A woman always has her revenge ready.

The line trades on a comic, misogynistic stereotype common in early modern satire: that women are perpetually alert to slights and keep retaliation “in reserve.” Read within the spirit of Molière’s theater, it functions less as a psychological truth than as a stage-ready maxim—an epigram meant to sharpen conflict, justify a character’s suspicion, or provoke laughter through exaggeration. It also reflects a social world in which women’s formal power is constrained; “revenge” becomes a coded form of agency, exercised indirectly through wit, social maneuvering, or strategic timing. The quote’s bite lies in its implication of inevitability: injury and reprisal are presented as a predictable cycle.