The Decameron Seventh Day Summary & Analysis

Summary: All Seventh-Day Stories

The steward gets up early on the seventh day to load and carry supplies to the Valley of the Ladies. Dioneo, ruler of the day, gets up soon thereafter. The company walks to the valley, which looks even more beautiful than it did the evening before. Dioneo orders tables to be set up under trees by the pool as well as curtained beds in different parts of the little valley. After siesta time, the companions spread rugs on the grass and tell their stories.

Dioneo has requested stories about tricks that women have played on their husbands. In the first story, told by Emilia, a wife hears her lover at the door and convinces her husband that there’s a werewolf outside. In the second story, told by Filostrato, Peronella hides her lover in a tub when her husband comes home unexpectedly. She convinces her husband that she sold the tub and presents her lover as the buyer. Peronella’s husband cleans the tub for its new owner while Peronella and her lover finish another transaction. All the companions tell similar jokes, always at the expense of the husband.

Summary of Selected Story: Seventh Day, Sixth Story

Pampinea tells about Madonna Isabella, a beautiful young woman who is married to a nobleman of great excellence. Isabella falls in love with Leonetto, an agreeable young man of humble origins. At the same time, a powerful gentleman, Lambertuccio, starts pestering Isabella with his intentions.

Isabella retreats to her country villa for the summer. When her husband leaves town on business, she sends word to Leonetto to join her. Meanwhile, Lambertuccio hears the husband is not at home and calls on Isabella. Both Isabella and Leonetto are afraid of the man, so Leonetto hides behind the bed curtains while Isabella welcomes Lambertuccio. He begins to have sex with her. Then Isabella’s husband comes home unexpectedly.

With great presence of mind, Isabella tells Lambertuccio to take out his dagger, wave it around like a madman, charge down the stairs, and ride off without looking back. Lambertuccio follows her orders. Isabella explains to her bewildered husband that a young man has just run into the house seeking refuge from Lambertuccio and that she has prevented Lambertuccio from entering. The husband then finds Leonetto hiding behind the bed and assures him that he is safe. After all three have supper together, the husband escorts Leonetto back to town.

Summary: Conclusion of the Seventh Day

After the tenth story of the seventh day, Dioneo crowns Lauretta the new queen. Lauretta instructs the steward to prepare supper earlier than usual so that they can break camp and return to the palace. Then she declares that the next round of stories will expand Dioneo’s topic to include all sorts of ways that people trick each other. That evening the young people dance and sing, with Tindaro playing for them on the cornemuse. Filomena performs a lament for a lover who is no longer with her, and the others wonder if she has a new love. The queen, Lauretta, then suggests that the company repeat Neifile’s plan of the week before, to take Friday and Saturday off. The queen’s devout words command general approval.

Analysis: Seventh Day

The seventh day is a breathing space in The Decameron story, a retreat from the retreat. The party goes on an elegant picnic, putting greater distance between the companions and Florence and taking them from a walled garden to an enchanted valley. The real world is remote, and the characters spend the day enjoying themselves in a pastoral setting.

The topic for the day, the tricks that wives play on husbands, changes the nature of the stories. The requirement for tricks ensures that the ten stories will be humorous and that the targets of the humor will be husbands. Stories that are jokes tend to be shorter than other stories, so the stories of the seventh day have fewer background details, digressions into morality, or other distractions from the central trick of the plot. Stories about conflicts between husbands and wives have domestic settings and depict intimate relationships, so the stories tend to be realistic rather than romantic.

The seventh day’s stories provide a realistic view of attitudes toward men, women, and marriage in Boccaccio’s time. The stories are set among different social classes, but in every class, the husband is the head of the house, and the wife is relatively powerless, an unequal relationship that explains why women must play tricks to get their way. Marriages are arranged between families, not just individuals, and do not necessarily involve love between the married couple. Love affairs outside marriage are common, but the lovers are expected to be discreet. Several stories end with the husbands and wives coming to terms with each other to avoid scandal.

Pampinea’s story about Isabella and her two lovers adds the element of class to the marital conflict. The people in the story are stock characters: the wealthy older husband, the younger beautiful wife, the lower-class lover, and the powerful gentleman. The high class of Isabella’s husband gives Isabella a country villa in which to meet Leonetto, but the villa also opens her to Lambertuccio’s attack. Lambertuccio’s status as a powerful gentleman makes Isabella fear him so much that she does not dare refuse his advances. Isabella and her husband are less powerful than Lambertuccio and more powerful than Leonetto. However, Isabella and Leonetto are both at her husband’s mercy. Isabella’s clever story, in which she credibly explains the presence of both Lambertuccio and Leonetto in her bedroom, allows her to keep both her marriage and her lover while getting rid of Lambertuccio without offense.

The end of the seventh day extends the break in the action and creates an additional level of structure for the ten stories. The structure of The Decameron is based on the number ten, but Boccaccio adds variety by combining addends of ten in different ways. For example, the third day and the seventh day both take place in new and even more pastoral settings, similar to the number pattern of seven female and three male companions. When Lauretta, the next queen, repeats the earlier instructions of Neifile by calling for a two-day break from storytelling, she creates the pattern of two days of stories, two days off, five days of stories, and two days off. That leaves three days of storytelling for after the second break. The breaks in story structure, like the moves from place to place, create the impression of an elaborately choreographed dance.