Heptameron

The idea of the private and the public self dominates many stories of The Heptameron, in which men and women either seek to keep their love secret or protect a secret affair, or conversely, reveal the affairs of others or openly declare their love in public. When love is revealed publicly, it is often to disastrous effect, as it often becomes vulnerable to the judgment of others and results in social ruin.

Some of the preoccupation with guarding one’s feelings and keeping affection a secret derives from a cultural interest in ancient philosophy, where stoicism and Platonic transcendence of the emotional, human condition allowed one to rise above sentiment and operate in a higher state. The stories often demonstrate the success of men who can stifle their jealousy to better execute a plan for revenge, or women who control their emotions to win their wayward husbands back. By hiding deep feelings and controlling one’s reaction, an individual has better leverage in the public court intrigues that dominate aristocratic life.  

However, some of the men regularly assert that it is better to be open and honest about desires and shortcomings, and that the private self should better match the public. For Hircan, men are closer to salvation than women because they do not disguise their sins like women, who pretend to be virtuous but secretly nurture a deep-rooted pride that augments their sin. 

A common motif throughout the text is the unmasking of hypocrisy. Perhaps more serious than any other vice in the text, hypocrisy is responsible for the destruction of families and communities, and often the hypocrite’s punishment is double. For Geburon, it is the cause of all evil, and it is better to be foolish and open book than to be a hypocrite.

It is important to remember that in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, some of the worst punishments are reserved for deception, fraud, hypocrisy, falsifiers, and counterfeiters. The same savage critique is extended to those in The Heptameron, and to the clergy who commit these sins above all. Hypocrisy reoccurs in contrast to the emphasis on truth that is an underlying theme of the text, just as it is essential to the spirit of humanist and reformist thought in 16th-century France. 

A motif that runs throughout the text is the occasional conflict between different “Estates” of European society. This was a common motif during the Middle Ages and Renaissance and reflects a struggle between the social classes for cultural dominance. For much of the Middle Ages, “First Estate” was the Church, the “Second Estate” was the Nobility, and the “Third Estate” included the Peasantry. Later the merchant and intellectual classes began to emerge as a “Fourth Estate,” as Europe began to move away from a feudal system.

Typically, in The Heptameron these Estates tend to stay in their own settings, where stories might play out at Court or on a hunt, in smaller manors, in peasant homes, or in Abbeys. However, these separate worlds also clash with regularity; for example, mismatched lovers hide their love to continue their liaison, servants struggle to escape the tyrannical authority of their masters, and Franciscan friars might overstep their social boundaries in a nobleman’s home or in their community. The predictable clash of Estates in the text offers opportunity for debate and to question the social norms that exist to reaffirm the social order at a time of continual social change. 

Masks, masked words, and double entendres are prevalent throughout Marguerite de Navarre’s storytelling, in which the unseen is often revealed to comic or disastrous effect. The motif of the masked banquet during Carnevale occurs at the beginning of multiple stories, symbolizing the hidden agendas and hidden selves of the men and women therein. Carnevale itself is a time when social roles are reversed, and with masks on, the anonymity of the festival undercuts all hierarchies, if only for a time. The mask thus has the power to strip away power and to import power to whoever wears it.

What meets the eye cannot be taken at face value, and the recurrence of the masked lover—whether literal or figurative—highlights the contrast between appearance and motive. Likewise, unmasking vice is just as central to the denouement of many tales, often coinciding with the revelation of hypocrisy or infidelity. Indeed, Saffredent goes as far as to assert that men are always masked, and while a man might put on an air of noble love, his real intentions are always questionable. This motif is constantly in dialogue with the question of the public and private selves and the persistent question of whether one can really know another person’s soul. 

A regular motif in many of the comic tales, scatological humor—or the use of defecation, urination, or flatulence for comedic effect—typically mixes humanism with satire to critique society. Often the target is religious hypocrisy, where the seemingly purest level of society, here the clergy, is revealed to be the most self-indulgent and filthy. Revealing the humanity in all of us, scatological humor also serves to humiliate those who consider themselves superior to others, literally sullying their self-importance and bringing them back down to earth.

Marguerite de Navarre was a patron of François Rabelais, whose bawdy Gargantua and Pantagruel would have influenced the author’s use of scatological humor in her tales. However, this motif has its roots in the Middle Ages, appearing in The Decameron and many fabliaux to humorously present a sharp critique of societal hypocrisy.