Lordful

Actually such lessons occur in service of an older hierarchical form of love whereby men are still seen as lords and masters of their households and wives and children are seen as subservient and subordinate creatures. Eliot and Joyce are obviously critical of the demeaning and damaging implications of such love and want their readers to agree with them. But Steinbeck is intrigued by the lordful view; he wants to shock his readers into accepting the supposed wisdom of the older hierarchical arrangements, and even to accept their violent implications.

The only thing he ever did wrong was his goodness and his not very faithful wife; his fat and 'lordful' wife who always wore a frown whenever someone visited them.

Some wives can't breathe loudly without facing the wrath of their dictator-husband. Some husbands are too lordful over their wives and make them feel incarcerated in their marriage.