Friday, September 6, 2013
Women in the Decameron
Why do you think that the women think that they are so subordinate to men? In the church they describe themselves as "fickle, quarrelsome, suspicious, timid and fearful....men are truly leaders of women" (18-19). Why do you think they describe themselves in this way instead of supporting each other?
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That his how they were raised as children. They were taught to be woman nothing else and that stuck with them.
ReplyDeleteSure, the women in the church are. However, in Day Six, Story 7, Madonna Filippa is oddly progressive. She takes a very liberal attitude towards sex and even causes the adultery law to be changed.
ReplyDeleteI'm not exactly sure, but I do know back then all societies were patriarchal; therefore, women probably considered themselves inferior to men, because the government was made up of men. Also, in a church setting there were no real heroines in the bible. Elijah, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and later Jesus were all guys and the friends of god. Not to mention the bible portrays women as evil all the way back to Eve who tempted Adam to eat the apple.
ReplyDeleteThere were certainly heroines in the Bible: Ruth, Esther, Judith, etc. However, I see (and agree with) your point about the government.
DeleteI agree with Josh that is has to do with something in the bible, most of the important characters were men and women were used mostly to aid in reproduction. People were religious back then, and the bible was one of the things that they really believed in.
ReplyDeleteThis is similar to the creation stories we talked about last year and why the humans writing the stories made themselves inferior to the gods. The humans did this in order to have someone to look up to. Deep down all humans want order and if you have someone to look up to and follow their rules, then you feel safe and under control. Maybe the women are describing themselves like this as a way of feeling safe and orderly and under control and following a set path. Especially with the Black Plague going on, people feel unsafe and not sure about their future and this would allow them to put the burden of planning for the future on the men's shoulders. They are scared about the openness and unpredictability of what lies ahead and if they just do what the men tell them to then they don't have to think and worry about this.
ReplyDeleteWell lets remember that this was written hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Woman's rights weren't acted upon and listened to until the 20th century, and even today we even have problems with woman's rights. Therefore it's easy to see why he thought of woman as subordinate to men. It's simply because he didn't have any other way of thinking. This was all he knows, and all anyone knew. Therefore him viewing woman as less then men was nothing new back then.
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