When historians look into the period between the 15th century and 17th century Europe, they analyze who was marginalized and how they were marginalized. The individuals who suffered at the hands of various forces that seemed beyond their control, came from a large group representing at least one-half of humanity known as women. The female gender had been a largely marginalized and went on during the time between the 15th and 17th centuries, as described by historians, “It consists of comparing woman's situation implicitly or explicitly to men's by focusing on law, prescriptive literature, iconographic representation, institutional structure, and political participation.”1 Economic developments, and emerging scientific techniques would eventually begin to improve the status of women during the 18th century. It is important to note that women could hardly respond to marginalization before the 18th century when the male entities at that point were too powerful to overcome and that it many women accepted these facts.
Until the 18th century had arrived, cultural traditions, law, and religion would conspire to keep women in the inferior position they had occupied for many millennium. John Nox was a Scottish clergyman during the Protestant Reformation in Scotland said in this recorded statement about women at the time, “And first, where I affirm the empire of a woman to be a thing repugnant to nature, I meant not only that God, by the order of his creation, has spoiled woman of authority and dominion, but also that man has seen, proved, and pronounced just causes why it should be.”2 Nox goes on to say that, “Man, I say, in many other cases, does in this behalf see very clearly.”3 Man is the dominant figure in these ages and...
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...onal property.7 Encouragement of these practices came from religions that believed that women were put on earth to serve men because of their higher rank in nature. Women were clearly marginalized, though their voices from the past live on today because their stories are told through historical documents and historians should continue to look for verification of the past so their memories will not be forgotten.
Works Cited
-Bossuet, Bishop Politics Taken from the Very Words of Scripture (1679) 3.
-Chojnacki, Stanley Motherhood, Gender, and Patrician Culture in Renaissance Venice Cornell University Press, 1991. 182.
-Davis, Natalie City Women and Religious Change Stanford University Press, 1975. 66.
-Engels, Frederick The Family (1884) 22.
-Laven, Mary Cast Out and Shut In 95.
-Scott, Joan Gender and the Politics of History Columbia University Press, 1983. 23.
Prior to the twentieth century, men assigned and defined women’s roles. Although all women were effected by men determining women’s behavior, largely middle class women suffered. Men perpetrated an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women. This ideology, called the Cult of True Womanhood, legitimized the victimization of women. The Cult of Domesticity and the Cult of Purity were the central tenets of the Cult of True Womanhood. Laboring under the seeming benevolence of the Cult of Domesticity, women were imprisoned in the home or private sphere, a servant tending to the needs of the family. Furthermore, the Cult of Purity obliged women to remain virtuous and pure even in marriage, with their comportment continuing to be one of modesty. Religious piety and submission were beliefs that were more peripheral components of the ideology, yet both were borne of and a part of the ideology of True Womanhood. These were the means that men used to insure the passivity and docility of women. Religion would pacify any desires that could cause a deviation from these set standards, while submission implied a vulnerability and dependence on the patriarchal head (Welter 373-377).
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