The ten days

Decameron

IX. The principle of marital submission

The submission of wife to husband is a recurring theme in the ninth day. The episode of Talano (7) exemplifies Margherita’s exemplary punishment, guilty of not having taken her husband’s admonishments seriously when he warned her not to go into the woods for danger of meeting the wolf. In the advice given to Giosefo by Salomone (9), who is unable to “dominate” his recalcitrant wife, there is further confirmation of such male authority, which ends up with her being beaten violently with a stick.

The misogynous novellas of the ninth day (7, 9) prepare the scene for the final act, which comes at the end of  Griselda’s patient toil (X, 10), tormented by her husband, the cruel Marquis of Saluzzo. The violence with which the scenes of the punishments of the women are described would seem to recall the lyrical model  of a hard Dante. The comical-realistic tradition is in truth openly alluded to in novella 4, which has as its protagonist the poet Cecco Angiolieri, derided by Cecco di Fortarrigo, after having been robbed by him in a tavern. Clearly inspired to the Divine Comedy  is instead the hoax played by Ciacco and Biondello. The two Florentines “bawds” that are described as greedy, a sin Dante’s Ciacco is a victim of in Inf. VI. The tit for tat described in this novella involves the Florentine families of the Cerchi and the Donati, protagonists of the political scene in Dante’s times. Another damned soul in, Inf. VIII, the violent Filippo Argenti, will instead be a decisive tool in Ciaccio’s hands, who exploits this very characteristic, which Dante ascribes Filippo Argenti in the Divine Comedy, so as to carry out his counter hoax on.