Essay: Sewing Virtuous Truths: The Representation of Women During the Renaissance

The literature of the Renaissance society gives us direct insight into the dominant culture and attitudes of the male sector and its attitudes towards women. Nevertheless, it also gives us possibly unintended insight and knowledge about the cultural activities of women from this time. Representations of women in literary texts describe the true virtues and gentilities of the Renaissance, yet we can discover through them, something of social truth and reality. (Mention/show picture on paratext) Here, a woman sits, content and humble; sewing virtuous inscriptions. Yet the male believes these women to be submissive and well behaved when in fact sewn letters were crucial in the development of women’s literacy and voice during this period. In ‘The rape of Lucrece’ this connection is completely missed by Colatine’s fellow comrades. They blindly fail to recognise the book as being an instrument for strong moral principles, declaring when they see Lucrece reading; ‘By love, I’ll buy my wife a wheel and make her spin and if not mine to learn by the prick of her needle for this, I am no roman’ (find source)
Natalie Zemon Davis writes (157) that proposed remedies for female unruliness included religious training that fashioned the reins of modesty and humility; selective education that showed a woman her moral duty without inflaming her undisciplined imagination or loosing her tongue for public tongue; honest work that busied her hands; and laws and constraints that made her subject to her husband. These laws and restrictions are depicted clearly and forcibly in ‘The instruction of a christien woman’. Vives educates women in all aspects of their lives, from ‘birth to widowhood’ which suggests in itself that there is no life for a woman after their husband has passed on. When it came to choosing a husband, a woman is to remain quiet, leaving all decisions to her parents, ‘It becometh not a maide to talke, where hir father and mother be in communication about hir marriage 9sig. P2r-P3r) Though he professes that women should remain modest and silent, it appears that a woman’s role as mother should be an active one when making decisions concerning their young. With there being little opportunity besides motherhood for a woman at this time, perhaps women took great joy and responsibilty when it came to being a mother and used Vives’ words to find purpose in an age that provided them with little recognition. His views on education are interesting and surprising. His writings on the position of women who should ‘hold hir tonge demurely’ and avoid teaching (sig. D1r-v) contradicts his statement that girls should ‘study…wisedom’ (sig. C4v)
He claims he could supply 100 examples of decent educated women though he admits that well read women are often accused or suspected of maliciousness. In some ways Vives’ book seems rather progressive, he encourages education whilst still endorsing chastity, humility and obedeince to God, parents and husband. This supports a strong context to some of Shakespeare’s female characters i.e. Beatrice and Juliet who often found themselves torn between passion and obedience; silence and self expression. (find quote)
This clear need to disguise one’s self expression and intelligence as Vives suggests is also illuminated in the Urania when female character locks away her letters (find quote)
The visual representation of fame, during the Renaissance period, is a woman. However, fame was certainly not intended for women. Renaissance gender ideology defined the male for acclamation. The notion of fame, specifically deriving from a literary field proved problematic for the female authorship. The feeling of the time being that women who sought fame were dishonest and those who wrote were fraudulent and loose living. Giovanni Bruto, writer of ‘Linstitutione di una faneiulla nata nobilmente’ believed that women who were linked with literary acclaim were guilty of lascivious self indulgence, proposing, ‘how far more convenient the Distaffe and Spindle, Needle and Thimble, are for maids with a good and honest reputation, than the skill of well using a pen or writing a lofty verse with diffame dishonour, if in the same there be more erudition than virtue’ (C2r) His views that women should sew rather than write were believed by the majority of people at that time although the study of letters and development of knowledge is attributed to needlework through a term called ‘alphabetisation’ and then memory and repetition of this process. This process first began for young boys and girls by looking at printed texts but the same method achieved the same result through sewn letters. Tuvill makes the connection between the sewing of letters and literate women unambiguous. He wrote that to anyone who believed that for the female ‘the pen must be forbidden them as the tree of good and evil’ and that woman who choose to write are ‘Pandar to a virgine Chastitic’ then if this is what concerned them, ‘let them likewise bar them the use of their needle’. (1616)
Needlework can be a capable and impressive concept and appears throughout history and histroical literature, positively praising the female. Women from various stories and myths have used sewing and weaving as a prevalent platform to stand strong and have a voice. Penelope, featured in ‘The Odyssey’ informs her suitors that she will choose one of them to become her new husband once she has finished the patterns she weaves ‘She set up a great loom in her palace, and set to weaving a web of threads long and fine, then she said to us ‘Young men, my suitors, now that the great Odyssey, wait, though you are eager to marry me, until I finish this web’ yet she unpicks it every night.’ (Homer 293)
Philomela, who is raped by Tereus seeks revenge and avoidance from imprisonment and though Tereus has cut out her tongue, she narrates her story through weaving which also condemns his fiction of her death. Both tales written by men, show the cunning and effective nature of these women. Yet they remain artificial. These literary figures remain metaphorically and literally illiterate. They are clearly intelligent and artistic but the male authorship does not reward them with the pen, a sign of education and stature. Both women have hoodwinked and thwarted the male character but only in ways in which a woman is worthy of doing, through the eye of her needle (find quote)
Another aspect to consider here is the deception which lies at the heart of Penelope’s act. She has deceived all those suitors. Homer does not appear to be convicting of her actions, though the repetition of the words ‘web’ he uses could be a decisive device to get his to reader to consider the well known saying web of lies, but rather applauding. She has remained true to her husband, her master, Odysseus, as was expected of women, even if their husband was gallivanting off with beautiful sea nymphs for a decade! Nonetheless it is the male reader who will ultimately condemn or praise her, as Homer’s work was often read amongst soldiers and school boys. This is illusive in ‘The Faerie Queene’ by Edmund Spenser, which describes Una as, ‘so lively and so like in all mens sight’ (find quote) The importance here is of men’s sight emphasising that it is the male reader whos is the most vital and valuable in perceiving the illusory and false Una that Archimago fashions his sprite into. It is the woman who is deceptive and it is the man who becomes victim of a woman’s sexuality but will ultimately, after moral battles, overcome. (find quotes)
Spenser respects the women in his ‘The Faerie Queene’ primarily in order to mirror his reverence for Queen Elizabeth I. He creates characters that embody powerful traits but he keeps the Petrarchan design of depicting a woman’s physical attractiveness. (find quotes)
He portrays the weaknesses and the strengths of his female characters, perhaps in order to emphasise the important roles he feels woman have in his society or relevant cultural beliefs of the time; Una meaning truth who embodies the unity of truth and the one true church. However, it can be speculated that his female characters exist only to support the role of the male character achieving catharsis on their journey. (find quote)
Many of the female characters are beautiful (find quote) and it is the male characters who must make moral decisions. Interesting when one acknowledges the ruler of England and woman would inevitably read it. The women pose as threats, dilemmas and diversions which the male character and readership will be head accountable for (find quotes)