YMMV / The Decameron

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• Angst? What Angst?: At the end of day 3, story 10, the narrator rather matter-of-factly mentions Alibech's entire family dying in a fire and she herself being abducted by a young man, Neerbale, intending to force her into marriage in order to become the heir to her estate. Alibech only seems upset by the fact that she will no longer get to put the Devil back into Hell. (When it turns out that her bridegroom is up to the task, everything ends happily.)
• Designated Hero: Ricciardo (day 3, story 6) is a man who is in love with a married woman, and so he takes advantage of her jealousy regarding her husband by impersonating her husband and having sex with her in the bathhouse. She doesn't even find out that the man she had sex with was not her husband until later. In other words, he rapes her! And Ricciardo is supposed to be the good guy!
• Esoteric Happy Ending:
  • (Day 5, story 1) ends with Cimon and Lysimachus marrying the women they love, Iphigenia and Cassandra, respectively. Yay! But they only do so after they have violently killed the men, Pasimondas and Ormisdas respectively, who were supposed to marry the girls in the first place, so whoop-dee-doo!
  • Also, (day 5, story 8). In it, Nastagio is in love with a woman who rejects him. So, as he walks along his way, he hears of a lady who rejected her knight suitor and rejoiced when he killed himself. She's sentenced to be hunted and killed by him, eaten by his dogs and brought back to life every Friday for the same amount of years as the months she was cruel to him. Nastagio uses this to frighten the woman he loves so much she finally agrees to marry him. In other words, he blackmails her into marrying him!
• Fair for Its Day: Some tales are remarkably progressive for their era.
  • While this collection of tales is not exactly feminist, women are treated as much more willful and independent than those in other tales of the time.
  • While Jewish characters are rich and occasionally miserly, they are also considered wise or virtuous. The tale of Melchizedek the Jew (day 1, story 3) is remarkable for having an Aesop arguing that Judaism and Islam are just as valid as Christianity. Likewise, the Jewish merchant Abraham (day 1, story 2) is described as far more moral than all the Catholic clerics he sees in Rome. He still converts to Christianity at the end, considering that if the religion has managed to last and remain successful despite the sins of the clergy, it must be supported by the Holy Spirit.
  • In Day 2, Story 8, a noble boy falls in love with an (apparently) lower-class girl. He's so violently in love with her that not being able to be with her makes him sick, but the girl, although she loves him too, refuses to sleep with someone who's not her husband, and the boy refuses to try and convince her otherwise. His parents eventually decide that his happiness is more important than a "suitable" bride and agree to the marriage. Of course, the girl is actually a count's daughter and is restored to her proper status by the end of the story, but it's still nice that they came around to the idea of an interclass marriage in theory.
  • Day 5, Story 10: A woman is sexually unsatisfied because her husband is gay, so she takes a lover. While his sexuality isn't exactly discussed with the most flattering terms, the story is very clear that the husband's wrong is not sleeping with men, but that he got married with no intention of fulfilling his wife's bedroom needs, and then begrudges her when she gets some elsewhere. You might expect that a medieval story would have the solution be "so he miraculously becomes interested in women" or possibly "he miraculously dies and the wife can marry someone else", but no indeed. The solution is that they make up by both enjoying the attentions of the wife's cute new boyfriend, and the husband agrees it's only fair for her to have her own piece on the side.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The work is subtitled Prencipe Galeotto (Prince Galehaut), the go-between of Lancelot and Guinevere, a reference to the many go-betweens in Decameron and also a reference made by Dante in Inferno V.
  • Boccaccio was actually a huge admirer of Dante and incorporates a number of references to Dante in the Decameron and elsewhere in his work; for instance, on the first day, the courtier-diplomat who serves as a hero of sorts for one of the stories is mentioned in the Comedy as being damned to Hell for being an unrepentant "sodomite" (whether this means "homosexual" or "pedophile/pederast" is unclear) despite being an otherwise honorable and upstanding gentleman.
• Older Than They Think: Most of the stories come from sources way older than the book; Boccaccio just brought them to his time.
• Squick: How Andreuccio (day 2, story 5) becomes trapped in Madam Fiordaliso's home. He steps on a faulty board in her privy and falls into raw sewage below.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Giosefo's wife (day 9, story 9), thanks to Values Dissonance regarding his Domestic Abuse against her.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: It's hard to complain about Griselda's woes after when being so submissive to her husband that she doesn't oppose him murdering their two children (he actually sent them to another family in order to test his wife's obedience). That's probably why Charles Perrault wrote a Lighter and Softer version where the husband makes her believe their daughter died in a convent.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The women admit to themselves they need men's presence because without them they are helpless. The beginning of day 9, story 9 is a long digression on that topic, just to name one example.
  • The moral of day 9, story 9: you have to beat your wife brutally when necessary to make her obey you completely.
• Values Resonance: Some Christian authors like G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Ronald Knox, and others completely agree with Abraham when he reasons that the Catholic Church must be supported by the Holy Spirit if it can withhold centuries of corruption and mismanagement.

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