Male Dominance of Women During the Renaissance

“Wives be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.”1 As the Renaissance came to a climax in Southern Europe during the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century, this Biblical verse was just one of many methods employed to place women under the control of men in society. The restrictions placed on women were in many respects a reflection of the changes sweeping society at the time, leading men to reemphasize a patriarchal order of society. As Europe moved beyond the chaos and confusion left in the wake of the Bubonic plague, it became critical to not only make a variety of changes but also to reinstate these changes within the previously existing social and political structures. In order to do this, men employed a variety of explanations and tactics to maintain the traditional social order. As Money, Money, Money indicates, during the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Renaissance, money, religion and authority were continually used by men as reasons and methods to restrict women in almost all areas of society regarding, the sumptuary laws, the patriarchal family, social opportunity, and marriage.

Government instituted sumptuary laws were a widely public level of restriction placed on women in Florentine society. These laws specifically targeted all women over the age of ten in regards to their attire by requiring an annual fee in order to wear a certain level of ornamentation on their bodies or clothing. As Money, Money, Money showed through various example cases, these laws were in fact strictly enforced regardless of age or social status.2 One of the specific reasons for these laws was the revenue from the original fees or later miscondu...

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...s thoroughly justified through monetary, societal, and religious means which showed that women had to be controlled through enforcing sumptuary laws, establishing patriarchal families, limiting social opportunities, and arranging marriages.

Works Cited

Notes

1. Quoted in Clifford R. Backman, The Cultures of the West: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 429-30.

2. Money, Money, Money, 8.

3. Ibid., 7.

4. 1 Peter 3:3 (New International Version).

6. Backman, The Cultures of the West, 430.

7. Quoted in Backman, The Cultures of the West, 429.

8. Money, Money, Money, 14.

9. Ibid., 14.

10. Backman, The Cultures of the West, 431.

11. Money, Money, Money, 3-7.

12. Backman, The Cultures of the West, 429-430.

13. Ibid., 435.

Bibliography

Backman, Clifford R. The Cultures of the West: A History. New York: Oxford University Press,

2013