Clients Last Name Goes Here 1 Discuss the Role of Women in Early Modern Europe

Before starting this topic we would like to determine the limits of the early modern history. Approximately it started in 1450s and ended in1850s. During this lengthy period a lot of transformations occurred: the Reformation, the decline of the feudal system and the growth of commerce, and the invention or application of such potentially powerful innovations as paper, printing, the mariners compass, and gunpowder.1 And all of that made its impact on womens role in society. But what was the real life of a common woman of that period? What rights did they enjoyed or were deprived of? Were there any differences in comparison with their aristocratic counterparts? First of all, we should make it clear that it was common to consider a woman as a creature unequal to a man. Such attitude was connected with the Catholic belief that a man is superior to a woman. On the other hand, the Reformation brought about some changes: They (Protestants) emphasized too that men and women were spiritual equals who should be companionate partners for each other as spouses. Protestant reliance on the Bible as the guide to Christian faith stimulated the education of women as well as men.2 Moreover, marriageable girls were sometimes characterised as merchandize.3 It was a common practise to hire a marriage broker in order to find a suitable spouse, preferably from an honoured family and with a big dowry:

Renaissance. Encyclopedia Britannica Online Teresa Meade, and Merry Wiesner-Hanks. A Companion to Gender History. (Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004), 349. 3 Gene Brucker. Giovanni and Lusanna. Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence (University of California Press, 1986), 107.
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Clients Last Name Goes Here 2 So important was the ideal of feminine chastity to family honour that it was guarded as jealously by male relatives as was their property. A stain upon a familys reputation adversely affected its social standing and, specifically, its ability to contract good marriages for its daughters.4 In general, females were regarded as only temporary members of either their birth families or the families of their husbands.5 That is why parents tried to find a beneficial marriage partner for their daughter(s) and were willing to give large dowries (1000 to 2000 florins and more) so that their daughters could marry honorably6. But in most cases the practice of dowries had other pragmatic reasons, which had nothing in common with parental care: Families used dowries to fulfill but at the same time limit their obligation to daughters while sons shared in equal (and usually larger) shares of all remaining propertyWomen brought dowries that were either gifts from their parents or the accumulated savings of their own earnings, especially as domestic servants. These dowries included both cash sums and the essential goods needed to set up a new household a bed, some linen, some pots and pans. 7 It must be emphasized that the consequences of such injustice were terrible: many Florentine widows, who were dependant on charity, lived as pensioners in religious houses or were forced to work as servants (and sometimes concubines) in the households of merchants and priests8. In other words, women were almost certainly doomed to become someones mistress

4 5

Brucker, Giovanni, 78. Meade, and Wiesner-Hanks, A Companion, 344. 6 Brucker, Giovanni, 10. 7 Meade, and Wiesner-Hanks, A Companion, 344-345. 8 Brucker, Giovanni, 90.

Clients Last Name Goes Here 3 or to enter a convent as a boarder or to join one of the tertiary religious houses where they performed charitable services9. Was everything so bad for women? Was it a vicious circle? In Italy, asylums for women at risk (whether from prostitution, marital difficulty, widowhood or poverty) were established that combined practical help in offering shelter and teaching basic skills with large doses of religious and moral education. 10 As can be observed there were not too many options for women. But what about upper-class women, did they have similar problems? According to Gene Brucker: Women from the artisanal class enjoyed a greater degree of social freedom than did their chaperoned, aristocratic sisters. They could move freely in the streets, gossip with neighbors, shop in the markets, attend services in their local church. Some worked in their husbands botteghe or, if widowed, as independent shopkeepers or spinners or weavers in the citys cloth industry.11 Apparently, aristocratic sisters did not enjoy even that amount of freedom, but thanks to the importance of familys honor, they had a bit more safety and protection. And what about judiciary system? How did it help common women to protect their rights? It would be proper to start with the notion that the pursuit of women was a common pastime of young males of all classes, but particularly among the rich and wellborn12. According to Brucker: Giovanni della Casa (aristocrat) would have incurred censure only if he had seduced an unmarried girl from a respectable family or had violated a nun. But even such

Brucker, Giovanni, 120. Meade, and Wiesner-Hanks, A Companion, 351. 11 Brucker, Giovanni, 91. 12 Ibid., 77.
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Clients Last Name Goes Here 4 peccadilloes could be forgiven.13And at courts women could only be represented by their legal guardians.14They couldnt defend their rights on their own. Despite all of that, those were the times when the western European marriage pattern 15 emerged: Marriage patterns were distinctive, with most men marrying in their late twenties or later and women in their late teens. Studies of Florence and Venice have shown that with men spending years as adults before marrying, prostitution was common and homosexual relations were a widely accepted phase of life for men. Italian elites were careful to safeguard the safety and chastity of women of their own class, but had little regard for elite mens exploitation of lower-class women whether through rape or casual fornication.16 In Renaissance Florence and in Europe generally, the sentiment of love and the institution of marriage were rarely combined into the felicitous state that later became the Western ideal, if not often the reality.17 If compare traditions of present society and that of the period in question, a lot of differences and even absurdity can be encountered. For example, Gene Brucker in his Giovanni and Lusanna provides us with a particular unwritten rule of early modern society: She stared openly at men whom she encountered in the streets, a violation of the social convention which decreed that respectable women should lower their gaze in public.18

13 14

Brucker, Giovanni, 80. Ibid., 94. 15 David Herlihy. Aspects of Early Modern Society. Encyclopedia Britannica Online 16 Meade, and Wiesner-Hanks, A Companion, 344. 17 Brucker, Giovanni, 93. 18 Ibid., 27.

Clients Last Name Goes Here 5 As a conclusion, we would like to emphasize that even if some social or lawful guarantees existed at all, they were totally neglected with the help of money and powerful connections. If we are to scrutinise the story of Giovanni and Lusanna (by Gene Brucker) we would find a bitter disappointment and resentment. Let us not forget that Lusanna was a middle-class woman and daughters of artisans did not marry the sons of aristocratic families19 in order to avoid such troubles. Although Lusanna won the ecclesiastical court in Florence, the Roman curia ruled that their marriage (with Giovanni) was null and void.20Therefore, all her efforts to restore her reputation were in vain. And women from the upper-class were not in much better situation, because they could not choose their spouse independently and their parents used them to increase their own profits and influence.

19 20

Ibid., 95. Brucker, Giovanni, 118.

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Bibliography

Brucker, Gene. Giovanni and Lusanna. Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence. University of California Press, 1986. Accessed Sep. 19, 2012, http://www.ebookdb.org/iread.php?id=5312G423G0G722327D3D1E69 Herlihy, David. Aspects of early modern society. Encyclopedia Britannica Online, accessed Sep. 17, 2012, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/195896/history-ofEurope/58342/Aspects-of-early-modern-society Meade, Teresa, and Wiesner-Hanks, Merry. A Companion to Gender History. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004. Accessed Sep. 18, 2012, http://wxy.seu.edu.cn/humanities/sociology/htmledit/uploadfile/system/20100501/201005 01152318995.pdf Renaissance. Encyclopedia Britannica Online, accessed Sep. 19, 2012, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497731/Renaissance