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Stoycheva, Anna

Dr. David Wallace

ENG270a: World Literature

11 December 2013

Women and Their World in Boccaccio’s The Decameron and A Thousand and One Nights

The Late Middle Ages in Europe is a time of crisis in history, marked by famines and

plagues. Despite these terrifying events, this period was also a time of immense development

in art and science – a lot of the great discoveries were made during these centuries. With the

new inventions it seemed like a new type of society was born. People started thinking in a

different, innovative way and let go of their old, medieval view on the world. The literature

from that time tries to represent the transition that people were going through as closely as

possible. Giovanni Boccaccio is one of the first European authors to try to portray this new

type of people that has formed. At first glance, his book vaguely reminds the reader of 1001

Nights, because of its structure. A closer look, however, will prove that the two books have

much more in common than simply the way they are written.

Boccaccio’s Decameron comes to shake people’s view on the world, the society they

live in, and their moral values. The 1001 Nights, despite looking like a children’s book,

contains so much truth and wisdom, that one can write another book simply summarizing the

life lessons from the first one. Despite being written in different epochs and targeted at

different cultures, the two books can make the readers ask themselves the same question:

What was women’s position and where did they stand in the world at that time? Clearly

recognizing the gender hierarchy in society, these two literary pieces show us how women

struggle to speak up in a society that is trying so hard to silence them. By revealing the gentle

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and fragile, yet courageous and profound world of women in the Medieval Age, The

Decameron and The One Thousand and One Nights show us the various ways in which

women contend against the so established status-quo.

Written in the middle of the fourteenth century, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron

perfectly portrays the life and values of European people during that epoch. Concentrating on

their human nature and their personal wants and needs, and thus contradicting the typical

representative of the medieval man, Boccaccio shows the reader that the new generation,

consisting of passionate young people, is willing to break off of the established norms. They

are ready to fight for their freedom to know and feel things for themselves, rather than have

someone else telling them what to do. And while men are primarily striving for that, women

have one more fight to lead – the fight against male dominance. In his novellas Boccaccio

portrays women’s world and their way of thinking very thoroughly, showing their most

valuable strengths, as well as their weaknesses, so the reader is sure to understand how

difficult the time was for women who wanted to have their voices heard.

Giovanni Boccaccio was born in 1313 in Florence, Italy. There is not a lot of

information available about his childhood, but it is known that it was rather unhappy. He was

sent away by his father to study, but found happiness in writing; something, that his father did

not approve of. During the years 1348-1353 Boccaccio wrote his most famous work – The

Decameron. This amazing collection of novels is still considered a masterpiece even 650

years later. One of the most interesting things about the book is the way it is structured. It is a

collection of 100 novellas, all told within the frame of one central story; 10 young men and

women flee Florence during the Black Death in 1348 to spend 10 days away from the dead

city and the horrifying situation that has come upon society. They spend their time in a luxury

house and entertain each other by telling stories – every person tells one story each day, to

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make a total of 100 stories, happy and sad, of poor and rich, of love and loss ("The

Decameron“ 36).

The first thing the reader notices is the structure and the members of the group – they

are predominantly women (7 in total, whilst only 3 men). It is the women who make the

suggestion to leave the city, so the attention is drawn on them from the very beginning of the

story. In addition, as soon as they reach their final destination, Dioneo, who is for the duration

of their stay acting as the leader of the group, states that as long as they are there, the women

in the group will behave and be considered as equal to men (Caporello-Szykmann 53). This

way, the group of friends will in a way try to neglect the established gender hierarchy in the

medieval society, and live in absolute peace and equality for the next ten days, away from the

city life and its prejudices.

In the different stories in the book, women are portrayed in a relatively large variety

of ways. In some of the novellas women can be seen as dominant and ruling, yet in others

they are portrayed as rather passive. A thorough examination of all the stories in the book,

however, shows that Boccaccio thinks of women as being superior. When talking about

Boccaccio and his writings about women, Pamela Benson argues that “a persuasive and

sensitive profeminist voice emerges from the text, a voice that admires female political, moral

and physical strength”(18). Even though men have the benefit of having a better social

standing, women still manage to prove that they are not only more intelligent and witty, but

also emotionally stronger.

One of the best examples of women acting superior and standing for what they believe

is given to the reader in the final story in the book – the 10th novel of the 10th day. It tells the

story of Gualtieri, the Marquis of Saluzzo, and his lower class wife Griselda, whom he has to

choose because he is pressured by his vassals to pick a wife. However, in order to prove her

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worth, he decides to put her through a series of tests. He calls her names and deceives her that

he murdered their own children, but to his greatest surprise, Griselda reacts very calmly to all

of his actions and tolerates his absurd behavior. At the end, Gualtieri brings a new bride

home, and Griselda is asked to share her opinion. Her comment is extremely witty, for she

succeeds in being critical towards the new bride, without openly criticizing her. Gualtieri

recognizes “the superiority of her muted response”, and “reinstates her as a wife worthy of

him”( Migiel 20). This story comes to show that women are able to endure emotional

hardships and tolerate behavior that most men would not be able to. In addition, they are not

scared of the established social hierarchy and are willing to stand against it. As Migiel says,

Griselda is “the lower class woman who shows the upper class woman how to speak” (21).

A great example of women raising their voices and speaking up is one of the

characters in the Arabian literary masterpiece 1001 Nights. A Thousand and One Nights is a

collection of stories from the Middle East and India which is of uncertain authorship or date,

but it is known that the tales have been gathered for hundreds of years. Some of the stories in

the book have been written as early as the 9th century. The tales told and the characters

portrayed in The Nights are very close to the main characters in the medieval European

literature. However, the book was not very well known in the Western world until its very

first translation in the 18th century. This serves as a very good example how two different

cultures can have the same issues and face the same difficulties in their lives and their

societies in two different epochs.

The various versions of the book of A Thousand and One Nights all have different

amount of stories in them –ranging from a couple of hundred to more than a thousand. They

all, however, share the tale of King Shahriyar and the brave Shahrazad, who still remains a

figure of great importance and in a way an idol for women in the Islamic world. Shahrazad is

presented as a bright and vigorous individual, who is confidently trying to break the barriers

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that harem life has put in front of her. In fact, this statement can also apply for most women

presented in the book. Through all the different stories in the 1001 Nights, the reader can

picture the image of women during that time very well, and thus imagine how hard it was for

them to confront the traditional morals and values in society.

The 1001 Nights, just like Decameron, is a frame story. It all begins with The Tale of

Two Brothers that tells the story of Kings Shahriyar and Shahzaman, both of whom find out

they have been cheated on. King Shahriyah is deeply traumatized by this, and finds it

impossible to ever trust a woman again. As Jerome W. Clinton states in his work “Madness

and Cure in the 1001 Nights “, “Shahriyar’s madness bespeaks not simply an inability to treat

women as his equals, but a deep-seated fear of and rage against them”(114). Shahriyar

decides to take revenge for what his wife did to him. He decides to marry a new woman each

night, and then kill her in the morning before she can do him any harm. It all goes as initially

planned, until Shahrazad arrives. Brought up by her father, she is intelligent and independent,

clearly knows what she wants and stands for, and has control over her own life. It is

interesting to mention that Shahrazad is the first women in the story to have a name. She

learns about the cruel king, and decides to get married to him to “either be a sacrifice for

Muslim women, or the cause of their deliverance” (Clinton 117). Shahrazad has a plan and

will do whatever it takes to implement it. This clearly shows that, opposing to society’s

opinion, she wants to raise her voice and be heard.

Shahrazad’s plan is not really complicated – she gets married to the King and starts

telling him a different tale every night. However, she never finishes them before dawn, so

Shahriyar has to keep her alive in order to find out the end of the story. Through her tales

Shahrazad is not only trying to prove to the king how unjust his behavior towards women is,

but also prove to the reader that women are not as powerless as society thinks they are. One

of the stories she tells the king is that of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, where an intelligent

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and witty slave girl saves Ali Baba from the thieves. In addition, thanks to her wisdom, all of

the thieves are killed and Ali Baba takes their wealth. That is one more example that proves

how in certain cases, women are superior to men, even though they are looked upon as mere

objects of sexual desire. Thanks to their intelligence and sharp minds they manage to climb up

the ladder of social hierarchy.

It is not difficult to see the similarities between Boccaccio’s Decameron and the 1001

Nights. Even if one looks simply at the structure, both literary pieces are written in the same

way – they are frame stories. What is more important, however, is that both books manage to

prove the same point – there is more to women than people think. Despite being constantly

dominated by man during the middle ages, they are doing their best to get out of the frame

that society has put them in. In all these stories there are plenty of examples of how women

try to prove their independence and use their intelligence to break off of society’s traditional

way of thinking.

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Works Cited

"The Decameron." Publishers Weekly 260.29 (2013): 36. Business Source Complete.Web. 2

Dec. 2013.

Caporell-Szykman, Corradina. The Boccaccian Novella. New York: Peter Lang Publishing,

Inc, 1990. Print

Migiel, Marilyn. "New Lessons in Criticism and Blame from the Decameron." Heliotropia

7.1-2 (2010). Web.

Clinton, Jerome W. "Madness and Cure in the 1001 Nights." Studia Islamica 61 (1985): 107-

25. JSTOR. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.

Benson, Pamela Joseph. The Invention of the Renaissance Woman: The Challenge of Female

Independence in the Literature and Thought of Italy and England. University Park,

PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1992. Print