Ghita’s fake drowning ruse

Madam Ghita’s fake drowning ruse is the decisive reversal in Lauretta’s tale of a jealous husband: a stone dropped into a well makes Tofano believe his wife has drowned, drawing him away from the locked house and giving her control of the story told to their neighbors. The trick turns his suspicion and attempted public shaming against him, but its ending is not a restoration of marital trust. After Tofano is beaten and seeks reconciliation, he agrees to tolerate his wife’s freedom so long as she keeps it from his knowledge.

Background and the household deception

The story is told by Lauretta after Elisa’s tale. Introducing it as another example of the devices Love can teach, Lauretta presents Madam Ghita as a woman of simple wit whose quick improvisation can outmaneuver a husband who has already made jealousy the governing rule of their household. Tofano is a rich man of Arezzo, and Madam Ghita is described as very fair. He becomes jealous without being able to give a specific reason; when she asks him repeatedly why he suspects her, he offers only general and empty explanations. His accusation has no evidence behind it, but it still shapes the conditions under which she must act.

Madam Ghita responds not by persuading Tofano to trust her, but by exploiting a habit she has observed in him. He enjoys drinking, and she begins to praise and encourage it. In time, she can lead him to drink until he is intoxicated and put him to bed. Once he is asleep, she meets the young man who has been courting her. The meetings grow more daring: she sometimes brings her lover into the house and at other times spends much of the night at his nearby home. Tofano’s drunkenness is thus both the practical cover for the affair and the weakness that will later make her counterplot convincing.

Discovery and the locked door

The balance shifts when Tofano notices that Madam Ghita urges him to drink but never drinks herself. He suspects that she makes him drunk so she can pursue her own pleasure while he sleeps. To test his suspicion, he abstains from drinking one evening but acts and speaks as though he is more intoxicated than ever. Madam Ghita believes the performance, puts him to bed in haste, and goes to her lover’s house. Tofano waits until she has left, rises, and locks the doors from inside. He then takes up his position at a window to watch for her return and confront her with what he thinks he has discovered.

When Madam Ghita comes home at midnight, she finds herself locked outside. Tofano tells her that she cannot enter again and threatens to expose her before her relatives and neighbors. She first begs him to open the door, claiming she has been keeping vigil with a female neighbor because the nights are long and she cannot sleep alone. Her explanation does not move him. The danger is no longer simply that her husband has uncovered the affair: he intends to make a public accusation while keeping himself, inside the house, in the position of judge.

The stone in the well

Madam Ghita changes tactics. She warns that, rather than endure the shame he means to inflict, she will throw herself into a nearby well. If she is found dead, she argues, people will believe that Tofano, drunk, cast her there; he could lose his property, go into exile, or be beheaded as her murderer. He remains unmoved. She then asks him to put away her distaff, as if preparing to leave it behind, and goes toward the well in the darkness, carrying a large stone.

The sound does the work of a body. Madam Ghita calls out for God’s pardon and drops the stone into the water; the splash is loud enough that Tofano believes she has thrown herself in. He grabs the bucket and rope and runs from the house to rescue her. She has hidden near the door. As soon as he is gone, she slips inside, locks him out, and appears at the window. The trick is exact in its reversal: Tofano had used the locked door to trap her in a vulnerable position, but his belief in the apparent drowning draws him away from that door and lets her occupy the house he had barred against her.

Reversal, public judgment, and settlement

Now Madam Ghita makes the neighbors her audience. She calls out that Tofano should have watered his wine before drinking it, then, when he returns and demands entry, raises her voice. Neighbors wake and come to their windows to ask what is happening. She presents herself as a wife who has long endured a husband who comes home drunk or falls asleep in taverns, and says that she has locked him out to shame him into changing. Her account reverses the original scene: she was the one left outside, but she makes Tofano look like the drunken offender abandoned in the street.

Tofano tells the neighbors what he believes has happened and threatens his wife. His own account, instead of clearing him, makes him seem foolish; Madam Ghita asks the neighbors to consider how differently they might judge the story if she were outside and he inside. She suggests that he has tried to frighten her by throwing something into the well, and wishes aloud that he had thrown himself in and drowned. The neighbors accept her version and blame Tofano. The report spreads from one household to another until Madam Ghita’s relatives hear of it, come to the scene, and beat him so severely that they break his bones. They then take her belongings and bring her home with them, threatening Tofano with worse.

The aftermath makes clear both the success and the limits of the deception. Tofano recognizes that his jealousy has brought him into a sorry state, yet he still loves his wife. Through friends who intercede for him, he makes peace with her and brings her home again. He promises never to be jealous and gives her leave to do as she pleases, on the condition that she act discreetly enough for him not to know. The resolution is comic and compromised: his attempted exposure has ended in his public humiliation, but the household settles not on honesty about the affair, but on a new agreement built around concealment. Lauretta’s closing praise of Love and condemnation of war gives the episode its playful finish, while Tofano’s bargain preserves the irony that the jealous husband’s final concession is to stop asking what his wife does.