This reminded me a bit of the film Malena: a community that ostracizes one particular person - a woman - to hate. One ugly, one too beautiful. For this story, for the former woman, the resentment of the husbands and the ressentiment of the wives gave them license to be so cruel. Their developing hetero-fatalism in comparison to the romance of the ugly girl and her wicker husband led them to be pitiful group of indecent people - as miserable as their marriages were revealed to be!