Framing Men: Violent Women in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron

This analysis of tales 1 and 70 of the Heptameron draws on the double meaning of framing and explores the complex relationship between violence and narration in Marguerite de Navarre's collection of short stories. The female protagonists in the two novellas take revenge on innocent men by maliciously framing them and cruelly setting them up for their demise. Because of their significant position at the beginning and toward the end of the collection, these tales of violent women also frame the entire work and put the question of violence, male and female, into perspective. Finally, the multiple layers of the two stories' narrative framing reveal that violence perpetrated by women is conditioned and therefore de-gendered by male cruelty. In the Heptameron, violent women, framing men, are always already framed by violent men.