Written by Abby Hughes
In the 1970s, second-wave feminism pushed Joan Kelly to question Burkhardt’s analysis of the Renaissance, in which he determined the equality of male and female experience. Concluding that women did not enjoy a Renaissance like their male counterparts, Kelly highlighted the economic, legal, and political frameworks that limited female autonomy. In Kelly’s argument, the domestic sphere that women were routinely confined to is presented as one that lacked influence upon important avenues of social power; however, overlooked spheres of social engagement must be considered. Women’s lives as wives and mothers afforded them influence in throughout Renaissance both inside and outside of the “domestic sphere”. While such influence did not rival the experience of male contemporaries, the importance of the home deserves highlighting as central to a female Renaissance.
As wives, women played an important role in a societally valued system of inheritance. Despite being excluded from directly inheriting from their natal families, women were key to the establishing of kin networks and the continuation of family lines. In Cassandra Fedele’s Letter XV, addressed to a male relative, she stresses their shared heritage by saying “we know that our common lineage has derived from you and your forbears, men of learning and great authority.” The family, as a unit of social authority and influence, was therefore implicitly male; however, this is not to say that wives within these units did not wield their own power. Romano notes the double meaning of the Italian home in the Renaissance, given that the word for home – casa or domus – was used in contemporary parlance to indicate both the physical structure of the house but also the patriline it represented. Wives held the role of household manager, meaning that they oversaw the running of the household and its members, including servants and guests. Artistically, the domestic ideal of wifehood was represented in print form, such as the print below, created in roughly 1600, aiming to illustrate the duties of a wife and mother and was accompanied by a poem. This poem, entitled Ufficio della Madre di Famiglia, states that “it is the woman who governs and rules the household, and keeps the family together”. Certain areas of the house were under a greater extent of female authority. Sarti argues that domestic space was divided between “service areas, entertainment areas and private areas.” From the fifteenth century, those that could afford to expand their houses increasingly chose to have rooms reserved for “personal use.” As such, “confinement” to the home did not necessarily reflect a disempowerment or subjugation. Within these areas of the home, a wife would house personal possessions brought with her from her natal family, often in the form of large chests or trousseaus. These chests could contain devotional works, clothes, shoes, sheets, ornaments, mirrors, combs, perfumes, and sewing equipment. These pieces of material culture suggest that the wife not only had her own spaces within the home but her own spheres of influence and belonging, bolstered by personal possessions and contributions to the domestic interior.
The authority granted through wifehood was further amplified in motherhood. Deemed the fulfilment of a marriage, motherhood was an aspiration for many Renaissance women. Although women were largely excluded from matters of inheritance and patrilineal succession, their influence on their children was noted by contemporary writers. For example, Barbaro’s De Re Uxoria discusses the sheer importance of a wife’s nurturing and pious attributes, given that these would be directly impactful on her children. Placing an emphasis on the influence of mothers in the process of procreation, Barbaro suggests that wives shape and even determine the personalities and calibre of their children. In contemporary literature, then, mothers were increasingly deemed influential, but this influence was not confined to genetics and noble character. Laura Cereta, a humanist writing in the fifteenth century, describes mothers as an emblem of natural loyalty and strength, and argues that motherhood empowers women by allowing them to enact influence through their husbands and, crucially, sons. To Renaissance Italians, the first seven years of a child’s life, dubbed infantia, were recognised as a distinct stage of life. During these critical years, Alberti advises that “this whole tender age is more properly assigned to women’s quiet care than to the active attention of men”. Infantia indeed saw children interact largely with their mothers, female servants, and other female relatives. Therefore, these first seven years saw mothers oversee the foundation of all this education, through the learning of language and social skills. A mother’s role as educator is further evidenced by home schooling manuals and educational treatises that aimed to advise mothers, usually instructing on how to introduce religious practice into the lives of their children. One example of this is the Libro Mainstrevole, written in 1524 Venice, which boasts to teach “anyone who knows how to read to teach his son or daughter or dear friend”. Women could therefore operate influence through motherhood, acting as educators during the early years of infancy, and later as guardians and advisers to their children.
The expectation for women to perform domestic tasks as wife, and to teach and guide as a mother, contributed to a domestic sphere that was not necessarily confining but contained within its own four walls many avenues to power and influence. Such authority, stemming from the home, was also not inherently private. The influence of running the household, the work of wives and daughters, and the counsel of mothers all had the ability to shape typically public spheres of Renaissance society, such as politics and economics. A female Renaissance may not have existed in the sense of economic or legal progress; however, the historical emphasis placed on the public sphere as the centre of commerce and politics had undermined some of the functional power that women exercised, and the sheer importance of domestic life outside the home.
Bibliography
Barbaro, F. in ‘Selections from Francesco Barbaro, De Re Uxoria: prologue and book 1’ in Renaissance Humanism: An Anthology of Sources, ed. Margaret King (Hackett, 2014).
Cereta, L. Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist, ed. by Robin, D. University of Chicago Press, (Chicago, 1997).
Fedele, C. Letters and Orations, ed. Robin, D. (Chicago, 2000).
Kelly, Joan, Pauline Ferrier-Viaud, and Juliette Galonnier. “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” (Lyon, 2019)
King, M.L., ‘The School of Infancy: The Emergence of Mother as Teacher in Early Modern Times’ The Renaissance in the Streets (2008).
Romano, D. ‘Gender and the Urban Geography of Renaissance Venice’, Journal of Social History, 23 (1989).
Sarti, R. Europe at Home: Family and Material Culture 1500-1800, (trans. Allan Cameron, 2002).
Strozzi, A.M. Letters to Her Sons, 1447-1470, ed. Judith Bryce (Toronto, 2016).
Featured Image Credit: Two Venetians by Vittore Carpaccio c. 1490 https://arthive.com/artists/442~Vittore_Carpaccio/works/302774~Two_Venetians_courtesans
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