Feminism

For centuries prior to the Renaissance, men dominated European society and women lacked the power to challenge them. After about 1400, however, women began demanding greater equality, access to education, and control over their own lives. By the 1600s, women had begun to see themselves in new ways, and the first feminists—supporters of women's rights—had emerged.

Feminism had its roots in Renaissance humanism*. Women educated in the humanist tradition debated issues with male scholars, celebrated the achievements of women, and tried to promote greater equality between the sexes. The French writer Christine de PIZAN (1365–ca. 1430) was a pioneer in this area. She claimed that women and men were morally equal and that the only true difference between them was physical strength. For this reason she believed that any virtuous woman could achieve extraordinary things.

During the 1500s other French writers spoke out in favor of women's rights. The poet Louise Labé urged women to become scholars. Madeleine des Roches and her daughter Catherine maintained a salon, a regular gathering of individuals dedicated to learning and discussion. Unlike most learned women of the Renaissance, the des Roches participated fully in intellectual debates with men. The humanists who attended their salon encouraged them to pursue their studies and publish their work.

In England, writers such as Jane Anger wrote vigorous defenses of women as men's moral and intellectual equals, echoing Pizan's notion that virtue is the same for both sexes. Between the 1570s and the 1620s, a number of women in London dressed as men to demonstrate their belief that gender does not define virtue or identity. In 1620 the king, JAMES I, ordered ministers to preach against this practice.

During the 1600s more salons appeared in France. Men and women involved in these groups wrote novels based on the experiences of real women. Their plots featured both political and romantic adventures. Between 1620 and 1640, many novels portrayed women as adventurous hunters and warriors. Later works focused on women as scholars and on the intellectual life of the salon.

In Italy various women writers expressed strong feminist views. In 1600 Lucrezia Marinella published The Nobility and Excellence of Women, with the Defects and Vices of Men. This text reveals great learning and skill in debate. In it the author expresses a hope that women will "wake themselves from the long sleep which oppresses them." That same year Moderata Fonte published The Worth of Women, in which seven Venetian noblewomen give examples of unequal treatment of women. One speaker urges women to "wake up, and claim back our freedom, and the honor and dignity men have usurped* from us for so long." Arcangela Tarabotti's Innocence Deceived (1654) condemned the practice by which girls—including the author—were forced into convents by parents unwilling to give them dowries*.

In many of these works, women began to see themselves as individuals who must shape their own destinies. By the end of the 1600s European feminists had developed an awareness of themselves as a group. The female intellectuals and feminists of the Renaissance prepared the way for later works, such as Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), the first clear call to change the conditions of women's lives.