[Negotiation with Mr. Scribe and Narrator's Inability to Part](arke:01KG6YGB4RB5GTN0B58WXKW9S3)" and precedes "[Wife's Suspicious Calm and Visit to Mr. Scribe's Residence](arke:01KG6YGB4YX3C69EP3RFCYN8TQ)".
## Contents
The text details the narrator's wife's use of the name "Holofernes" as a term of endearment and criticism for her husband when he opposes her plans. It includes a vivid, albeit fictionalized, description of a newspaper story she might read, detailing a tyrannical husband who commits horrific acts of violence against his family before taking his own life. The narrator reflects on his wife's method of expressing disapproval and the dramatic narratives she employs.
- description_generated_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:51.867Z
- description_model
- gemini-2.5-flash-lite
- description_title
- Wife's "Holofernes" Accusation and Narrator's Reflection
- end_line
- 763
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:24.702Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 747
- text
- “So Holofernes will have his way, never mind whose heart breaks for
it,” said my wife next morning, at breakfast, in that half-didactic,
half-reproachful way of hers, which is harder to bear than her most
energetic assault. Holofernes, too, is with her a pet name for any fell
domestic despot. So, whenever, against her most ambitious innovations,
those which saw me quite across the grain, I, as in the present
instance, stand with however little steadfastness on the defence, she
is sure to call me Holofernes, and ten to one takes the first
opportunity to read aloud, with a suppressed emphasis, of an evening,
the first newspaper paragraph about some tyrannic day-laborer, who,
after being for many years the Caligula of his family, ends by beating
his long-suffering spouse to death, with a garret door wrenched off its
hinges, and then, pitching his little innocents out of the window,
suicidally turns inward towards the broken wall scored with the
butcher’s and baker’s bills, and so rushes headlong to his dreadful
account.
- title
- Wife's "Holofernes" Accusation and Narrator's Reflection