Tofano

Tofano, a rich man of Arezzo, is the jealous husband in Lauretta’s tale of suspicion, deception, and reversal. His drinking gives his wife a way to conduct an affair, but his effort to catch her ends with him locked outside his own house and condemned by the neighbors. When her relatives beat him and take her away, he must seek reconciliation on terms that expose how completely his unfounded jealousy has overturned his authority.

Identity and Introduction

Tofano is introduced as a wealthy man who marries Madam Ghita, a very beautiful woman. The tale gives no reason for his jealousy: it arises quickly, and when she asks him to explain it, he can offer only vague generalities. That absence matters to the plot. His suspicion is not presented as a response to evidence of infidelity; it precedes the affair and helps bring about the secret conduct he fears.

Madam Ghita becomes aware of his jealousy and resents it. A young man desires her, and she discreetly reaches an understanding with him. The tale presents Tofano’s suspicion and her subsequent affair in sequence, but does not make the affair proof that his earlier accusation was justified. Instead, his conduct creates the conditions in which she plans around him, while the story’s central conflict turns on his inability to distinguish suspicion from knowledge.

Drinking and the Attempt to Catch Her

Madam Ghita notices that Tofano enjoys drinking and carefully encourages the habit. In time, she can lead him to drink until he is intoxicated, put him to bed, and meet her lover. She grows confident enough to bring the lover into her own house and, at other times, to spend much of the night at his nearby home. Tofano’s drinking is thus more than a personal weakness: it becomes the practical means by which his wife manages his attention and makes her meetings possible.

Eventually Tofano notices that she encourages him to drink while never drinking herself. He suspects that she is making him drunk so that she can do as she pleases while he sleeps, and decides to test the suspicion. One evening he has not been drinking, but acts and speaks as though he were thoroughly drunk. Madam Ghita takes him to bed, judging that he needs no more drink, then leaves for her lover’s house and stays until midnight.

Tofano rises as soon as he knows she has gone. He locks the doors from inside and waits at a window for her return, intending to show that he has discovered her behavior. When she finds herself shut out, he tells her she will not come back in and threatens to expose her before her family and neighbors. His plan depends on controlling the appearance of the scene: he is inside the house, watching; she is outside, unable to enter. Madam Ghita answers that imbalance with an invented explanation, saying she has been keeping a night vigil with a neighbor.

The Well and the Reversal

When pleading fails, Madam Ghita threatens to throw herself into a nearby well. She says that, if her body is found, people will believe Tofano threw her in while drunk; he would then face flight, exile, or execution as her murderer. He remains unmoved. She goes to the well in the darkness, picks up a large stone, calls out as if seeking pardon, and drops it into the water. The noise convinces Tofano that she has jumped in.

He rushes outside with a bucket and rope to save her. Madam Ghita, who has hidden near the door, slips back into the house and locks him out. From the window she now accuses him of coming home drunk and turns the conduct he had hoped to expose back against him. When he protests loudly, the neighbors gather at their windows to ask what has happened. She tells them that he habitually returns late and drunk, and that she has locked him out to shame him into changing. Tofano tells them what he believes occurred, but his account sounds implausible beside her composed accusation and the apparent evidence of his drunkenness.

The neighbors blame Tofano. His jealousy has led him to stage a confrontation, but Madam Ghita’s well-devised performance makes him appear to be the disorderly husband he accused her of deceiving. Her relatives arrive after hearing the neighbors’ account, beat him so severely that they break his bones, and take her home with them. The reversal is public as well as domestic: Tofano loses control of the house, the story told about the night, and finally his wife’s presence.

Reconciliation and Narrative Significance

Tofano still loves Madam Ghita, and, finding himself injured and separated from her, he arranges for friends to intercede. He makes peace with her and brings her home again, promising never to be jealous. He also gives her leave to do as she pleases, provided that she acts discreetly enough for him not to know. The ending does not establish that the affair ends or that trust is restored. It records a negotiated settlement: after his suspicion and attempted exposure have brought punishment and separation, Tofano accepts secrecy as the condition of keeping his marriage.

The tale makes the gap between jealousy and proof central to Tofano’s characterization. His initial suspicion has no stated foundation; his later test does reveal that Madam Ghita is meeting a lover, but his decision to trap her does not give him mastery over what follows. She exploits his drinking, reads the danger of being locked outside, and uses the well, the darkness, and the neighbors’ view of the scene to redirect blame. His eventual concession is therefore both an admission of defeat and a comic reversal of his effort to police her conduct.

The story is also placed within a wider discussion of women’s constrained lives and jealous husbands. In the proem to the collection, women in love are described as having fewer ways than men to leave their rooms and divert themselves from distress. After Lauretta’s tale, Fiammetta introduces another story about a jealous husband and argues that baseless jealousy can threaten young women’s lives and confine them more harshly. That framing sharpens the significance of Tofano’s ending: his wife’s freedom is not secured by his recognition of her fidelity, but by his promise to stop watching and by her ability to keep her actions from his knowledge. The tale’s comedy rests on his humiliation, while its terms of reconciliation leave the unequal contest over surveillance and discretion in view.