The Story of Griselda As Silenced Incest Narrative

THE STORY OF GRISELDA AS SILENCED INCEST NARRATIVE Louise O. Vasvári New York, New York The Griselda story of a noble's abuse of his wife in order to test her obedience has been endlessly recirculated from its first textualized version as the last and most famous tale in Boccaccio's Decameron (1 3491351 ). Petrarch, who in his letter to Boccaccio in 1372-1373 objected to the lewdness of the Decameron in general, blaming it on the low tastes of its female readership, declared that he was deeply moved by the serious subject matter and moral significance of this tarn dulcís ystoria (Seniles XVII, 3; Aldo Bernardo 2: 655). He became the first of many rewriters to take possession of Griselda and silence die violence and indeterminate moral of the story, by ripping it from its frame in the Decameron, amplifying and translating it into Latin for a male readership, turning Griselda into a Job figure, and in this new garb bestowing it on Boccaccio. The subsequent history oí Griselda is one of continued translation, where Petrarch's rewriting began the process of homosocial exchange among male writers and male readers of the translatio of die text-heroine as feminized object (Carolyn Dinshaw 132; Mihoko Suzuki; Emma Campbell). Griselda's suffering came to be interpreted variously, as symbolizing not onlyJob's suffering, but, alternately, as Christ's or Mary's passion, or the Christian soul who suffers out of loyalty to Jesus Christ, "her" eternal spouse. Even today allegorical interpretation continues to be promoted among some contemporary critics, who insist that since die story is an exemplum, its value is political, moral, philosophical, and religious (the reading of Dora Faraci is a case in point). The difficulty with allegory is that while masquerading as an idealist literary manifestation, it is, in reality, a form ofviolent textual colonization, a necessary "fig leaf" serving to direct attention precisely away and upward, removing a text altogether from a taboo realm. No matter La corónica 35.2 (Spring, 2007): 139-56 140Louise O. VasváriLa corónica 35.2, 2007 how many fanciful interpretations are imposed the text remains an embarrassing constant (Gordon Teskey 297). Some rewTiters have tried to cope with the literal level by utilizing Griselda as a didactic exemplum ofwifely patience and humility. For example, Philippe de Mézières in his 1384 Le Miroir des Dames Mariées, a translation of Boccaccio's Griselda story, treated the story simultaneously as an allegory and as a conduct book for married women (Françoise Gazai 1 : 141-76; Kevin Brownlee). Ofparticular interest in attempting to reconcile the incompatibility of the literary level with the allegorical is the anonymous Le mesnagier de Paris, written about 1394 by an unnamed author who apparently had a fifteen-year-old wife when he was fifty, perhaps much older (Georgina E. Brererton andJanet M. Ferrier). In his book, intended for his wife's education, he deals with everything from spiritual teaching, to stories of Griselda and other exemplary wives, to practical details of how to manage a household. The history and reception of the Griselda story has been one of rationalizing explanations of this sort with, at best, passing condemnation of Walter's cruel behavior, which Dioneo, the embedded narrator ofthe Decameron version, was the first to condemn as matta bestialità, 'wild brutality''. Here I will not deal with the scholarship on latent allegorical interpretations ofGriselda, nor will I enter into another favorite topic, the endless and irresolvable conjectures about the mythic or historical origins ofthe tale. Nor will I be retracing the history ofthe Griselda story, from medieval sources through the present, whose European diffusion has been well documented.1 Rather, I will focus on the violence in the much-neglected literal level ofthe story, suggesting that it deals not with an isolated case of senseless cruelty but represents, rather, a classic case of sexual abuse of the sort that is inevitable in patriarchal social structure. According to feminist theory, power and domination are reflected in gender relations and sexual practices. Sexual violence is defined as the primary social sphere of male power through which men express power over and the desire to...