Thursday, October 27, 2011

The Decameron Day Six

9.2: It was ironic that the Abbess would scold the nun for taking a lover when she herself had one, who was a priest by the way, and not only did she basically rat herself out by mistakenly wearing pants on her head but she had the nerve to scold the nun without realizing she had it on and giving herself away. The other nuns didn't notice either as they were to blind by the fact that they just caught a fellow nun in an act of sin, they were committing a sin of their own being full of pride and feeling above her because she did wrong and got caught.
When the Abbess realizes that she got caught though she changes her persona and she lets the nun keep her lover as she is not going to revoke hers and the other nuns look upon the nun with envy that she got away and she still had a lover. The nuns then look to satisfy their needs in others ways, in the end it hints that they themselves go and start to live in sin a little. The way the Abbess changed her mind about criticizing the other nun made it seem like it was okay to live in sin as long as people outside didn't know.

9.3: Women seem to get the short end of the stick and men always find a way to invoke their power over them. Tessa is always blamed for the misfortune that befalls Calandrino. Women are seen as bad luck, like sailors thought at one point that having a woman on border would bring them bad luck and women have been the cause of arguments and fights between couples and other men. Women are also the ones that get beaten on by men when something goes wrong or they do wrong to the men. Men pick and beat on the women because women are seen as fragile creatures and are easy targets.

9.5: We do see a drastic change, a nice change with instead Tessa being the target of abuse Calandrino is. He is caught with another woman with the help of his friends trapping him in that predicament and incouraging him to have an affair. They then backstab him and get his wife to find out about him and his "lover" though they never really get to have sex. When Tessa finds them she immediately has no fear and is so full of angry, begins to beat on Caladrino and it was funny how she made the comment of how he would let another woman get him pregnant, though she should know that men can't get pregnant. It was good to see a woman taking charge and standing up for herself, and I believe that is what Boccaccio is trying to show that women have power too, men are dogs and they need to be punished as well. They need to be taught a lesson on the wrong that they have committed and women need to dole out the beatings too, not just take them (though they shouldn't be taking beatings at all). In reading about Calandrino and his foolishness, one simpathizes with the wife and feels that she had every right to beat Calandrino for a wrong that he committed as he beat her up for things she didn't do with I found that ironic the way the reasons behind the beatings were reverse as well.

9.6: I got confused as some points in the story as to where people were and who was sleeping with who and how one person made to another persons bed. I tried to visualize which bed would be where but I couldn't see it and I really had to go back and reread. It was a clever story and the way the characters were trying to outwit each other thinking that they other one didn't know. Like when Pinuccio saw that he was in the wrong bed but went along with whatever it was that was being said about him. I like how the host's wife was the one to manipulate and make it so that she was not found out that she had been with another man. She basically covered for herself, Pinuccio and Adriano and her daughter just by saying that Pinuccio had been sleeping walking, that this was all a dream, none of what was being said was real. This is like 7.5 where both the wives don't really lie but use what is being said by their husbands to form a sort of loop hole to get out of lying. Their husbands speak for them and they just agree with and use what they say to form an alibi.

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