ABSTRACT
In Chapter 6, “Is all well on love’s pilgrimage? Boundary crossings between the sheets,” the intersectionality of status and gender allows French and Italian cisgender female characters to cross international and interpersonal boundaries in Boccaccio’s “Gilletta of Narbonne” from The Decameron and Bargagli’s La Pellegrina. Helena, Gilletta, and Drusilla dress as pilgrims to pursue their beloveds and win back their husbands. Indeed, the lovesick Helena and Gilletta deprive their husbands of consent, trick their husbands into bed, and claim conjugal rights, and obtain rings and heirs to fulfill unreasonable demands. Italian and French women who enable Helena and Gilletta in the bed trick reap rewards. In La Pellegrina, Drusilla’s misreported death fools her fiancé Lucrezio and causes her to doubt his fidelity. The Spanish pilgrim uses her guise as an herbalist to heal other women and empower her rival and herself to marry the men whom they love. However, the maids and innkeeper assist the higher-status women with little gain. Gender and status subvert international and interpersonal boundaries to enable women to fight for and win the husbands of their choice in Italy.
