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Yes, her knowledge and wisdom is held in high esteem by the villagers, but his designation of her particular kind of knowledge as 'cunning' is heavily imbued with significance. It could only be, in the gendered semiotic of eighteenth and nineteenth-century British culture. It is perjorative in the same way sinister is. Sinister is perjorative because of it's association with left-handedness and homosexuality; cunning is perjorative because of its feminine associations. The culture that produced that tag had spent a century and more reducing female wisdom's cultural status to something less rational or relevant than male wisdom: 'cunning' despite his other references to knowledge and wisdom is 'untutored' and 'natural' ie. female; and potentially dangerous.
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