Griselda
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
gri-zel'da, Griseldis, or Grissel, in medieval legend, a character who was so patient under severe tests imposed upon her by her husband that her name has become proverbial. Griselda was the beautiful daughter of a poor charcoal burner. The Marquis of Saluzzo made her his wife. He treated her most cruelly, but with the presumably justifiable intention of testing her obedience and patience. He took her children from her, pretending that they were put to death, while really they were sent to be brought up elsewhere. Finally, after she had borne uncomplainingly every indignity and unkindness, her husband informed her that he intended to divorce her and marry another. Even at this the patient Griselda offered no complaint. She was stripped of her fine clothes and sent back to her father's cottage. When the day set for the Marquis' wedding arrived, Griselda was sent for to prepare for and welcome the bride. She made preparations for her rival carefully, and with the same calm sweetness with which she had borne other trials. When the expected "bride" appeared, she proved to be no bride, but Griselda's own daughter, now a beautiful young girl. Griselda was restored to her rightful place as wife of the Marquis and was famous forever after for her patience and wifely obedience. The origin of the story is unknown. Boccaccio told it in the Decameron. It is the last story of the collection, and the best. Petrarch translated the story into Latin; Chaucer used it as the clerk's tale in Canterbury Tales. Maria Edgeworth has written a novel entitled The Modern Griselda. In Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio says of Katharina, "For patience, she will prove a second Grissel."
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The tale itself has not moved since Aiton's wrote this in 1910: Boccaccio's last Decameron story, Petrarch's Latin retelling, and Chaucer's Clerk's Tale are still the three pillars, and Aiton's admission that "the origin of the story is unknown" remains broadly true, though folklorists now file it among widespread patient-wife folktales rather than treating it as one author's invention. What has changed is the verdict on Griselda. Where the 1910 account calls her husband's cruelty "presumably justifiable" testing and praises her "wifely obedience," twentieth-century criticism, feminist readings especially, treats the story as disturbing rather than exemplary, and points out that Chaucer's own Clerk ends by telling wives not to imitate her. The old operas have also come back: Vivaldi's Griselda, unheard for two centuries, is now staged and recorded.
Written for this edition, 2026.