Discussion Topic
Griselda as the Ideal Woman in Boccaccio's Decameron
Summary:
In Boccaccio's Decameron, Griselda embodies the ideal woman through her unwavering patience, obedience, and virtue. She endures numerous trials and humiliations imposed by her husband, Gualtieri, without complaint, demonstrating her steadfast loyalty and resilience. Her character represents the medieval ideal of wifely submission and fortitude.
In The Decameron, does the story of Griselda symbolize an ideal?
Giovanni Boccaccio's epic work The Decameron was written over the course of several years and contains reworkings of common myths and legends. Of note is his version of the Griselda myth, in which a man tests his wife's obedience and patience by subjecting her to a number of cruel deceptions.
The Griselda myth is remarkably similar to the Biblical story of Job, where God tests Job by subjecting him to tragedies. The significant difference is that while Job's tragedies were real, Griselda's are fictional, created by her husband Gualtieri; while he claims to kill their children, they are alive, and when he divorces her, he sends her back to her father's house, where he knows she will be taken in and comforted. For her part, Griselda is astonishingly placid and deferential; when Gualtieri divorces her, she says:
"My lord, I ever knew that my low degree was on no...
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wise congruous with your nobility, and acknowledged that the rank I had with you was of your and God's bestowal, nor did I ever make as if it were mine by gift, or so esteem it, but still accounted it as a loan. 'Tis your pleasure to recall it, and therefore it should be, and is, my pleasure to render it up to you."
(Boccaccio, The Decameron, stg.brown.edu)
As she was a simple woman when he married her, she makes it clear that she saw his generosity as a gift rather than as an entitlement. In this sense, Griselda is shown to be an "ideal" woman for the time, when women were always expected to defer to their husbands and to indignities. The metaphor does not, however, last the test of time, and so is not literally relevant today.
Is Griselda portrayed as the ideal woman in Boccaccio's Decameron?
Griselda in Boccaccio's Decameron is an interesting character. In
some ways she embodies the female ideal of a loving wife who endures
mistreatment and is eventually rewarded. In this sense, she is also an ideal
Christian, turning the other cheek when mistreated, and possessing the value of
humility. On the other hand, the virtue of submission in Christianity, and in
Christian marriage, is based on the notion of submission to the will of a just,
omniscient, and benevolent God. In this tale, however, Griselda is a poor woman
enduring mistreatment by an unjust husband for her own economic gain. Thus the
story becomes almost a satire on the notion of Christian humility, suggesting
that submission to the corrupt Catholic Church or to the unjust husband,
becomes mercenary, as the corruption of church and marriage both pervert the
essential goodness that God gave his creation of both institutions. InÂ
other words, it is only possible to be a genuinely ideal woman in an ideal
world, and the world of the Decameron is a fallen one.