The defence of women, 1400–1700

Abstract

Although some theorists deem Wollstonecraft’s to have been the first feminist voice, this chapter demonstrates that a rich tradition of defences of women’s right to an education, to rule in certain circumstances and to be considered men’s moral, spiritual and intellectual equals already existed from the Late Medieval Period and continued to flourish during the Renaissance and Reformation. It traces these defences through the works of Christine de Pizan Isotta Nogarola, and Marguerite of Navarre, to the writings of Lucretia Marinella, Moderata Fonte, Marie de Gournay, Margaret Cavendish and Madeleine de Scudéry. It argues that in tandem with the rise, during the Reformation, of challenges to the right of a monarch to interfere with the spiritual liberty of subjects, both a critique of patriarchal marriage as slavery and a new concept of marriage as egalitarian friendship were being developed, by women, from the beginning of the seventeenth century.

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