Decameron 5

Stories 7.3 and 7.4

Question 1) Is the trickery in these stories justified?

In these two stories, more than any of the other that we have read concerning wives cheating on their husbands, I have an incredible amount of sympathy for the husband. I can understand the logic behind an affair if the woman is forced into a loveless marriage, but in both of these stories the husbands really loved their family. I couldn’t even understand why Agnesa would want to cheat on her husband in the first place; he seemed to be more of a caring/innocent husband and father than most others we have read about: “his father took him in his arms, weeping as if he were taking the boy from his grave, and he began to kiss the son and thank the godfather for having cured him” (502). The husband in the next story may not seem as virtuous, but it is stated explicitly that he really loves his wife, and her desire to trick him only arose out of the jealousy he had for her because of how much he loved her.

If the ‘moral’ of the story were that women have/should have just as much freedom to have relationships outside of their marriage, then I would have had more sympathy for the wife if she were in a loveless marriage. The theme of trickery seems (in my interpretation) to be arising from the idea that the women who want to have a more free sexual life cannot do so with the same freedom that men have.

I think that the reason why there is such a common theme of trickery running through these stories is partly for the purpose of simply adding humor to the stories (one of the presenters last week mentioned that Boccaccio decided later on in his life that he grew to dislike the Decameron because it was morally baron and suitable only on an ‘entertainment’ level). I think that the theme of trickery often makes the stories more morally complex and in that sense more relatable (to a certain extent); sometimes it’s more interesting to delve into the mindset of a person who is not so virtuous so that the interpretation that any one reader gets from the story is not to black-and-white.

Question 2) In story 7.3, what does the narrator seem to be saying about her view of people who trick others the mentality of the people who allow themselves to be tricked?

I was intrigued by the long tangent that the narrator went on in the middle of the story and thought that it had to have some significant meaning to the overall theme of the story or it would not have been included (referring to the passage in which Elissa goes on a rant about how much she hates hypocritical clergy members). She asks, “Is there a friar who does not act this way?” (498), and chastises these friars for thinking that they are clever in tricking their followers. This would appear to suggest that she has no sympathy for the ‘trickster.’ Later, in the scene where Rinaldo is talking with Agnesa, the narrator states, “The lady, who was unskilled at logic and was in need of very little persuasion, either really believed or pretended to believe that what the friar said was true” (500), commentating on the idea that some people allow themselves to be tricked simply because they want to be tricked. (I have to think that Agnesa is only pretending to believe in what Rinaldo is telling her, because no one can be that stupid.) The husband himself incites much sympathy from the reader, as when he goes pale and weeps upon learning that his son was in mortal danger. It would seem to me that the husband here represents the innocent worshiper who allows himself to be tricked due to blind faith, while Rinaldo obviously represents the hypocritical clergy. I would go as far as to say that the sympathies are supposed to be directed towards the husband, and because of this there are virtually no one praises Elissa’s story when it has concluded (whereas most, if not all, of the stories that we have read are followed by some kind of laughter, praise, or comment of some kind), as the listeners are more used to hearing stories in which the sympathies are directed towards the person having the affair.

Question 3) In story 7.4, what is the point of Monna Gita tricking her husband into drunkenness and tricking her neighbors into thinking that he is a worse man than he is?

In this story, the text explicitly states that Tofano “really did love his wife” (507); in order to ‘justify’ her actions, Gita has to make her husband take on the appearance of a neglectful husband, when in fact she made him that way herself. Later in the story, we see that Tofano still cares about Gita because he rushes to the well when he believes she has fallen in, and finally says she can do whatever she pleases as long as she is discreet about it. But I don’t think that Tofano deserved half of what he got (e.g. the reprimanding and whipping from Gita’s relatives); I actually thought he was clever in the way he tricked his wife by pretending to be drunk and locking her out of the house. In many of the stories that we have previously read, it is the woman who is the mastermind behind the trickery. Of course, this eventually becomes true in this story as well, as it is proven that Gita is cleverer in trickery than her husband. While these stories seem to be attempting to illustrate a kind of balance in marriage, the end result is not a happy, balanced marriage, but simply one in which the role of conniving master and ignorant slave is reversed as opposed to being replaced with a more honest relationship. If Gita was not loved by her husband, and if Tofano really were deserving of the punishment he suffers, then I would sympathize more with Gita taking her life into her own hands.