This book is comedy, but only to the judgmental people who wrote it that way. To the rest of us, the joke's on us, because who can say that they are not sometimes complacent or lazy? And the book seems to argue that the just recompense for failure is cuckoldry. Is that so? No, and the problem can be adjusted for quite simply: This book is horror.
Instead of analyzing the story for its merit as satire (which it is), one should at least consider interpreting it as a work of horror fiction, where the emotionally humiliating aspect of the stories is regarded as one's own nightmarish fears about life. In other words, the book should not be seen as a picture of justice. It should be seen for what it is: It is the Oedipal nightmare.
The Oedipal nightmare simply put is the psychological experience of life from a position of fear, paranoia, and desperation, typically caused by one's desire to go backward toward mother (like Oedipus in Freud's opinion), instead of bravely going into the world to have meaningful adventures and journeys.
The effect of this 'failure to launch' so to speak makes a feeling in a person that can be best explained through the feelings of inadequacy, fear of abandonment, fear of being cheated on, etc. Simply put, the lack of new (sometimes painful) experiences makes a person cowardly, and over time, incompetent. In these Medieval French stories, a person has to try new things and follow their passion to avoid this nightmarish fate.
