Well, here’s an oldie but goodie. I was reminded of it by a recent post on Ricochet about Euripides’s play, Medea (speaking of oldies but goodies). That post has to do with the retelling of the story of the figure with her roots firmly in Greek mythology who marries Jason of Golden Fleece and Argonauts fame. Naturally (it is a Greek tragedy after all) things end badly and Medea murders Jason’s second wife, and then her own children (this particular plot detail seems to have been added to the much older story by Euripides in his play).
While several variations of the stories exist outside of Euripides’s telling, his play ends with Medea being lifted up to the heavens on a golden chariot with the bodies of her children, spewing bile and venom at Jason as long as she’s within hearing range, while Jason is left among the rubble with his new wife and his children dead, and his own life in ruins. This markedly different ending for the two of them has always led me to speculate that Euripides was trying to make the point that Medea found favor with the Greek gods (one of whom sent the chariot down to collect her and her children), and that they must have approved of her vengeful actions more than they did of Jason’s admittedly disloyal ones towards his wife. A point I’ve always thought is worthy of discussion.
Certainly, Euripides’s Medea is often viewed today as a feminist hero. Which is unfortunate.
But that got me thinking again. About, among others, tragedies like Oedipus Rex and Antigone. (Never let it be said that RWKJ favors mistreatment of one sex in favor of the other. Lord. The things parents do to their children. Even the Bible is not quite exempt from the horror.) And about other Greek and Roman myths. And about fairy tales. (Especially relevant today, there’s Snow White, in the early retellings of which, the vicious and vengeful Queen was Snow White’s own mother. And some of Shakespeare. And so on.)
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Perhaps these stories speak to us at a level so deep we’ve forgotten what they are for, and whether the lessons contained within them should teach us to follow, or avoid, certain courses of action. Maybe we just can’t read the signs anymore, preferring, in our insular little worlds to make it all about “me” and less about “everyone else in the world.”
I dunno. Perhaps I’m just losing my grip. (🤣🤣 I think not.)
Still, here’s the old post all this reminded me of, a retelling by Geoffrey Chaucer of an even older story about the perfect wife:
I’ve long thought that some of my better and more interesting posts are ones that I don’t think about much in advance, but which come to me spontaneously, or as a result of something I fall over on the way to looking up other things. (I do realize that your mileage may vary on this point, and it’s OK if it does. This is one such post, so if you’re not favorably inclined to my thesis, perhaps you might want to stop reading now).
But, I was on a tear about Old and Middle English Literature on a couple of other threads recently. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Knight. Beowulf. One or two other things.
And in the course of leafing through The Canterbury Tales (between us, Mr. Right and I have several copies and numerous editions), I came again upon Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale, in which the Clerk, a poor fellow on a skeleton-thin horse, perhaps a perpetual student, but one whose motivations we should think of kindly (“and gladly would he learn, and gladly teach”), tells the story of Patient Griselda.
It’s a story that was first featured in Boccaccio’s Decameron (mid 14th Century), and was picked up and retold by numerous others throughout the Middle Ages, including Chaucer, Petrarch, Christine de Pizan, several fifteenth and sixteenth century playwrights, and others well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
With all that, Griselda is traditionally viewed as the very model of the patient, obedient, and Christian wife.
Here are the outlines of the story, as told by Boccaccio, and with minor variations by others throughout the ages:
Gualtieri (Walter), count of Saluzzo has spent most of his life indulging himself, but finally he succumbs to the pleas of family, friends and subjects that he should settle down, find a wife, and take care of his succession.
Thinking that his well-wishers would like him to marry up, or at least at his own social level, he goes out and finds Griselda, a poor, lovely, petite and charming, young woman, who he brings home and marries, after making her promise to love, honor and obey him in all things. She gladly agrees.
Walter, who thought her poor circumstances would make her grateful, and that her “cuteness” would make her at least bearable to live with, then begins to set Griselda a series of tests to prove her submissiveness and obedience. (Apparently, Walter has serious trust issues.)
First, not long after the birth of their first child (a daughter), Walter tells Griselda that the child must be put to death, as his subjects find the child unfit. Griselda happily surrenders the child to Walter, who has her sent off to a secret place where she will be cared for. He then informs Griselda that the child has been executed.
Walter is still not satisfied as to Griselda’s loyalty and compliance, so:
Shortly thereafter, when Griselda bears a son, Walter chastises her and says the child must be put to death. Again, she surrenders the child without complaint, and Walter take the child somewhere else, then informs Griselda that her second child is dead.
She continues in her role as happy, compliant, obedient wife. But Walter is still not satisfied. So he sets her a final test:
He denounces Griselda, asserts that the Pope has granted him permission to divorce her, and sends her, wearing only a nightie, back to her father.
And then he announces to his subjects that he’s about to remarry. He orders Griselda to come to his castle to prepare the new bride for her nuptials. Griselda gladly complies.
When she gets there, Walter introduces Griselda to his twelve-year old bride, who is actually Griselda’s and his first child, and asks Griselda what she thinks of the lovely girl.
Griselda replies, sincerely, that if the young woman’s wisdom is as great as her beauty, she and Walter will be happy together.
Eureka! At last! That does it!
Walter is finally convinced of Griselda’s worth, her submissiveness, and her goodness, and he confesses all his deceptions. Griselda is overjoyed, she resumes her position as Walter’s loyal wife, and everyone lives happily ever after.
So. That’s the tale of Patient Griselda.
This story was, for many years, used to illustrate the proper way a wife should behave towards her husband. In the Christian tradition, it’s been compared to the book of Job, and Griselda’s trials, set by Walter, have been compared to the trials we face which are set by God. And rarely, for many centuries, was the behavior of her husband examined or questioned at all (one of the rare exceptions to this fact is the peerless Geoffrey, one of the reasons I love him so much, because–as far as I can see–he doesn’t think Walter was all that worthy of his generous and long-suffering helpmeet).
This most recent time I read Chaucer’s tale, I found myself wondering how others view it, and what they would think about Griselda, and about Walter, and about their respective behaviors in this story which stood up for so long as the acme of fine womanly behavior.
When I originally told this story on Ricochet, all the way back in 2018, I didn’t tip my hand as to my own opinion about it. But life goes on, I’m always learning, much water has passed under the bridge, some of it even down here amidst The Headwaters of the Mississippi, and I’m half-a-decade older now, so here goes (don’t say you weren’t warned):
I think Walter is a rotten, self-involved, narcissistic, and manipulative shit. I think Griselda is a moronic and credulous fool who should have kicked Walter’s ass out the door all the way from here to Fagus, Dexter, or even Cape Girardeau Missouri, when confronted with the first of his “loyalty” tests. Because all he’s doing, over and over is the old “IF YOU LOVED ME YOU WOULD” challenge:
- “IF YOU LOVED ME YOU WOULD” [impersonate his wife, lie, and sign a document in her name in front of a corrupt notary public]
or
- “IF YOU LOVED ME YOU WOULD” [drive him to visit our friends in another state and then lie to them and sneak out with me after dark for a “dirty” night in a cheap motel]
or
- “IF YOU LOVED ME YOU WOULD” [invite his young Asian girlfriend into our (theoretical) bed for a riotous threesome]
or
- “IF YOU LOVED ME YOU WOULD” [disown my own family and trust only him]
or
- “IF YOU LOVED ME YOU WOULD” [spend fewer than 45 minutes talking about a member of my own family who’d died under tragic circumstances when I should have been talking only about what’s important to him]
or
- “IF YOU LOVED ME YOU WOULD” much else, some of which (involving his nuclear family) is so sad, and some of which–involving his ugly dreams–is unpleasant enough that I don’t care to include it here, but almost all of which has to do with a malignant narcissist’s need to push his target’s boundaries beyond that which is congruent with her own own moral code, just so she can “prove” to his ever-evolving degree of satisfaction how much she cares for him.
Yes. A few (not exhaustive) examples of my own “Patient Griselda” moments at the hands of a manipulative individual.
Which I reflexively (wouldn’t you?) spurned. But from which I’ve learned.
Any behavior, on either partner’s part which drives him or her to beg: “How can I prove to you that… [I understand you], [I am on your side], [I love you}, [I feel your pain], and so on, is manipulative and vicious.
I’ve been an excellent woman, and a really good wife over the course of half-a-century. But I’ve never been–much to my late husband’s relief, I’m pretty sure– Griselda the credulous fool. The idea that–in order to be worthy–I need to “prove” anything about myself to another human being is idiotic and repulsive to any thinking person.
Still, the idea that we have something to “prove” is–I have discovered, a much more common problem and trope when it comes to manipulative men and gullible, accommodating, women than one might hope or expect. (See Andrew Tate and the traditional Christian “anti-feminist” women who can’t get enough of him, for other examples.)
It’s funny, really. Because popular culture would have it that it’s the women who are the control freaks, the emotionalists, and the manipulators. But real life has taught me that men–particularly self-involved, narcissistic, drama-queens–are pretty good at it too.
Thank God I never gave in to any of it and that my dignity–such as it is– is still pretty much intact.
Difficult as it is to do so, when you’re so unfortunate as to have a “Walter” in your life, however temporarily, it is nevertheless possible to get out from under the smothering sense of being helpless and under someone else’s control, to recover, to reassert oneself, to reset one’s moral compass, and to forge ahead. It’s ugly. It’s hard (probably harder in the days of the social media mob than it ever was before). But it can be done. If you are struggling, this might be an excellent and very inexpensive way to set you in the right direction: Fifty Shades of Narcissism: The Secret Language of Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Psychopaths. FTR, I’ve never been one of those impressionable fools who reads about a medical condition on the Internet and suddenly shouts, “OMG! This is exactly what I am suffering from!!” But this little booklet made me cry the first time I read it years ago because it exactly described not only how I felt, but it was also spot on about the behavior of a few others of the harpies gleefully circling the supposed corpse (that which these miserable women were hoping would be my own corpse):
Smear Campaign: Narcissists keep harems because they love to have their egos stroked and they need constant validation from the outside world to feed their need for excessive admiration and confirm their grandiose sense of self-importance. They are clever chameleons who are also people-pleasers, morphing into whatever personality suits them in situations with different types of people. It is no surprise, then, that the narcissist begins a smear campaign against you not too long after the discard phase, in order to paint you as the unstable one, and that this is usually successful with the narcissist’s support network which also tends to consist of other narcissists, people-pleasers, empaths, as well as people who are easily charmed.
This smear campaign accomplishes three things:
1. it depicts you as the abuser or unstable person and deflects your accusations of abuse
2. it provokes you, thus proving your instability to others when trying to argue his or her depiction of you, and
3. it serves as a hoovering technique in which the narcissist seeks to pull you back into the trauma of the relationship as you struggle to reconcile the rumors about you with who you actually are by speaking out against the accusations. The only way to not get pulled into this tactic is by going full No Contact with both the narcissist and his or her harem.
Then there is this:
Triangulation: Healthy relationships thrive on security; unhealthy ones are filled with provocation, uncertainty and infidelity. Narcissists like to manufacture love triangles and bring in the opinions of others to validate their point of view. They do this to an excessive extent in order to play puppeteer to your emotions. Triangulation consists of bringing the presence of another person into the dynamic of the relationship, whether it be an ex-lover, a current mistress, a relative, or a complete stranger. This triangulation can take place over social media, in person, or even through the narcissist’s own verbal accounts of the other woman or man. The narcissist relies on jealousy as a powerful emotion that can cause you to compete for his or her affections, so provocative statements like: “He wants me back into his life, I don’t know what to do” are designed to trigger the abuse victim into competing and feeling insecure about his or her position in the narcissist’s life. Triangulation is the way the narcissist maintains control and keeps you in check. You’re so busy competing for his or her attention that you’re less likely to be focusing on the red flags within the relationshiip.
Well, as a famous person once said:, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
So here I still am.
Mostly because–I think–along the way, I’ve discovered that preserving a sense of humor, and a sense of proportion, might be the most important things of all. And I think I’ve done pretty well in those areas.
Not to mention the fact that I love my life, I love where I am, and I have a very decent network of both online and IRL friends who watch out for me, support me, and keep me going. Bless you all.
Along the way, I’ve grown. I can only hope Griselda grew too, that she learned something during her ordeal, and that the last chapter of her life was more personally satisfying and rewarding than had been the previous few.
Perhaps it’s time for someone to write–joyfully–the story of Patient Griselda’s later life.
I might do just that.
Watch this space.
