Decameron Blog #6

9.2: How do the Abbess actions/ her physical appearance

change the outlook of the Nuns at the end of the story?

At the beginning of the story, it appears as if the Abbess is the perfect stereotypical nun.  She stays up all night to catch another nun who has been accused of taking a lover.  While the Abbess is waiting up to catch the other nun in the act, she goes on about how immoral this is.  Contrary to the previous stories we have read in the Decameron about nuns, it seems as if this Abbess will actually uphold to the moral standards that a nun should have (but as we have seen, this is not always necessarily true).   When the Abbess is about to leave to catch the other nun in the act, she puts the priest's pants on her head thinking that it is her veil.  As she walks in on the immoral act, the nun sees the pants and realizes that the Abbess has also been up to no good.  Therefore, the nun is forgiven for her mistake and allowed to keep seeing her lover.  At the beginning of the story, the reader feels against the nun because of her wrong deeds, but at the end of the story, the reader is more critical of the Abbess.  The Abbess' actions completely change the outlook of nuns in the story because the Abbess is the highest position there is as a nun.  Therefore, it is expected for an Abbess to uphold all moral codes that are entailed in being a nun.  However, the Abbess is more of a hypocrite than anyone because she chastises others for what she is doing herself.

Decameron Blog #5

7:5 Question --- What do the narrator’s words in the prologue of the story tell us about how the society viewed the relationship between husband and wife? Has our society progressed from this viewpoint? Regressed?

This story is very different in the sense that this is the first time we see the man being so jealous over the wife which causes her to stray.  In previous story, it was, stereotypically, the wife who was jealous over the husband and his actions.  The prologue that the reader is given at the beginning of this story really sets the tone for the rest of the plot.  Here we have a man who controls every single action that his wife makes.  He monitors her daily, and to him, she cannot have any type of happiness that is not related to him.  In a way, this story makes it appear that in society it was perfectly acceptable for the man to hold the power in the relationship.  Implying, jealousy is okay for the man, but not okay for the woman.  Therefore, men can control women as much as they want to keep their jealousy a bay.  Clearly, Boccaccio does not agree with this.  The wife is far more clever in this story, and Boccaccio advocates that if a partner is too jealous in a relationship, then infidelity is inevitable.  To be quite frank, our society has not progressed much from this.  Even centuries later, there are still relationships were one partner is overbearingly jealous which causes the other partner to stray.  For instance in the 1950's, men had complete control over their wives.  In society, the wives had to stay home and disregard anything that could give them personal pleasure.  Therefore, one sees this theme of control still in modern society.        

All About My Mother Blog

1. The themes of : desire, desire to know about others, death, (re)birth. How does the film link them together?

 

Of all the themes in the movie, Almodovar ties these four the best.  These themes correlate to the movie plot itself.  There is the mother's desire not only for sexual relations, but also to have a child to care for.  Then there is Estaban's desire to know his father.  Because Manuela only had a brief affair with the father of Estaban, Manuela had to raise Estaban as a single mother.  Therefore, this fuels Estaban's need to know the other part of him.  Then Estaban is killed by a car when he is chasing after his favorite actress, Huma.  After which, Manuela works with a nun who is ironically pregnant by the same man who impregnated Manuela.  After the nun, Rosa, dies in childbirth, Manuela cares for Rosa's son whom she names Estaban.  Therefore for Manuela, there's a rebirth in opportunity for her.  Since she loses her first son, she now has the opportunity to in a strange way recreate him.  Almodovar uses these themes throughout the movie, to show that without one, the others would not be possible.  Therefore, life is merely a continuation of whatever occurred before it.

Decameron Blog #4

1) 5:8- Do you believe it is the women who have ‘power’ in this story, or the men? Explain using evidence from the text.

Nastagioung loves a young girl from the Traversari family very much.  He goes out of his way to impress her and win over her love.  He even goes as far to squander away all of his fortune for her.  Even though Nastagio does all of this for the young girl, his love goes reciprocated.  While it might appear that the young girl has the power in the story because she is capable of seducing Nastagio into doing anything for her, I think that it is the man who truly has the power.  When Nastagio invites the young girl for dinner, she sees the other girl who had been eaten by the dogs.  Therefore, she instantly agrees to marry Nastagio to escape from the same fate as the other woman.  In which case, it is Nastagio who truly holds the power in the story because he is able to gain what he wants. 

2) 5:9- What is your interpretation of the quote, “…I would much rather have a man who lacks money than money that lacks a man”? (pg. 431)

Just like in the first story, the main character, Federigo, loves a young woman, but his love also goes unrequited.  While Nastagio was very wealthy to begin with, Federigo is not.  All Frederigo has is a falcon which he gives to his love because he insists that he would do anything for her.  Personally, I think that this quote goes against the grain of the gender and social stereotypes during this time.  Typically he social ranks were very rigid and to marry someone from a different social class was obscene.  This quote shows that who someone is matters  more than what someone has.  The young girl agrees to marry Frederigo because she sees that he is a generous, and resourceful person who does not want her for her money.  He just wants to love her and make her happy. 

Decameron Blog #2

In the seventh story, Alatiel is arranged to be married to a sultan, but is lost on the way and is forced to be with numerous different men who love her before she returns to her arranged husband.  This story says much about desire, and gender.  When Alatiel meets Pericone, she rejects his sexual advances until she becomes drunk and gives into him.  As Boccaccio writes, "When she felt what it was like, never before having felt the horn men use to butt, she repented of having rejected Pericone's previous advances; and not waiting a second time to be beckoned to such sweet nights again, she often invited herself - not with words, since she did not know how to make herself understood, but with actions" (Boccaccio 132).  Gender wise, it was expected for a woman to be chaste and pure for her husband.  Therefore for Alatiel to be intimate with any man that was not her husband, this would be completely immoral.  However, Boccaccio uses this scene to show that desire is inside all of us, and it cannot be repressed.  Lust is a natural feeling and one should not eschew them, and rather should fulfill them.  Just like Alatiel, Massetto is mute, too.  Both of them have a hard time articulating what they want and think verbally.  However, the main difference between Alatiel and Massetto is that Massetto chooses to be mute to gain sexual advances, whereas, Alatiel does not have a choice but to be mute because of the language barrier.  Just like the previous story, Boccaccio is showing how actions speak far more than words.  By Massetto not speaking to the nuns and physically agreeing with their actions, he holds the power.  Therefore in a way, this means that silence gives Massetto the power in the story because it attracts the nuns even more.  The nuns often state how he lacks wits, but in actuality it is the nuns who are dumb because Massetto is clearly lying.  Overall, I think that both of these stories show that lust cannot be assuaged in any way, and that power comes from silence.   

Decameron Blog #1

In all honesty, I have never laughed as much as I have while reading the Decameron purely out of bafflement.  It is clearly evident that Giovanni Boccaccio's style of writing completely varies from Chretien de Troyes' style of writing.  One quote that peaked my interest is when Giannotto di Civigni tries to convert his friend Abraham.  Abraham tells Giannotto that he is going to visit Rome and if he likes it then he will convert to Christianity.  When Giannotto hears this, he thinks to himself that "If [Abraham] goes to the court of Rome and sees the wicked and filthy lives of the clergy, not only will he not convert from a Jew to a Christian, but if he had already become a Christian before, he would, without a doubt, return to being a Jew" (Boccaccio 40).  I was drawn to this quote because of its' irony.  Giannotto begs Abraham to convert to Christianity relentlessly, yet when Abraham agrees to go to Rome, Giannotto does not want him to go? This makes no sense whatsoever.  Right from the beginning, the reader is being shown the hypocrisy of religion which tends to be a continuous theme in Boccaccio's Decameron.  Another quote that I like is after Abraham returns from Rome.  During his stay in Rome, Abraham sees all the bad deeds done by the cardinals.  When he returns, Abraham tells Giannotto that he was disgusted by the cardinals, and he did not think that they are holy at all.  However, Abraham becomes baptized, and "he learned quickly and became a good and worthy man who lived a holy life" (Boccaccio 42).  To be honest, I disliked this story the most because I could not understand this ending.  This quote truly astonished me.  For an entire paragraph, Abraham rants about how unholy the cardinals are and how he would never want to be a part of such a religion, yet a couple of sentences later he says that he wants to join them.  I do not understand this sudden change.  I feel like Boccaccio should have eased this transition smoother because I do not understand how Abraham's feelings could change so quickly.  The other quote that I was drawn to is when the Abbott pursues the girl from the garden.  In his mind, he makes the situation okay by telling himself that "A sin that's hidden is half forgiven" (Boccaccio 48).  I was drawn to this quote specifically because of its' baffling quality.  Typically a man of high rankings in the church should know better than to break his chastise rules.  What really makes me laugh about the quote,though, is how faulty the logic is.  Boccaccio really shows how corrupt religion is which is a major theme throughout most of his stories.  All in all, I like all these quotes because they show the true character of religion.  All the stories unveil the facade that the church perpetuates.  Thus, showing how religion is based on lies.  While Chretien's work are still enjoyable, the heavily based influence in Boccaccio's works makes for a more interesting read.