I don't know if this suggestion would require too radical a rewrite to consider, but here goes. I think you spill the beans too soon. Maybe the octet should simply and consistently refer to his "other wife" without explicitly revealing that it's not actually a different person. Spend the octet describing the "other wife," then save the reveal for the sestet, or even as late as the final couplet. Among other things, that would give you more space to describe the "other wife" in more particular detail, not just as someone who is miserable and cries a lot, and it would give us a decisive sonnet-like turn.
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