Discuss late medieval views of women and their reflection in Boccaccio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Question

Please provide the best answer for the statement.

Answer 1

1. The women in Boccaccio’s Decameron and characters like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath represent the increasing social prominence of women in medieval society. Neither Boccaccio nor Chaucer could ever be called a feminist—in fact, both depict misogynist characters—but both do recognize these new women as real forces in contemporary social life. Chaucer’s women leave prevalent and prescriptive views of women’s proper roles far behind. Boccaccio’s story of Filippa, told by Filostrata on the sixth day of the story sequence of the Decameron, is another case in point. It recounts how Filippa is charged by her husband with the crime of adultery, punishable by death in the town of Prato where they live, a crime to which she freely admits. But in court she argues that the law represents a double standard.
2. These literary representations of greater female autonomy are no doubt at least in part a reflection of the growing role of the Virgin in medieval religious life, and her prominence helped raise the dignity of women in general. By the thirteenth century, women were active in all trades, especially the food and clothing industries; they belonged to guilds and increasingly had the opportunity to go to school and learn to read, at least in their vernacular languages. They were, however, still generally excluded from the learned professions of medicine and law, and they performed the same work as men for wages that were, on average, 25 percent lower.