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The position and status of women during the renaissance period
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The Status of Women During Renaissance
The attitude towards women, their treatment and their rights, underwent many changes during the Renaissance. During feudal times women were given more liberties and enjoyed freedoms. They could own land and had many of the rights men had. However, this period where so many great changes had been made in the church, in literature, and in all other artistic areas, women took a big step backward in their fight for equality.
Women were thought of as property, owned first by their fathers, and then their husbands. This is only true, however, for the upperclass. Commoners during this time were not affected by the new social reforms. Lower class women still could own properties and shared many responsibilities with their husbands. They helped on the fields and in business matters. The upperclass dealt with the bourgeous double standard. This idea was formed from the novel The Courtier, written by Castiglione.
He believed that women should be learned, have had a fine education, be able to hold appropriate conversations with anyone, but still be loyal and submissive to their husbands. Women were to be bound to chastity until their wedding night. They were to always remain faithful, even though their husbands were urged to have relations outside of marriage.
Some upperclass women had the advantage of recieving an education. However, they were forced to give up their studies once married. A women's first priority was to be a good wife and to please her husband. The thoughts and feelings of women in Renaissance society were not expressed, they were not considered important. This is especially evident in the case of rape.
Many common women were raped. Most of the time it was noblemen who committed these crimes who either covered it up, went to prison for very short periods of time, or paid small fines. Theft was considered a worse crime than rape. An unmarried girl, a "virgin", raped was far worse than a married women. Such girls were considered "used property." A rape was only considered outrageous if it was the rape of a noblewoman.
As is obvious, the mind sets of the upperclass during the Renaissance were severely misplaced.
In the book, Giovanni and Lusanna, by Gene Bucker, he discusses the scandalous actions of a Florentine woman taking a wealthy high status man to court over the legality of their marriage. Published in 1988, the book explains the legal action taken for and against Lusanna and Giovanni, the social affects placed on both persons throughout their trial, and the roles of both men and women during the time. From the long and complicated trial, it can be inferred that women’s places within Florentine society were limited compared to their male counterparts and that women’s affairs should remain in the home. In this paper, I will examine the legal and societal place of women in Florentine society during the Renaissance. Here, I will argue that women were the “merchandise” of humanity and their main objective was to produce sons.
...emselves, they would not have to have orders given to him and be expected to follow them. Both quotes clarify that women succumb into what they are expected to be and thus not achieve what they could have.
Women in society were always put as not being equal to men. During the Renaissance, women were inferior to men; women in different classes had different roles. Low class women were expected to be housewives and take care of everything to do with the house. Working class women were expected to work for their husbands and help them run their business. They would work along side with their husbands and then go home and take care of the household. Upper class women may have had servants and workers working for them but the women were still expected to take care of the house hold.
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...
Women were very important to the development of the Republic in the United States. Although their influences were indirect they had a big impact. Women were not allowed to participate in elections or hold office; however they were wives of politicians and “mothers of republic”. Despite being legally ineligible for the above roles they were granted the right to education and a small amount of freedom, which in turn enabled them to become more intellectually acceptable on the topics of government.
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. "Do Women Need The Renaissance?" Gender & History 20.3 (2008): 539-557. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Men and women were seen to live in separate social class from the men where women were considered not only physically weaker, but morally superior to men. This meant that women were the best suited for the domestic role of keeping the house. Women were not allowed in the public circle and forbidden to be involved with politics and economic affairs as the men made all the
Throughout ancient civilizations, women were lower than men. In some civilizations like Mesopotamia society, women were below slaves. It is not shocking that they would still not be equal to men. In Roman society, women had more independence and people were more encouraging of women being educated in philosophy. In the Hans society, women did not have any freedom. They were required to follow what the men told them. By examining Gaius Musonius Rufus’ essay and Ban Zhao’s essay, the views of women were different. Woman in Roman society had more freedom and women in the Han’s society were required to fulfill her responsibilities.
Medieval society was completely dominated by men, making a women’s life at the time difficult. Medieval law at the time stated that women could not marry without their parents consent, could not divorce their husbands, could not own property unless widows, could not inherit land if they had surviving brothers, and could own no business with special permission (Trueman, “Medieval Women”). When a woman married a man, he would get any property she owned and she would forfeit any rights she had to him. When the husband dies she would get one third of the land to live on and support herself. Unmarried women who owned land had the same rights as men (Hull). Whenever a woman got into trouble it would be her closest male relative who would appear in court, not the woman herself (Medieval).
On the other hand, married men and women had to preserve their marriage state to preserve their honor and the honor of their families (Lavrin 11). A wife was required to be faithful and modest at the same time.
The question of women’s agency, in moving history holds a long history dating back to the ancients, then turning away from that in small degrees during the Renaissance. Most notable in this change comes from the capital of education, the Italianate states. Home to rife differences in attitudes towards women, it also hosts the origins of the discussion around women’s purpose. The current field largely finds inspiration from writers during the American 1970s women’s rights movement, and it shows in the modern origins and their influence. However, the field’s creation date loom farther back than such a recent movement, easily dating back to Plato and Aristotle. Beginning with a negative view of the female sex as inferiority, the study of women and their rights progressed to Giovanni Boccaccio’s creation of female biography in 1374, and further developed with a female voice in 1405 under the pen of Christine de Pizan. Clearly, none of the prestigious scholars could have predicted the alterations and growth of the discussion surrounding a people group often considered subhuman.
Women “were expected to bear children, stay home, cook and clean, and take care of the children” (Cobb 29). They were expected to be weak, timid, domestic, emotional, dependent, and pure. Women were taught to be physically and emotionally inferior in addition morally superior to men. During this time, women were ostracized for expressing characteristics and wants that contradicted those ideals. For women, the areas of influence are home and children, whereas men’s sphere includes work and the outside world” (Brannon 161).
During the Renaissance, England was dominated by a repressive patriarchal culture. It was natural for women to be “submissive to men [as] they were raised to be obedient” (Kakkonen, 25); hence being seen as objects since the “patrilineal descent principle”, advocates the “absolute authority of male, the father in the family” (Kakkonen, 25). Breaking through the absolute patriarchal structures and “exposing gender as a powerful but vulnerable patriarchal construction designed to repress or contain volatile realities” shows that “the structures and strictures of gender and patriarchy are ultimately powerless” (Hunt, 49). I claim that Shakespeare intricately breaks through the hierarchal structures at the time due to subtle emancipation of his
The social lives of people were greatly influenced by advancements in education during the Renaissance. More people then ever before were send to schools and educated. Schools for girls were built, and they were taught sewing, reading, writing, and dancing. Some of these schools even had teachers for singing and playing instruments. Upper class women were taught language, philosophy, theology and mathematics. But their education only prepared them for social life at home. Women lost political power, access to property and their role in shaping society.