The maiden, who goes unnamed, communicates with her crush through the gullible friar. She uses reverse psychology to make what she wants to happen actually happen. It's like witchcraft! By complaining to the friar that his friend had been harassing her, she actually got the friar to plant the idea in his friend's head. Even more importantly, she lets it become known that any potential advances from him would be both welcomed and reciprocated.
This text shows that the friar means well, but that he is not conniving enough to realize that he is being duped. Just as an over-the-hill prostitute thrives on caked-on makeup, so does the Decameron (as we know well by now) delight in painting the Church the color of lust and sin. But this tale is different. In showing the friar as naive and innocent, the Decameron still points out a flaw of the Church - but one of over-piety and a debilitating lack of worldliness. In many ways, this friar is just like the friar who, in the very first story of the Decameron, declared "Master Ciappelletto ... a saint." Taking what is said at face value, these two friars believe that what people say is what they mean - in essence, that speech is synonymous with truth. However, as the Decameron shows us time and time again, this is woefully far from the way things are. These friars need to poke their heads out of their confession booths and realize that the big, bad world out there is real un-pretty.
3. story 3.9: In beginning Beltramo didn't want anything to do with Giletta. How does his love for her in the end define how women were viewed? How does this compare to other strained relationships in the Decameron?
In the end, Giletta conforms to the role that society has set out for her: that of being a mother. It is only in this guise as a baby-making machine that Beltramo accepts her. Before, when she was defined by how she broke society's rules of conduct, Beltramo refused to see in her a suitable match. Imagine him marrying a lowly physician's daughter - and even more so, one who goes out on her own and does things like heal the king! The horror of a working woman! Granted, this was a lot more uncommon (and disreputable) back in the Middle Ages. It is not only her comparatively low social status but her threatening individuality and intelligence that drives away the man she loves. At the end of the tale, when she comes to him literally on her knees, dressed in ugly pilgrim garb, pleading her case desperately, that he will even listen. By losing everything that set her apart, she gets the guy.
It seems like Beltramo is a man who likes his woman beneath him, and there is no doubt that her strict adherence to his "ring and children" rule only emphasizes the male power in a marriage. By fulfilling the impossible-sounding standards he set out, Giletta does not impress on her husband how amazing she really is, but how much of a dishrag she is. I wish she could have just laid down the law to him and made him be with her! Now that would take a really strong woman. But by making pigs fly, Giletta shows that she is quite capable ... but only of following society's rules.
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