Bertha's madness represents the limit case of mistresshood — the worst possible end of a dependent and degrading marriage — but its more gruesome aspects work, paradoxically, to distract the reader […]

You, like a lecher, out of whorish loins / Are pleased to breed out your inheritors:

They must be told, that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the People alone;

Like as a fire, the which in hollow cave Hath long bene underkept, and down supprest, With murmurous disdaine doth inly rave, And grudge, in so streight prison to be prest, London: Constable & Co., 1919, p. 202, https://archive.org/details/ahq1435.0002.001.umich.edu