The Destructive Power of Anger and Jealousy

The Destructive Power of Anger and Jealousy emerges in these stories as a force that converts intimate bonds into instruments of injury. A suspicion or affront, once allowed to govern action, does not remain private: it draws lovers, relatives, and bystanders into consequences that exceed the original grievance. The contrast between Tancred and Ghismonda and the lovers in Lauretta’s tale shows two forms of that danger—an accusation met with defiant self-command, and jealousy allowed to harden into murder.

Anger as a narrative force

Lauretta introduces her tale by describing anger as a sudden emotion that drives reason from the mind and obscures understanding. She presents it not merely as a feeling but as a change in judgment: the angry person sees an affront as warrant for action, while the power to consider consequences recedes. Her stated purpose is cautionary. The three young men and three sisters begin in happiness, but, as she explains, the anger of one woman turns their loves from good fortune to misery.

The story also complicates its own moral framework. Lauretta attributes women’s anger to their supposedly more delicate and mobile nature, contrasting it with men’s greater density and weight. That claim belongs to the narrator’s explanation, not to an impartial rule established by the events. The plot gives her argument a pointed dramatic form: Ninetta’s rage is decisive, but the harm that follows is distributed across the whole group, while Restagnone’s waning attachment and the Duke of Crete’s intervention are also part of the chain of causes.

Tancred and Ghismonda: love under accusation

Tancred’s confrontation with Ghismonda presents anger beside a competing attachment. He has discovered her secret love for Guiscardo and has had Guiscardo seized and secretly guarded in the palace. When Tancred speaks privately with his daughter, he says that he had believed in her virtue and honesty, and grieves that she has loved a man of low condition who was raised at his court. He admits that love for Ghismonda pulls him toward pardon, while indignation at what he calls her folly urges him toward harshness. His distress is real, but his account also makes her choice answerable to his judgment of rank and propriety.

Ghismonda does not answer by denying the relationship or asking Tancred to spare her. She composes herself despite her grief and the fear that Guiscardo may already be dead, then declares that she will neither deny the truth nor plead for herself. She says that her love is real and enduring, and defends her choice by pointing to Tancred’s failure to arrange another marriage for her and to Guiscardo’s personal worth. Her response refuses the role of a daughter merely chastened by her father: she presents herself as prepared to defend her honor and to meet the consequences resolutely. The exchange makes the conflict more than a contest between anger and obedience; it places paternal affection, social rank, and Ghismonda’s own account of her love in direct opposition.

Ninetta and Restagnone: jealousy becomes murder

In Lauretta’s tale, Ninetta and her sisters elope with three young men, taking money and jewels from their father’s coffer. They sail first to Genoa and then to Crete, where they buy estates near Candia and live comfortably, with servants, hounds, hawks, and horses. That abundance establishes the security of their new life, but it also precedes its unravelling. Restagnone, who had loved Ninetta, grows tired of a relationship he can pursue without hindrance and begins courting a local young woman with entertainments and attentions.

Ninetta responds with jealousy and reproaches. The narrative carefully leaves one matter uncertain: whether Restagnone actually obtained the local woman’s favors or not, Ninetta takes reports as proof. Her suspicion becomes certainty, and her grief gives way to rage; she interprets the situation as an affront to be avenged. Rather than test what she believes, she seeks out an old Greek woman skilled in compounding poisons and persuades her to prepare a lethal drink. One evening, when Restagnone is heated and unsuspecting, Ninetta gives it to him. He dies before morning.

The killing is concealed at first even from those closest to the dead man. Folco, Ughetto, and their mistresses mourn Restagnone and arrange an honorable burial, not knowing that he was poisoned. The secret comes to light only after the poison-maker is arrested for another crime and confesses under torture. The Duke of Crete then has Ninetta seized secretly at Folco’s palace and learns from her, without torture, what happened. The disclosure turns private vengeance into a matter of public justice and puts Ninetta’s life in danger.

Retaliation, escape, and shared ruin

Maddalena, Ninetta’s sister, seeks to save her by yielding to the Duke of Crete. The Duke stages Ninetta’s removal in a sack, making it appear that she will be sunk in the sea, and secretly delivers her to Maddalena the next morning. His favor comes with a demand that Maddalena send Ninetta away, so that he will not be blamed or forced to pursue the case again. Ninetta’s rescue is thus bought at the cost of Maddalena’s sexual submission, and it does not end the danger surrounding the sisters.

Folco soon realizes that Ninetta is in the palace. Suspicious because he has heard of the Duke’s passion for Maddalena, he questions her and forces her to confess how her sister came to be there. Overcome by grief and rage, he kills Maddalena with his sword despite her pleas for mercy. He then deceives Ninetta, pretending that he is carrying her away as her sister had arranged. She leaves with him at night, unaware that Maddalena is dead. With only the small amount of money Folco can gather, they embark on a vessel; their destination is never discovered.

Maddalena’s murder produces another reversal. The next day, people who hate or envy Ughetto report the killing to the Duke. He arrests Ughetto and his companion, who know nothing of either Folco and Ninetta’s departure or the murder, and compels them to confess that they were involved with Folco. Facing the death they reasonably expect to follow, the pair bribe their keepers with money they had hidden for emergencies. They escape by night to Rhodes without time to take their other possessions, live there in poverty and distress, and die soon afterward. The ending expands the consequences beyond the original pair: Restagnone’s change of affection and Ninetta’s anger lead to deaths, a sister’s coerced bargain, a second murder, and the ruin of survivors whose supposed guilt rests on a forced confession.

Narrative design and significance

Lauretta’s tale is framed by Filostrato’s dissatisfaction with the preceding story’s ending. He asks for a better one; Lauretta objects that he is too severe toward lovers if he wants only unhappy conclusions, then tells of three couples who end badly and have enjoyed little of their love. That exchange makes the tale’s bleakness part of its design: its ending does not isolate one villain’s punishment but accounts for how misdirected desire, suspicion, and fury multiply harm.

The two episodes together resist a simple equation of anger with one character or one act. Tancred openly experiences love and indignation at once, while Ghismonda answers discovery with composure and an argument for her own choice. Ninetta, by contrast, treats uncertain reports as certainty and turns jealousy into a calculated poisoning. The later deaths do not follow from her act alone; Restagnone’s pursuit of another woman, the Duke’s bargain, Folco’s suspicion and violence, and the false confession forced from Ughetto all extend the damage. The subject’s force lies in that accumulation: emotion becomes destructive when it overrides judgment, and the resulting harm travels outward through relationships long after the first grievance.