Page 160 - SUMMARIES OF GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO’S DECAMEON : A Visionary Journey In 100 Stories And 100 Etchings By Petru Russu

A Jealous Husband, His Wife and Her Lover: Confessions of a Fool

At this point in Day Seven, Boccaccio’s gallery of sharp-witted women
and deluded men has found yet another gem, with a merchant so
obsessed with guarding his radiant wife that he becomes the architect

of his own humiliation. This story is dripping in irony, cleverness, and
a delicious bit of retribution.

The merchant of Rimini is wealthy, respected, and utterly paranoid.
His wife, beautiful, gracious, and innocent, becomes the prisoner

of his jealousy. No windows, no churches, no society. He loves her
obsessively yet assumes every other man does too. His love, warped
by insecurity, becomes suffocating mistrust.

Denied freedom and fairness, the woman begins to reason: If I’m going to
be punished like a guilty woman, why not take on the crime? Cue Filippo,
her charming neighbor, whose proximity becomes a lifeline. A crack in
the wall soon becomes a portal for conversation, then affection, and

eventually romantic rendezvous. It’s intimacy built on ingenuity.

Her husband’s paranoia reaches peak absurdity when he dresses as a

priest to “confess” her. But she sees through the disguise and plays along,
feeding him a story about a priestly lover who sneaks in nightly. The trap
RENDERED IN A BOLD ETCHING
STYLE, SYMMETRICALLY is set. He guards the door like a knight protecting virtue, while Filippo
ERRATIC, RICHLY TEXTURED, slips over the rooftop and into her chamber. That night, the wife enjoys
AND THEATRICALLY IRONIC, ‘A true affection as the husband stews in false piety.
JEALOUS HUSBAND, HIS WIFE
AND HER LOVER’ EMERGES AS
A VISUAL FABLE OF DECEPTION By morning, the merchant has nothing but empty hands and misplaced
AND POETIC JUSTICE, WHERE suspicion. The tale flips the moral high ground, positioning the
SUSPICION SHADOWS ITSELF clever wife not as a seductress, but as a woman justifying her unjust
AND WIT ALWAYS FINDS THE
HIDDEN DOOR. confinement with tactical grace.
DECAMERON 158 159