Who will deny, that it should be given, for all that it may be worth, to gentle ladies much rather than to men? [ 010 ] Within their soft bosoms, betwixt fear and shame, they harbour secret fires of love, and how much of strength concealment adds to those fires, they know who have proved it. Moreover, restrained by the will, the caprice, the commandment of fathers, mothers, brothers, and husbands, confined most part of their time within the narrow compass of their chambers, they live, so to say, a life of vacant ease, and, yearning and renouncing in the same moment, meditate divers matters which cannot all be cheerful. [ 011 ] If thereby a melancholy bred of amorous desire make entrance into their minds, it is like to tarry there to their sore distress, unless it be dispelled by a change of ideas. Besides which they have much less power to support such a weight than men. For, when men are enamoured, their case is very different, as we may readily perceive. [ 012 ] They, if they are afflicted by a melancholy and heaviness of mood, have many ways of relief and diversion; they may go where they will, may hear and see many things, may hawk, hunt, fish, ride, play or traffic. By which means all are able to compose their minds, either in whole or in part, and repair the ravage wrought by the dumpish mood, at least for some space of time; and shortly after, by one way or another, either solace ensues, or the dumps become less grievous. [ 013 ] Wherefore, in some measure to compensate the injustice of Fortune, which to those whose strength is least, as we see it to be in the delicate frames of ladies, has been most niggard of support, I, for the succour and diversion of such of them as love (for others may find sufficient solace in the needle and the spindle and the reel), do intend to recount one hundred Novels or Fables or Parables or Stories, as we may please to call them, which were recounted in ten days by an honourable company of seven ladies and three young men in the time of the late mortal pestilence, as also some canzonets sung by the said ladies for their delectation.
(Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, “Proem”)
After reading this in the introductory part of his work, how can I not consider Giovanni Boccaccio as one who anticipates what Sarah Gwyneth Ross calls The Birth of Feminism in Renaissance Italy (and England)?
During the first week of class, I assigned several stories from Giovvani Boccaccio’s Il Decameron. I then chose a bias in teaching these samples, which might have been a bit misleading, but was on target for the central thesis of the course: that Feminism was born in Italy. But now I’m feeling a bit guilty in generating this bias, this idea that, just as men like St. Jerome helped to inspire and fuel anti-feminism in previous centuries, Boccaccio helped to inspire and fuel the birth of feminism. As Kristina Olson points out:
Some scholars argue that we cannot ask whether or not Boccaccio was a misogynist or a feminist, claiming that his hermeneutics challenge these categorizations (most recently, Marilyn Migiel). Others, such as Millicent Marcus, have asserted that detecting misogyny in Boccaccio’s novelle, such as Decameron VIII.7, is a “misreading” because the novella itself critiques misogyny. Still others view the foregrounding of women producers of discourse within society as the origins of a feminist literary tradition (Teodolinda Barolini).¹
Olson herself makes the argument “that Boccaccio can be related to misogynist and non-misogynist ideologies by means of his own rhetoric of philogyny when seen as the result of linguistic debates within textual communities that can be discerned inside and outside of the Decameron” (52).
One might make the case that my presentation of Boccaccio as an anti-anti-feminist (a feminist set in defense agains pro-active misogyny and other expressions of anti-feminisms), set up in stark contrast to the propagandic, misogynistic writings of St. Jerome, is rather one-sided and oversimplified. However, I think that these particular undergraduate students understand (based upon small conversations I’ve held with them) that the aura of medieval Europe was far from being feminist! This course that I am teaching is a survey of ideas, as well as of parts of ideas, that I hope serves as a singular counter-point to the general understanding that the European Middle Ages was “dark” with the oppression and abuse of women—only one counter-point to many points.
It is my belief, my hope that they understand this intention of my bias for the moment, for the class.
Boccaccio sets the start of his story of storytellers and their stories inside Santa Maria Novella, located in the Italian town of his birth, Florence. It was “towards the beginning of the spring,” according to the author, when “the doleful effects of the pestilence began to be horribly apparent by symptoms that shewed as if miraculous” (“First Day, Introduction,” 009, Decameron Web). Boccaccio then goes into great detail to describe how the plague had affected Florence that year, as well as how its people dealt with it and all the death. He then writes:
[ 049 ] Irksome it is to myself to rehearse in detail so sorrowful a history. Wherefore, being minded to pass over so much thereof as I fairly can, I say, that our city, being thus well-nigh depopulated, it so happened, as I afterwards learned from one worthy of credit, that on a Tuesday morning after Divine Service the venerable church of Santa Maria Novella was almost deserted save for the presence of seven young ladies habited sadly in keeping with the season. All were connected either by blood or at least as friends or neighbours; and fair and of good understanding were they all, as also of noble birth, gentle manners, and a modest sprightliness. In age none exceeded twenty-eight, or fell short of eighteen years. [ 050 ] (“First Day, Introduction,” Decameron Web)
One day during my stay here in Florence—actually, the very last day of my stay—I ventured inside, sat down, and tried to imagine seven young women seeking refuge from the plague, eventually convincing three young men to escort them away from the city, away from the pestilence, with the “queen” of the good company setting the rules for a storytelling game to keep everyone amused.
My viewpoint: sitting at the back of these pews, trying to imagine seven young women of the 14th century, seeking shelter from the plague (and from their boredom). In my mind’s eye, they are to the right, about seven rows ahead of me, taking up two rows, some leaning over the back to talk to the others behind them.
The first two stories of Day Three (which we also read for class) inspired a recently released film, which we watched in class on that first Thursday: The Little Hours (2017), an American improv adaptation. I sat in that pew, trying to imagine what Boccaccio would have thought of this film. I can’t imagine.
¹ Olson, Kristina. “The Language of Women as Written by Men: Boccaccio, Dante and Gendered Histories of the Vernacular.” Heliotropia 8-9 (2011-12): 51-78. <http://www.heliotropia.org/>
Giovanni Boccaccio (16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375), who devoted much of his writing to women, and who was from Florence, set the beginning of 
