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Stoycheva, Anna
Dr. David Wallace
ENG270a: World Literature
11 December 2013
Women and Their World in Boccaccios 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.
Boccaccios Decameron comes to shake peoples view on the world, the society they
live in, and their moral values. The 1001 Nights, despite looking like a childrens 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 womens 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 Boccaccios 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 womens 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 10
th
novel of the 10
th
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 9
th
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 18
th
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 , Shahriyars 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 societys
opinion, she wants to raise her voice and be heard.
Shahrazads 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 Boccaccios 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 societys 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