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Day 3: Eighth Tale
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Decameron, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Sex
Men and Women
Moderation and Excess
Intelligence
Class and Character
Faith vs. Religion
Summary
Analysis
Neifile’s turn comes next, since Dioneo has the privilege of going last. Protesting how hard it will be to follow up Lauretta’s entertaining tale, she offers her own “for what it is worth.”
Throughout The Decameron, Neifile is characterized by her modesty, as when she downplays her tale in introducing it.
Active
Themes
The invalid Count of Roussillon keeps a doctor called Gerard of Narbonne as a member of his household staff. Gerard’s daughter Gilette grows up alongside the Count’s son Bertrand. When the Count dies, his son goes to the king’s court to be fostered. This breaks Gilette’s heart, since she has fallen head-over-heels in love with Bertrand, despite her tender age.
Via several intermediary translations of Giovanni Boccaccio’s work—first into French and then into English—Shakespeare adapted the premise of this tale for his play All’s Well That Ends Well. Although Gilette and Bertrand grow up together, he is the son of a nobleman, and she is the daughter of a doctor—a middle-class occupation. Thus, Gilette’s love is precarious, since it crosses class lines.
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Themes
Gilette’s love doesn’t diminish as she grows up, burning even hotter when she reaches a marriageable age. Learning that the king suffers from a painful fistula that no one can cure (but which she knows how to treat), she sees a chance to win Bertrand’s hand in marriage. The king, after many painful attempts, has given up on treatments, but he can’t refuse the charming and beautiful Gilette. Because he doesn’t take her seriously, he promises to find her a “fine and noble” husband if she cures him. Gilette extracts a promise that she can pick the man as long as he’s not royal.
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Gilette heals the king and asks for Bertrand as her husband. Bertrand is unwilling and indignant because Gilette is a “she-doctor” and her family is beneath “his own noble ancestry,” but the king is unwilling to break his promise and compels him. He swears he will never “rest content” with the marriage, despite royal assurances that she is “beautiful, intelligent…deeply in love” and a better match than many a loftier lady.
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Compelled to marry Gilette, Bertrand refuses to consummate the marriage except in Roussillon, and he avoids returning by offering to help the Florentines in a war against Siena. An unhappy Gilette arrives alone in Roussillon, where she restores order to Bertrand’s neglected estates, thus winning his subjects’ love. When she informs her husband of her achievements, he sends a message saying that he will never live with her unless she first wears his favorite ring on her finger and carries his child in her arms.
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Although she is initially dismayed, Gilette sets about winning her husband back. Reminding his subjects of her hard work on their account and her husband’s coldness, she tells them that she has decided to spend the rest of her life as a pilgrim in exile so that Bertrand can return. Despite their pleas for her to stay, she dresses in pilgrim’s garb, takes an ample supply of money, and departs for Florence.
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In Florence, Gilette soon catches sight of Bertrand. Her innkeeper explains that he is an affable gentleman who is hopelessly in love with the daughter of a noblewoman who has fallen into poverty but still protects her daughter’s honor. Gilette ingratiates herself with the Impoverished Noblewoman, promising that if they work together, they can overcome their ill fortune and be restored. She reveals her identity and offers to pay the daughter’s dowery if they will help her.
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Gilette wants the Impoverished Noblewoman to send a messenger to Bertrand saying that her daughter is ready to become his lover, but first she wants his ring as a gift. Once Gilette has it, she wants the Noblewoman to secretly invite him to sleep with her daughter, but to substitute Gilette (who needs to become pregnant). Because any hint of sexual involvement with Bertrand will ruin her daughter’s reputation, the Noblewoman is wary. But believing it to be noble and correct to help Gilette retrieve her husband, she agrees to participate.
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Bertrand falls for their plan, and contentedly sleeps with Gilette—thinking her to be the Impoverished Noblewoman’s daughter—many times. Once she realizes that she’s become pregnant, Gilette gives the Noblewoman a generous gift of thanks and then returns to her inn, where she stays until she gives birth to twin sons who are the exact image of their father. Meanwhile, Bertrand returns to Roussillon.
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After their babies are born, Gilette secretly returns to Roussillon just in time for a great feast. Wearing the ring and carrying his children, she enters Bertrand’s palace and throws herself at his feet. She tells her story, and he is so impressed with their children’s beauty and with her persistence and intelligence that he not only honors his promise to accept her as his wife but does so willingly, and with great affection. From that day forward, he “loved her and held her in the greatest esteem.”
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