Tuesday, July 26, 2016

How do women are act immorally in The Decameron?

In many of the stories in The Decameron, women are more sinned against than sinning, but in the third story on the third day, a woman does plot to cheat on her husband--and uses an unwitting friar to make this happen.
This woman has been married against her will to a rich merchant. She's not too happy about this, especially as she had hoped to be married to an aristocrat. She decides to have an affair and picks out the man she desires. 
To communicate her wishes to the young man, she tells the local friar that this man has been flirting with her. She asks the friar to tell him to stop. The man at first protests his innocence when the friar speaks to him, but then realizes that the woman is communicating to him that she wants a flirtation. He stops by her house and flirts with her. Later, the woman tells the friar that the young man peeped into  her window and saw her naked. The friar tells the young man he shouldn't do that.  The young man shows up at her window, and the two make love. They also make fun of the woman's husband and the friar. 
The stories in The Decameron are often bawdy, for the travelers escaping the plague wanted to entertain themselves as they journeyed. 

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