Gualtieri and Griselda’s marriage

Gualtieri and Griselda’s marriage is a union of striking contrasts: a marquis and a shepherd’s daughter, public splendour and private submission, apparent bereavement and concealed family survival. Gualtieri chooses Griselda for her manner rather than her birth, but then subjects her to trials meant to establish his control and test her patience. The marriage ends in reunion and honour, yet its happy conclusion cannot erase the severity of the ordeals that precede it.

The Match and Its Unequal Terms

Gualtieri begins the story unmarried and without children, absorbed in hunting and hawking. His vassals urge him to take a wife so that he will have an heir and they will not be left without a lord. He resists, arguing that spouses may prove badly suited to one another and that parents’ conduct cannot reliably predict a daughter’s character. He finally consents, but insists on choosing his own bride and warns his vassals that they must honour her whoever she may be.

His choice is Griselda, a poor girl from a nearby village whose manner has long pleased him. He believes that life with her may be comfortable, and arranges the match with her father. Before the wedding, however, he asks Griselda whether she will strive to please him, obey him, and accept whatever he may do or say without resentment. She agrees. This assent makes the terms of the marriage explicit, but it is given in a relationship already shaped by the difference between a ruler choosing a bride and a poor young woman being asked to accept his authority.

The wedding turns that inequality into spectacle. Gualtieri has fine clothes and bridal ornaments prepared, then finds Griselda returning from the spring with water as she hurries to see the bride. He enters her father’s house, questions her, and, once she has agreed to marry him, has her stripped in front of the assembled company before dressing her in the costly garments. He crowns her and asks whether she will have him as her husband; she agrees, and he takes her as his wife in the presence of the guests. A lavish celebration follows. The abrupt transformation from working girl to marquis’s bride establishes both the extraordinary change in Griselda’s station and the public authority with which Gualtieri directs it.

Household Life and the First Trials

Griselda appears to change with her clothes: she is gracious, pleasant, and well-mannered, diligent in her husband’s service and kind to his subjects. People who had thought Gualtieri foolish for marrying beneath his rank come to praise his judgement, believing that he recognized worth hidden by poverty. The marriage initially seems to fulfil the comfortable life he had expected. Griselda bears a daughter, and Gualtieri rejoices; the birth also gives him the occasion to begin testing her.

He tells her that his vassals resent her low birth and are displeased that she has borne a daughter. When a servant arrives, pretending to carry out an order to kill the child, Griselda kisses and blesses her daughter and hands her over, asking only that the child not be left to beasts and birds unless Gualtieri commands it. In fact, Gualtieri sends the girl to be raised by a kinswoman in Bologna. His test depends on concealment: Griselda believes the child may be killed, while the reader knows that Gualtieri has arranged for her survival.

After Griselda bears a son, Gualtieri repeats the pattern. He claims that his people cannot accept a grandson of Griselda’s father as their future lord and threatens to put her away and take another wife. Griselda answers that he should satisfy his own wishes and not trouble himself on her account. The son, too, is taken from her under the pretence that he will be killed and is secretly sent to the same household in Bologna. The vassals believe both children dead and condemn Gualtieri as barbarous; Griselda, meanwhile, gives no outward answer beyond accepting what pleases her husband. Her composure is not presented as indifference: Gualtieri knows she loves the children, and marvels at her ability to endure their supposed loss.

Rejection and the Measure of Patience

Several years after the daughter’s birth, Gualtieri announces that he can no longer bear to have Griselda as his wife. He circulates counterfeit letters purporting to grant him permission to divorce her, then tells her before others that he will put her away because his ancestors were lords while hers were husbandmen. After more than thirteen years of marriage, Griselda is to return to her father’s home and surrender the rank she had received through Gualtieri.

Her reply treats her elevated position as something lent rather than owned. She returns the ring with which Gualtieri had espoused her and accepts that he is reclaiming what he gave. She recalls that he first took her naked from her father’s house and offers to leave naked again if he considers that fitting, asking only for a shift in recognition of the maidenhood she brought to the marriage. Gualtieri grants her that single garment. She leaves barefoot, bareheaded, and dressed only in her shift, while those watching lament her departure. Her father has kept the clothes she wore before the wedding, and she puts them on again and resumes the small tasks of his household.

Gualtieri’s rejection does not end his demands upon her. He announces that he will marry a daughter of a count and summons Griselda back to prepare the house and receive the expected bride. Although the request wounds her, she agrees. In her coarse clothes she sweeps and orders the rooms, hangs the coverings, arranges the food, and welcomes the guests with the bearing of a lady. The supposed bride is in fact Griselda’s twelve-year-old daughter, accompanied by her six-year-old brother, both brought from Bologna without their identities being disclosed. Griselda praises the girl’s beauty and her young companion, believing them to be Gualtieri’s future wife and her brother.

Recognition, Restoration, and the Marriage’s Meaning

When Griselda’s response to this final humiliation convinces Gualtieri that his test has gone far enough, he reveals the children’s identities. He explains that they were not killed but raised in secrecy, and declares that Griselda is still his wife. She weeps with joy, embraces her children, and is welcomed back into her former place. The women at the feast take her aside, remove her poor clothing, and dress her magnificently again. The household’s hidden history becomes public: the children believed dead are alive, and the bride Griselda has been ordered to serve is her own daughter.

The reunion restores the family, but the story does not treat the trials as harmless. Those present rejoice at the outcome and praise Griselda as wise, while considering Gualtieri’s tests excessively harsh and intolerable. He says that he meant to teach her how to be a wife and to show others how a wife should be treated, as well as to secure his own peace of mind. That explanation belongs to Gualtieri, whose ability to impose each trial depends on his rank, his control over the household, and Griselda’s dependence on the position he granted her. The ending supplies reconciliation, not a reversal of that power: Griselda returns as wife and mother, while Gualtieri’s authority has determined both the suffering and its conclusion.

Gualtieri later honours Griselda and places her father in a comfortable and respected position; he and Griselda live happily together for a long time. The tale’s final contrast extends beyond their household: noble character, it suggests, may be found beneath poor clothes, while high rank does not by itself guarantee worth. Griselda’s endurance wins admiration, but the marriage also makes the cost of that endurance visible. Its central paradox is that the woman who begins as a bride elevated by Gualtieri’s choice proves herself most fully when he repeatedly strips away the security and dignity that choice seemed to promise.