The women of the Renaissance

"The women of the Renaissance" by R. de Maulde-La-Clavière is a historical study written in the late 19th century. It explores how women in Renaissance Italy and France steered culture and morals, charting an early feminist movement rooted in idealized love, beauty, and salon influence rather than laws or suffrage. Through social history and lively anecdote, it examines family structures, education, platonism, and women’s political, intellectual, and religious impact. The opening of the book sets the stage with contemporary praise and a translator’s note highlighting the author’s scholarly wit and Renaissance expertise, then frames the “woman question” amid modern confusion about education, marriage, and public role. The preamble proposes learning from the past, contrasting Anglo-Saxon “masculinism” with Latin “feminism,” and points to the Renaissance as a comparable age of transition. The introduction locates the movement’s origin in Italy, where women became the “motive force” of society—countering war and the power of money, revitalizing a tired religious and intellectual climate, and elevating life through beauty, love, and platonist ideals; France at first resisted these Italian ideas, then absorbed them. At the start of Book I, marriage appears as a practical contract wholly distinct from love: fathers negotiate, brides are married young (often betrothed in childhood), and grooms approach the step fatalistically. Anecdotes (from courts like Urbino and figures such as Michelangelo and Raphael) underscore the calculations, dowries, and family interests that govern matches.

The women of the Renaissance, by R. de Maulde-La-Clavière. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #77508.