Decameron Day 4

5.8- From what I could gather frM the text, to me the women were the ones with the power. They were the ones being taught the lesson be uase they were the ones who had he power to make men feel bad about themselves and do the things they do for them. The girl that Nastagio is in love with is not letting up the guy, she is tormenting and on page 420 it says that "because of her singular beauty or perhaps because if her exalted rank, she became so haughty and disdainful that she disliked everything about him", didn't even give the guy a chance, she just immediately thought herself better than him. Though the women seem to be the ones that are dominating, the men aren't pitting up with it what with the example of the knight and woman who are forever condemned to her being chased by him until caught and then killed by him. It was smart of him to use the condemned couple to teach the girl he was in love with lesson. Here witness used for good, for the better of the couple because if they had continued on the way they did they would be the same as the knight and the naked lady.

5.9- my interpretation of the quote "I would rather have a man who lacks money than money that lacks a man", I believe that by this the woman is trying to say that money is not what she is most concerned with, what she wants is a guy who is a true man in all senses as to her her husband is not. She already justified her reason to have sex with other men because her husband had not touched her and he never would be wise his interest lied with men. She makes the comment that "such enjoyment is commendable in me, whereas in him it is most blameworthy, for I would only be breaking the law, but he breaks both that law and the law of Nature as well." (pg433) so because he is gay she finds it alright to have sexual relations with another man as her breaking one law is t so bad as he has already broken more than she. She does not view him as a real man and that can be justified by the fact that it wasn't accepted at the time to be gay, and in the eyes of the church what he was doing was wrong, wasn't as if he wasn't having sexual relations. In the texts it looks like the husband is having affairs on the side as it says in her speech, "This sorry man abandons me to go up the dry path in clogs but I shall see about taking someone else aboard ship for the wet." her husband Pierto looked to marry her just so that others would get off his casebut he wasn't being honest about who he really was and she asks in her speech, "he knew I was a woman, so why did he marry me if women were not to his liking?" I think that it wasn't a real reason to cheat, just because her husband was gay but also he shouldn't really have been mad as he doesn't really like women and it worked out in the end. They both got something out of it in the end.