Gualtieri Expels Griselda

Gualtieri Expels Griselda is the most public and humiliating stage of Gualtieri’s trial of his wife’s endurance. He uses counterfeit papal letters to make her believe that their marriage has been dissolved, dismisses her by appealing to the difference between his noble ancestry and her peasant origins, and sends her back to her father in a shift. Griselda’s calm response, especially her return of the ring with which he had espoused her, makes the scene both an ordeal of personal loyalty and a stark display of the power Gualtieri exercises over her status and home.

The Final Trial

Several years after the birth of their daughter, Gualtieri decides that the time has come for what he regards as the supreme test of Griselda’s endurance. He announces before his people that he can no longer bear to have her as his wife and intends to seek papal permission to put her away and marry another woman. Men of worth rebuke him, but he gives them no explanation beyond insisting that it must be so. His announcement turns a private marriage into a public spectacle: the household hears that Griselda may be discarded, while she must face the possibility of losing the life she has built with him.

The threatened divorce repeats the pattern of earlier trials. Gualtieri had already arranged for Griselda to believe that first their daughter and then their son had been put to death. In fact, both children had been secretly sent away to be brought up elsewhere. Griselda had shown no outward rebellion when told of their supposed deaths, though the people around her pitied her and condemned Gualtieri. Now he presses the same test through a different loss: rather than tell her that her children are dead, he tells her that the marriage itself is over. The earlier deceptions make the expulsion more than a sudden change of fortune; it is the culmination of a deliberately repeated demand that she bear whatever he chooses to impose.

The False Dispensation and the Grounds for Dismissal

Gualtieri reinforces his announcement with counterfeit letters from Rome, which he presents as a papal dispensation permitting him to leave Griselda and take another wife. He then addresses her in front of witnesses. His stated reason joins legal authority to social hierarchy: because his ancestors were great lords and hers had always been husbandmen, he says she is no longer to be his wife and must return to Giannucolo’s house with the dowry she brought.

The forged document matters because Gualtieri makes the separation appear authorized rather than merely his own decision. Yet the status argument is not new. He had chosen Griselda despite her low birth, and the present reversal exposes how little security that choice has provided her. His words recast the marriage as a favor that can be withdrawn, while Griselda’s reply refuses to pretend that she ever possessed its benefits outright. She says she has always regarded her position with him as something borrowed, not as property she could claim as her own. Her answer recognizes the imbalance without challenging his immediate power to enforce it.

The Ring, the Shift, and the Return Home

Griselda contains her tears and gives Gualtieri the ring with which he had espoused her. The ring makes the separation concrete: the object that marked their union is returned by the wife whose place in that union is now being revoked. She accepts that he may reclaim what he gave her, but asks for one additional garment beyond her dowry. Her request is precise and restrained. Since she entered his house naked, she says, she will leave naked if he considers that fitting; she asks only to take a shift in return for the maidenhood she brought into the marriage and cannot take away with her.

Gualtieri grants the shift, but refuses the appeals of those present to give her a gown. After more than thirteen years as his wife, Griselda leaves his house barefoot, bareheaded, and wearing only that garment. The people who witness her departure weep and lament. She returns to Giannucolo, who had kept the clothes she wore on the morning of her marriage because he had never believed she would remain Gualtieri’s wife. Putting them on again, she resumes the small duties of her father’s household and bears what the story calls the assault of hostile fortune with a stout heart. The preserved clothes turn her return into a visible reversal: the garments of her earlier life await her when the marriage that seemed to have transformed her is taken away.

Expulsion Extended into Service

Gualtieri does not let Griselda’s dismissal end with her return to her father. He announces that he has chosen a daughter of one of the Counts of Panago as his new bride and asks Griselda to come back and prepare the house for the wedding. He appeals to her experience of household arrangements, asking her to order the rooms, hangings, and food and to receive the invited ladies as though she were still mistress there. He says that she may return to her father’s house after the festivities.

Griselda agrees, although the request wounds her because she still loves Gualtieri. She enters the house in her coarse homespun clothes and undertakes the work: sweeping and ordering the chambers, arranging hangings and coverlets, preparing viands, and inviting the ladies. On the wedding day she receives them with a cheerful countenance and the bearing of a high-born lady, despite the plainness of her clothing. The expulsion thus becomes not only the loss of a home and title but a reversal of household rank: the former wife prepares the rooms and welcomes guests for the woman she is told will replace her.

Marriage, Rank, and the Meaning of the Scene

Across the Decameron, marriage can be established or repaired through different combinations of promise, consent, family authority, and public recognition. Alessandro accepts a woman’s proposal and receives her ring as a pledge; Gillette secures Bertrand through the French king’s promise after curing him; Ricciardo is discovered with Caterina and takes her as his wife before her parents; and Teodoro’s marriage to Violante becomes possible when their fathers recognize the truth and agree. These episodes make the mechanics of marriage visible. Griselda’s expulsion reverses that movement: Gualtieri invokes a supposed higher authority to undo a union, while she returns the ring that had signified it.

The scene also resonates with the book’s account of women’s constrained circumstances. Its opening describes women in love as often confined to their chambers and subject to the wishes and commands of fathers, mothers, brothers, and husbands; in a later discussion, Filomena warns that the women’s company needs guidance beyond its own. Those passages do not erase the differences among the stories, but they sharpen the force of Griselda’s situation: her home, public standing, and marriage are all placed at the disposal of a husband who controls the terms of her removal. Her steadiness is therefore presented within a story of extreme dependence, not as evidence that the expulsion carries no cost. At this point in the narrative, Gualtieri’s supposed new marriage is still being prepared, and Griselda has returned to the household from which she came, still performing the service he demands.