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Female status changes renaissance
Status of women in medieval and renaissance
Gender equality in the Renaissance
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In Alexandra Korey’s article, “Being a woman in Italy...in the Renaissance,” she argues that although the role of a woman in the present day has not been universally equalized, we have made substantial improvements since the conditions of the Renaissance era. She states, “Most of what we know...comes from documents, paintings, or other visual evidence that tell us much more about the patrician than peasant.” Originally, gender roles were highly influenced by the Christian story of the temptation in the garden, which affected many aspects in a woman’s life during this time, for she is seen as weak in comparison to man.
Marriage typically posed as a business transaction, more common within the wealthy, and girls were to marry men twice their
Men and women were held under drastically different expectations in Spain and the Spanish colonies in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These set gender roles are effectively demonstrated through the life of Catalina de Erauso, who experienced the entire spectrum through her adventures as a transvestite in this time period. Opportunities and freedom in culture, politics and economy, and religion varied greatly between men and women. Men were capable of living out their lives independently and ambitiously. Women, on the other hand, were taught to be reliant and mild-mannered characters in the background. De Erauso shatters this idea of a woman’s role by fulfilling a life of adventure and power. In doing so, she briefly dispels the obligations of gender roles, if only for herself. Catalina de Erauso was a nun, a lieutenant, and a history-maker.
In the traditional political history of Italy the people outside of the ruling class of the society were rarely studied. Only with the use of social history did the issues of class and gender begin to be debated by scholars. Numerous recent articles have done a great job of analysing particularly men of high status. In this paper I will look at the lower classes of Renaissance Florence. More specifically, I will center my focus on the lives of women during this era, how they were treated and viewed by people of other classes and how women were viewed and treated by men.
During this time period women were not respected at all and were belittled by all med in their lives. Even though men don’t appreciate what women they still did as they were told. In particular, “Women have an astoundingly long list of responsibilities and duties – th...
Robin, Diana, Anne B. Larsen, and Carole Evans, eds. Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France and England. Santa Barbara: Abc Clio, 2007.
Women in antiquity did not have an easy lot in life. They had few, if any, rights. Surviving early records of the civilizations of antiquity from ancient Greece, Egypt, China, and Rome suggest the diversity of women’s roles differed little from region to region. There were a few exceptions, mostly concerning women of nobility and the city-state of Sparta. Excluding the rare instances mentioned most antique women were generally limited on education, mobility, and almost all possibilities interfering with domestic or childbearing responsibilities. The limited social roles of women in antiquity suggest the perceived c...
An unlikely candidate to dispute the unfair, misogynistic treatment of women by men and society, Christine de Pizan successfully challenged the accepted negative views that were being expressed about women by the all-male literary world of her era. Part of Christine’s uniqueness stems from the time in which she lived, the middle to late 1300’s. The lack of a positive female role model to pattern herself after made Christine a true visionary in the fight for the equal rights of women. Her original ideas and insight provided a new and more intelligent way to view females. Pizan’s work, The Book of the City of Ladies, provided women much needed guidance in how to survive without the support of a man.
Her chief arguing points and evidence relate to the constriction of female sexuality in comparison to male sexuality; women’s economic and political roles; women’s access to power, agency, and land; the cultural roles of women in shaping their society; and, finally, contemporary ideology about women. For her, the change in privacy and public life in the Renaissance escalated the modern division of the sexes, thus firmly making the woman into a beautiful
Any examination of women in Livy’s writing demands not only a literal interpretation of their character development and values, but also must account for their symbolic importance—thus creating a much more complex representation. Livy, an ancient historian, authored The Early History of Rome to be an exploration of Rome from its foundation, focusing on historical events and societal organization. In it, he examines the patriarchal society that stabilized Rome throughout its dominance. However, as a result of this explicitly defined hierarchy in Rome, women were seen as secondary figures in society. Most were viewed as submissive and passive, and it was well within the rights of men to assert their dominance—many women even agreed with these values. This can be seen in Livy’s portrayals of such women as the Sabine women, Horatia, and Lucretia. Yet Lucretia provides an interesting complexity to the exempla of women. On a symbolic level, Lucretia is an important catalyst in affecting the political organization of Rome. This representation is furthered with Livy’s descriptions of Lavinia, Rhea Silvia, and Verginia. Despite the work of Livy to create an accurate portrayal of women in ancient Rome, other authors showed women to actively defy this patriarchal society he describes. However, Livy’s effort to create the most accurate explanation of early Rome through a historical representation drives this discrepancy in characterization through genre. Therefore, Livy’s work serves as both an accurate and complex examination of the role of women in ancient Rome. According to Livy, a woman’s role was defined by her sacrifice; culturally, women were to be subordinate to men in the patriarchal structure of society, but also served as important...
The ultimate purpose of my research is to study the occupational habits of women specifically in the the role of alewives, and how gender defined their role in within this context. I intend to look deeper into the scholarship on the topic and determine how specifically the jobs of these women changed and empowered them past the restraints of classical gender roles of the time. I may extend this analysis to include regional variance (possibly France and other European countries) within material for research's sake. With the inclusion of analytical material of primary sources, prospective feminist researchers, historians and scholars, I hope to create literature which reinforces the theory that women played a much more involved role through their occupational statuses and responsibilities than what conventional history writing says.
Elite Renaissance men and women play very different roles in society, they are almost opposite of one another. For example, Castiglione describes men as bold, energetic, and faithful; while he describes women as pure and fragile. These oppositions between men and women are a reoccurring theme throughout the Courtier.
In Italy their gender roles are very traditional however, more strict. As it is in many countries, women do the housework while men work full-time jobs to provide for their family. Wives are spoiled by their husband, as long as they keep the house clean and educate their children. Italians are obviously dictated by Roman Catholicism. Italian men can be too controlling, as well as territorial and strict about their wives and children. Some Italian women prefer to marry a non-Italian man to avoid it.
Marriages were arranged. Because girls lived such sheltered lives, they usually had never even met the men their fathers agreed for them to marry. Men were mostly in their twenties when they got married, the girls were usually 15.
In fulfilling this opinion of Alexander Pope, research is studied to define the women of his time. Women of the Eighteenth Century had standards to live by that developed an environment of constraint and manipulation. The severity of a woman’s behavior around the Eighteenth Century is expressed in many conduct manuals of this era; the purpose of a manual is to teach a woman how to follow methods in order to be the desire of a man (Jones 14). The frivolous qualities that females seemed to exude so easily were learned through lessons such as the conduct manuals but a...
Many women in this period would engage in “arranged” marriages which were widely accepted and indeed, one of the most practiced forms of marrying at this time. Usually a marriage of convenience rather...
Women in the Renaissance could be said to mainly be seen not heard, they were suppose to obey their husbands and not disagree with what he told her, if she did not follow the rules she could have been “subjected to discipline that could include a beating or worse” (Halio, 2000,p.93). These rules still applied if the woman was the one who had the money. Men were superior to women and that can be said was the reason for Portia disguised herself as a man to save Antonio, she saw her new husband in pain and how that could inferior with their marriage. Portia can be argued to be a very daring Renaissance woman she was educated and she risked getting caught when she disguised herself. Women were not allowed to high status jobs if allowed to have a job at all. In this time it could be argued that many women did not have a say in who they married, if the marriage was not arranged by parents they were giving advice on the man that their daughter chose, even if the father is deceased it could affect the inheritance. This can be seen with Portia even though her father was deceased he still fuelled how her husband would be chosen. Her future husband had to chose the right casket in order to be able to marry her, even though in the beginning she expressed that she was not for this method at first it could be said that she