In mid-sixteenth-century Italy, the story-collector Straparola helped to popularize fairy-tales. Straparola nonetheless had a keen sense for the earthy compromises that make ordinary life possible. For example, a medieval proverb taught, “whoever minds her own business doesn’t get her hands dirty {chi fa li fatti suoi non s’imbratta le mani}.” Straparola exemplified this proverb with a story of a wife and husband compromising to promote marital love.
In Straparola’s story, Gliceria and Bigoccio were newly married. On their wedding night, Gliceria put on gloves just before they had sex. Bigoccio asked her to take them off. He desired his wife’s naked touch. But she responded:
My good husband, at such times as these I could never bring myself to touch a man with my bare hands.
{ Signor mio, io non toccherei mai così fatte cose con le mani nude. }
In short, she had internalized disparagement of sexual activity with men as “dirty.” Bigoccio fulfilled his marital sexual obligation with his gloved wife, but he felt besmirched.
The next evening before getting into bed, Bigoccio slipped onto his penis a hawk’s jesses with many little bells attached to them. He and his wife commenced marital sexual relations as married couples normally used to do:
He at once began to caress, embrace and kiss her. She as previously was wearing gloves on her hands. Because she had by now acquired a taste for marital relations, she put her hand on her husband’s penis and discovered the jesses. Then she said, “My husband, what’s this thing I’m touching? It wasn’t there last night.”
{ cominciò accarecciarla, toccarla e basciarla. Gliceria, ch’aveva i guanti in mano, e per l’addietro gustato il mattarello, pose la mano al membro di suo marito, e trovò i getti; e disse: Marito mio, che cosa è questa ch’io tocco? Ier notte non l’avevate. }
An interpersonal difficulty apparently arose along with ringing of the bells from the husband’s sexual exertions:
Bigoccio said to her: “What you feel are jesses men use in hawking.” He tried to get into her arbor and plant his spade in the shady vale. But the jesses impeded entry. Glisceria said, “I don’t want any jesses contraptions.”
{ Rispose fra Bigoccio: I’ sono i getti d’andar a spariviere; — e montato sopra l’arbore, voleva mettere il piviolo nella val pelosa, e perchè i getti impedivano il piviolo entrare, disse Gliceria; Io non voglio i getti. }
A kind and loving husband, Bigoccio pointed out an opportunity for compromise:
“If you don’t want jesses,” the husband responded, “well, as for me, I don’t want gloves.” So by mutual consent the couple cast aside both gloves and jesses. Thereafter they had much pleasure by night and day, and Gliceria became pregnant.
{ Se tu non vuoi i getti, rispose il marito, nè io voglio i guanti. Onde di commune consentimento, gettarono via i guanti ed i getti. Dandosi adunque piacere notte e giorno, la donna s’ingravidò }
In having sex with her husband, Gliceria learned the validity of the proverb, “whoever minds her own business doesn’t get her hands dirty {chi fa li fatti suoi non s’imbratta le mani}.” A wife having sex with her husband isn’t dirtying.
Straparola’s story provides more general and important lessons, particularly for our age of gender conflict. Men most recognize the value of guile, an art in which women have traditionally excelled. Moreover, women and men need to compromise in their ordinary relations. That’s no Straparola fairy-tale.
* * * * *
Read more:
- piggish men rebel against constraints of men’s lives
- medieval women taught men about true love
- wizard Merlin’s virgin conception in literary history
Notes:
The quotes above are from Giovanni (Zoan) Francesco Straparola, The Pleasant Nights {Le Piacevoli Notti}, Night 11, Story 5, Italian text from Rua (1899), English translation (modified) from Beecher (2012). The lady Vicenza tells this story. Subsequent quotes below from Le Piacevoli Notti are similarly sourced.
Beecher has traced the story of the gloves and jesses (an inset story in Straparola’s Night 11, Story 5) to Antonio Cornazano’s The Origin of Proverbs {De origine proverbiorum}, published in Milan in 1503. Drawing upon the well-established tradition of expressive freedom in medieval Latin, the wife uses her bare hands to caress her husband’s genitals while repeating the proverb “whoever minds her own business doesn’t get her hands dirty {chi fa li fatti suoi non s’imbratta le mani}.” That plot element is suppressed in Straparola’s version. Cornazano’s story was reproduced in Proverbs of Antonio Cornazano within Witty Stories {Proverbii di Antonio Cornazano in facetie}, first published in Venice in 1518. This proverb collection was republished many times in subsequent centuries, including in French and English translations. Beecher (2012) vol. 2, pp. 496-7.
Regarding men’s genitals as dirty is mild disparagement relative to the history of brutalizing men’s genitals. Straparola’s Le Piacevoli Notti includes the story of the priest and the image-carver’s wife (Night 8, Story 3). That story is similar to the fabliau The priest crucified {Du prestre crucefié}. In Straparola’s version, a naked priest hid by posing as Christ on a cross in an image-carver’s workshop (the priest had cuckolded the image-carver). Nuns entered the workshop to get a crucifix. The image-carver pointed to the living crucifix of the priest and suggested that the nuns take that “sculpture.” The nuns exclaimed:
“Certainly that one is beautiful, and will greatly please Mother and the nuns. But just one thing is rather displeasing,” they said. “It’s that nuisance there, right before our eyes and in plain sight. It might cause no little scandal to the whole convent.”
{ Certo che è bellissimo, e piacerà molto alla madre ed alle monache. Ma una sol cosa — dissero le suori, — ne dispiace assai, che voi non avete provisto che sì scopertamente non si vedesse quel fastidio che dinanzi tiene: perciò che tal cosa potrebbe partorire non picciolo scandolo a tutto il monastero. }
Despite Jesus Christ being a fully masculine man, the nuns were referring to the priest’s genitals. Showing the relationship between disparaging men’s genitals and castration culture, the image-carver went to cut off the priest’s genitals in order to please the nuns.
Straparola’s Night 13, Story 9 (“Of Filomena the Hermaphrodite Nun,” taken from Antonio Molino), underscores social disparagement of men’s genitals. That story describes the transformation of a woman into a man. A surgeon cut open a painful swelling in Filomena’s groin:
Everyone believed that from such a wound would come putrefaction and blood, but instead emerged a certain large member of the kind that women desire, but that to see is so disgusting.
{ quando si credeva che di tal buco uscir ne dovesse o sangue, o marza, ne uscì un certo grosso membro, il quale le donne desiderano e di vederlo si schifano. }
That social sense of a man’s penis associates it with putrefaction and blood. Waters’s translation of this story elided the reference to the transman Filomena’s member (penis). Tradition philology has more generally repressed representations of men’s genitals.
[images] (1) Woman putting on white latex medical gloves. Source photo by Merco Verch, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0 By. (2) Hawk wearing jesses. Source photo by whiskymac (Reg McKenna) via Wikimedia Commons.
References:
Beecher, Donald. 2012. Giovanni Francesco Straparola. The Pleasant Nights. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Rua, Giuseppe. 1899. Le piacevoli notti di M. Giovanfrancesco Straparola da Caravaggio nelle quali si contengono le favole con i loro enimmi da dieci donne e duo giovani raccontate. 2 vols. Bologna: Romagnoli-Dall’ Acqua. Alternate presentation of 1927 edition.
Waters, W.G., trans. 1894. Giovanni Francesco Straparola. The Nights. Vol. 1. Vol. 2. London: Lawrence and Bullen. Alternate presentation: vol. 1, vol. 2.