unless perhaps the husband were to carefully prod his wife after marriage, in private, to see if she might prove to have some spark in her.

Yep. Because, see, it'd be a kink, and a dangerous one at that. For a man to solicit a woman to talk back to him would be to act outside his station, and society would clamp down on that hard.

Do lines bother you because they seem off for the story (bad storytelling) or because you don't like what the say (ooky concept)?