Decameron Women Quotes

In one of our first stories, we're treated to the beautiful and intelligent Marchioness of Montferrat, who manages to recognize the designs of the King of France and, staying faithful to her husband, manages to eloquently get her point across to the king (via a chicken dinner) without being insulting or disrespectful. He gets the hidden message and regrets being such a jerk to such an elegant and respectable lady.

Some of the ladies of the brigata have little good to say about women in general. When Pampinea proposes the exodus from Florence, the ladies of the brigata are pretty convinced that they don't have enough moral fiber, intelligence or physical strength to handle the two-week vacation on their own. Here, Pampinea can't resist putting down the younger women of her day for being petty, stupid, and narcissistic.

Filomena's rogue Ambrogiuolo is not the kind of guy you want your sister to date. He thinks that he can seduce any woman, even the virtuous ones, because women are weak and inherently inferior to the will and intellect of men. Ambrogiuolo plies his particular logic here (if men are unable to control themselves sexually, women are worse because they're inferior in every way) to demolish Bernabò's regard for his (Bernabò's) wife. We're kind of glad that Ambrogiulo winds up eaten by bugs. This isn't the only story in which women are described or depicted as being unable to resist jumping into bed with any good-looking guy in the vicinity. In this case, though, she's virtuous and faithful.

Dioneo doesn't buy the story concerning Bernabò's virtuous wife. He's pretty sure—and the rest of the crew agrees—that women will make the most of the time their husbands spend away from home. One might say that this is yet another indication that The Decameron was written by a man. Or one might claim that Boccaccio was far ahead of his time, granting to women an equal right to acting on sexual desires. We're open to interpretation.

Deep psychological insight? Male wish fulfillment? Whichever side you take, you will certainly see more of this philosophy appearing throughout The Decameron. There's a strong sense in these tales and elsewhere in medieval literature that a woman who refuses the sexual desires of a man is sinning against nature. And for those romances involving courtly love, it can actually cause the death of the man. The story of Tedaldo degli Elisei is the perfect case in point. Tedaldo has the steadfast Ermellina believing that she has brought misfortune on herself because she refused to return Tedaldo's love.

Brave Ghismonda is confronting her father about his disapproval of her beloved Guiscardo. Her confidence and resolve shines through in this speech, and she follows through by killing herself for love after her father has Guiscardo murdered and his heart sent to his daughter in a golden chalice. It's not only men who can obey the rules of courtly love and die for their beloved. B's totally on her side in all this.

Licisca knows that women have healthy and undeniable sexual appetites. Boccaccio seems to be okay with that. Another element of this particular episode is that Licisca, one of the kitchen servants, is depicted as a coarse and opinionated blabbermouth. The lovely ladies of the brigata crack up at her little speech but send her back to the kitchen with a threat to whip her if she doesn't calm down. See our section on "Theme: Social Class."

It's important to understand the tone of any passage relating to women and to be able to identify the character that's speaking about it. In this case, it's pretty difficult to know if this is Boccaccio interjecting his own philosophy about female existence or if he's putting these words into the mouth of a medieval madame in order to be ironic. We will say that there's a kind of pathos in the last section of this passage that makes the sentiment feel genuine. The sense of neglect felt by aging persons goes beyond gender. But in this case, the character sees that old women are particularly disadvantaged because women are mostly valued for their looks. Some things never change.

There's really one thing that all the members of the brigata agree on: jealous husbands are the worst possible creatures on the planet and deserve to be given a good reason for their jealousy. In this passage we hear the opinion that women have the right to live their lives in peace and enjoyment. It's also interesting to note that Fiammetta compares the housewife to male members of society in terms of deserving social freedom. Do we think that Boccaccio would give women the right to vote? Nope. But passages like this prove that he knew that society could be very hard on its women.

Neifile is the youngest member of the group, and to some extent, we can see that in her absolute definitions of What a Woman Should Do. The crew is pretty liberal in the topics they offer for their stories, but it's clear that there are boundaries for behavior. For Neifile, taking money for sex is a capital crime. Just sex—well, that's understandable, even if chastity is the ideal.

For the record, Emilia's telling a story of physical abuse of a wife by a husband who feels he doesn't have proper control in his household. It's a difficult and violent story that makes us question what we were supposed to get out of it. The good news? It's meant to make us question. Can we really believe that Boccaccio, even as a man of his time, thought that women should be beaten within an inch of their lives if that's what it took to make their husbands happy? And that he would quote Solomon (wisest guy ever) who suggested it? We still have women today apologizing for their "contribution" to being knocked unconscious by their guy.

We're glad that Griselda gets some admiration here, because she has just endured without complaint a decade of deception, grief, and torture just so her insecure husband could assure himself that she was faithful and virtuous. He claims that the point of all this was to educate her and his household how to be a proper wife. And although Griselda has acted in an almost saintly manner throughout all the abuse, she isn't praised so much for her patience and forgiveness as for her "wisdom" that this was the right way to behave. Dioneo, the storyteller, thinks that Griselda would have been justified in finding another guy as soon as she was kicked out. The other members of the brigata aren't really heard from, although you would have thought that the ladies would protest, too. As it is, they just "debated" the "details" of the story.