Books and Women
Nature foeminine
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Renaissance women who pursued an intellectual life or chose to write faced powerful obstacles from longstanding traditional views regarding the inferior and imperfect nature of the female. Having inherited beliefs established in Greek philosophy and medicine, codified in Roman law, and reinforced by medieval interpretations and teachings of the Bible, Renaissance society by and large viewed women as inherently irrational, flighty, and deceitful creatures, prone to melancholy, and incapable of controlling their passions. Women were therefore typically excluded from any civic activity and advised against going out in public. Their place was in the home, tending to domestic matters, giving birth, and raising children. Certain women of royalty played important political roles in Renaissance Europe, but their actions were closely scrutinized and often suspect based on their gender.
In the late Middle Ages, Christine de Pizan, French writer of Italian descent and the first woman in the West to make a living by her pen, launched a new inquiry into the nature of women with her defense of the female sex in the form of an ideal community of virtuous, learned, and sometimes powerful women, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405). Renaissance Humanism, although led by men who tended to accept the traditional misogynistic views of women, contributed to a new spirit of inquiry and willingness to reconsider and reevaluate the nature of women, their education, and their roles in society. The debate about female nature, education, and the appropriate role(s) of women in private and public spheres continued over the next few centuries. The volley of texts for and against education for women, and defending or denying her mental capacities, spiritual qualities, and moral nature came to be known in the French Renaissance as the querelle des femmes.
 Societal constraints and lack of education made it difficult for women to take up the pen and even more so to publish their work. The fluorishing debate in the Renaissance about the nature of women, however, created an opening through which a minority of well-born women managed to write and publish, as well as to act as patrons of poets and artists. The preface to Louise Labé’s Oeuvres (Gordon 1556 .L25) reflects this new attitude and sense of educational and literary opportunity for women, calling on "les femmes de s'apliquer aux sciences et disciplines." Euuvres de Louïze Labé Lionnoize, Reuues & corrigees par ladite Dame (Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1556)
The Gordon Collection includes works by five important women writers of the French Renaissance: Louise Labé, Marguerite de Navarre, Georgette de Montenay, and Madeleine and Catherine Des Roches (mother and daughter).
The collection also includes texts that were part of the querelle des femmes, and a broad representation of the types of books written and published for women in the French Renaissance.
Noteworthy among those is the French translation of the extremely influentual treatise by Juan Vives on the education of women (Gordon 1543 .V58), which makes recommendations for their education and upbringing that, although reflecting a sympathetic understanding of the realities of the female condition in life, remain completely in line with traditional views of women and their roles in society. He acknowledges the traditions that (sensibly, in his view) long ago proscribed silence and relegated women to home and hearth:
Vous semble il, que ce soit sans cause, que les sages vous ayent oste ladministration du bien publique? De prescher, de parler es eglises, excercer iudicatures? Entendez que ce na este, que a clle fin, que nayes occasion de hanter, & parler es lieux publicques. Vostre maison vous soit grande cite. (L2r-L2v) |
Various popular emblem books in the Gordon Collection include visual and poetic forms of the same recommendations espoused by Vives with regard to women, particularly concerning the importance of chastity as the highest of female virtues, the association of her silence with virtue, and the insistence on the woman’s place at home.
Above all, preserving a young woman’s virginity was essential, both for her marriageability and social standing, as well as for her spiritual well-being. Mary, mother of Christ, was the primary model recommended to all women, unmarried, married, or widowed, and for those destined for secular lives as well as the convent. George de Esclavonie writes at length and eloquently on the topic to his young goddaughter who has taken the veil in Le chasteau de virginité (Gordon 1505 .E74). The anonymous Cy commence une petite instruction & maniere de vivre pour une femme seculiere... (Gordon 1530 .P48) provides similar advice and practical instruction for a young woman’s spiritual practices in the secular world. The text offers its female readers the exemplary tale of a young wife, devoted to her husband and children, who proves even more dedicated to seeking a “parfaicte et vraye congnoissance de dieu,” to the point that she astonishes the “maistre en saincte theologie” who has never encountered such perfect devotion is his fifty years of wearing the ecclesiastical cloak. Vives repeatedly emphasizes and illustrates how important it is for a woman to guard her virginity, asking her to consider that her chastity allows her to emulate Mary, as well as other pre-Christian models of “deeesses exaltees de virginite,” Cibele, Diane, and Minerva.
Translations into French of popular catalogues of exemplary women – the Opuscule de Plutarque, des vertueux et illustres faitz des anciennes Femmes… (Gordon 1546 .P58) and Boccacio’s Des Dames de Renom (Gordon 1551 .B65) – offer a generally positive view of women, highlighting individual women who have shown courage, strength, intelligence, and virtue, often in the public sphere, although there remains an emphasis on chastity as women’s greatest virtue throughout these examples.
An ever-present and dangerous distraction from the recommended focus on women’s purity and chastity is the lure of make-up, jewelry, and beautiful clothes. Vives explains that women are weak and prone to “les exces de luxure.” He warns them of the dangers of this sort of vanity and advises each one to seek instead to ornament herself with virtue in the eyes of Jesus Christ and of her husband.
Another Gordon Collection volume, André Le Fournier’s La decoration dhumaine nature, & aornement des dames (Lyon, Françoys Juste, 1537) offers instruction in just the sort of “aornement” that Vives denounces. Clearly there was a market for these recipes for how to darken or lighten one’s hair, whiten the teeth, or to – as one entry proclaims – “purifier & faire triumpher la face de la personne qu’elle semblera n’avoir que xv ans.”
Later in the century, Antoine Estienne published his Remonstrance charitable aux dames et damoyselles de France, sur leurs ornemens dissolus… (Gordon 1575 .E78), in which he calls for the women of France to give up their ostentatious, dishonest, and wicked vanity, to leave behind “l’habit du Paganisme, & prendre celuy de la femme pudique & Chrestienne.”
Along with offering moralizing admonitions to women to value spiritual purity above false ornaments, and recommendations that they be brought up to be silent and subservient to their parents and then obedient to their husband, many of these same books also provide advice to men. Husbands must respect their wives for their virtue and their skill and devotion to the womanly arts of spinning and weaving, successful household management, and child rearing. For the “mesnagerie” to prosper, both the husband and wife must fulfill their duties and must do so in harmony with one another, one of the points made in La mesnagerie de Xenophon, translated by Etienne de La Boëtie and edited by Montaigne (Paris: Federic Morel, 1572).
Gilles Corrozet, Hécatongraphie (Paris: Denis Janot, 1543)
The household items most commonly used to evoke the domestic sphere of work by women were the “quenouille” (distaff) and the “fuseau” (spindle), used in spinning. In his catalogue of “dames de renom,” (Gordon 1551 .B65), Boccacio explains that Eve, having been barred from Paradise along with Adam after the fall, “trouva la maniere se filer avec la quenouille, quand Adam eut commencé à labourer la terre,” and how she began to feel “tresgrandes douleurs en ses enfantemens” (p. 21-22) Corrozet’s emblems (Gordon 1543 .C67) include the image of the Roman statue of Caia Cecilia, a model “femme pudique,” at the foot of which were laid a distaff and spindle, a sign of her domestic virtues. Near these items is a bedroom slipper, to signify that her place was in the home, and not in public. The verses accompanying the woodcut explain:
| Car telle ymage assez faisoit entendre, / Que toute femme à vertu debvoit tendre:/ Qu’elle debvoit estre laborieuse, / Des faictz d’aultruy non pas trop curieuse / Et ne debvoit, sans grand’ cause, & raison / Aller en ville, & laisser sa maison. |
Louise Labé’s preface calls on women to raise their spirits and minds (“esprits”) above their distaffs and spindles, asking that the world recognize them as equals “tant es afaires domestiques que publiques.”
This recognition of the possibilities available through education and the call to women to use their intellect to write and to seek a more active role in public as well as in household affairs represents one side of the querelle des femmes, countering the voices of Vives and others who, following powerful patriarchal traditions, continued to relegate women to lives of silence in the domestic sphere/realm.
-- Karen James, University of Virginia (2007)
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