Unit 4.

Early modern women: first glimpses of change

15th century – after the War of the Roses

Women start to be connecting with a certain projection of the scientific experiments. There
were lots of new ways of looking at things. The discover of human body will have an impact in
how women are seen.

Religion is also essential.

Things do not only depend on God, the discovery of new things to improve the world and the
constant promotion of that attitude to improve science, human living and knowledge:
anthropocentrism.

Anthropocentrism and religion are going to advance in new uses of women. The role
of women is marked by religion, and the biblical image of women is going to be same,
but some of the dogmas that came with Protestantism change some of the references
that people have about women.

Early Modern Period

Late 15th century

o European culture: Renaissance
o European culture: Printing press
o European religion: Reformation
o World exploration: East and West Indians
o English politics: Tudors - Stuarts
Early 18th century

Some models of politics, learning, education are changed.

The Christian aspect is going to continue, but the activities that go together with the renaissance
put a filter into that. New input of those models from an aesthetic point of view. The
influence of the renaissance is going to come significantly through texts. All those texts that
are in Latin and Greek and had to be translated and women contributed to the translation of
the Classics.

The printing press was a phenomenal factor, changing the way culture works. One of the
groups that would change the relation to culture were women.

The role of women in politics worldwide would be different, but more specifically in
England. All the political, intellectual, material open the door to new circumstances of women.

1
In this period we will see more women.

Continuities
Patriarchal society continues
Women excluded from power and authority
o Check Queenship: we start to have medieval queens.
Misogyny
o Biblical arguments continue to justify
 Demonization of women
 Violence
 Women as descending from Eve  source of evil
o Other biblical women symbolizing evil: the “Whore of Babylon”
 Known as the “Mother of all the abominations on earth”
 Representative of disrupted order: destruction, corruption, anti-Christ
 Thomas Dekker’s Whore of Babylon (1606-7)  anti-Catholic
criticism
o Women as a source of women’s sexually consciousness
Virgin Mary no longer the ideal model for Protestantism. Her role was kind of not
so central for protestant. Other female figures that came from the Bible would be the
new symbol: Whore of Babylon.
Marital status: still defining women
o Maids
o Spinsters
o Married women
o Widows
o Nuns no longer presend as models (after Reformation)

New developments

Women defined by father’s or husband’s social status

o Women: lowest category of adult female
o Lady: female head of a household, having people under her direction; lso,
merchant’s wives
o Gentlewoman: wives or daughters of men entitle to bear a coat of arms
o Noblewoman: wives or daughters of men with hereditary title

Social status could make possible privileged position for women

Early modern women, economy and labor

2
- Economy
o Women allowed to own land, but restrictions in use
o Women as transmitters of wealth in higher social groups
 But women – more vulnerable to poverty and less liable to upward
nobility
- Household-related activities (“housewifery”)
o Cooking, housework
o Farm-related activities
o Family business  both in production and selling (food, crafts, etc)

Crucial for economy

- Motherhood-related activities
o Wet nurse
o Midwife
o Caregiver, etc
- Other activities
o Teaching: women as “Dame teachers”
o Educators for basic learning: write and read
o Teaching house-related skills: sewing
- Labor status – not defined by women’s occupation, but by husbands’
o For instance  women printers appear as “widow of…” This is going to
happen during more periods.

Early modern period: women education

- Increasing access of women to education
o Bourgeois, middle class families.
o Curriculum
 Basic literacy
 Mathematics
- Education with private tutors
o Wealthy families (not just nobility). The girls were included in this type of
education
o Curriculum
 Humanities-oriented because of humanist and renaissance education are
the base of the learning.
 Classical learning

3
  Translation of Classics in vernacular languages
 Women translators. Early modern women were translators,
many women (including the queens) were very learning in
classicals.
o Education or social manners: dancing, embroidery…
- Women NOT admitted to universities or colleges. Universities are much beyond the
aspect of education.
- Female literacy  women as readers. Literacy change radically in this period, the
printing press allow people to get books. In the 16 th century, having a tutor for your
family was fashionable.

Prior books: expected to read by women, certain poetry is address to women. The printing press
significantly changes the direction of how the books were published and printed for that kind of
women.

Early modern women and books

- Women: largest community of readers in early modern England
o But largely dissociated form intellectual circles (exc.higher society)
- Women actively involved in books

Writers

o Prose fiction: Mary Whroth, Margaret Tyler..

o Lyric poetry: Margaret Cavendish, Lady Curlo, Aemilia Lanyer…
o Lettes & autobiography: Lady Jane Grey, Margareth Hill, Lady Anne Clifford,
Lady Margaret Hoby, Mary Ward…
o Drama: Katherine Philips & Aphra Behn
 But women were not allowed to perform on stage
 But most of their works not published  only circulated in manuscript
copies

Translators

o Translation of classical authors: Queen Elizabeth

o Translation of religious texts:
 Margaret Roper (Thomas More’s daughter), Mary Sidney (Philip
Sidney’s sister), Anne Bacon (Francis Bacon’s mother)

Printers

o Usually take over their husband’s profession after their deaths

4
 Sometimes printers don’t want to publish something with the name of a woman.
Something written by women has not the sense of authority and respect.

Response to the anti-feminist:

Origin  late medieval

- Defense of
o Moral value of women
o Intellectual capacities of women
o Rights to education for women
- Literary texts (Boccacio, Chaucer)
o Praise of some women’s strength, courage and intelligence
However, these are presented as exceptional women
- Christine de Pizan, the Lady of the Ladies
o Defense of women’s voice and virtues
o Main argument: complementary character of sexes

She was a respected woman.

Equality: in the 15th century, this text is totally revolutionary. The way of looking at the union
of men and women. It was a notion that the women were always under the men’s authority.
Christine de Pizan in this text is changing that notion. New approach to the value of men and
women.

Anti-feminism: she is inverted the arguments.

Education: she is trying to suburb all the arguments that had been for centuries. She was seen
as a woman defending her family.

This is some kind of protofeminism that started to change the way of looking man-woman
differences at that time. How there are many aspects that started to point in a different direction,
so it will start different thinking and roles.

Early modern “querelle des femmes”

Sixteenth century: new approaches

- Women’s capability can be equal to men’s

o No disabilities result from the reproductive function
- Women endowed with specifically female virtues
o Femenine strength resulting from reproductive function

5
 o A “masculine woman” – interpreted as violation of nature

The notion of gender started to be another element of confusion.

The querelle in England

- Men’s “defenses” of women
o Celebration of docile, chaste, conventional women.
o Women’s social role not considered
o No defense of independent women
- Women’s responses
o Texts contesting the traditional view of women
o Style: 1st person, railing tone, attack against men, presentation of every-day life,
reference to historical and legendary figures
o Influence of Elizabeth’s rulership
- Works of the debate
o English translation of Chrstine de Pizan’s City of Ladies
o Thomas Elyot, The Defende of Good Women (1540)
o R. Vaughan or Burdet, A Dyalogue defensive for women (1542)
 Bird dialogue debating the qualities of women
o C. Pyrrye, The Praise and Dispraise of Women (1569)
o Jane Anger, Protention for women to defend them against the scandolus reports
of a late surfeting lover