The women of the Renaissance

Marriage, its realist character and its difficulties—The aim of marriage not personal satisfaction—The girl married blindfold—The father—Marriageable age—Interviews—Reflections...

The genius of motherhood—Marriage a physical science—Domestic difficulties—Platonism in marriage—Semi-wives—Wives in name only—Vocation of women for medicine—Women as sick-nurse...

1. _Maternity._—Tendency to small families, its various causes—Marital misfortunes—How new arrivals were received—Unpopularity of feeding by the mothers—Children educated by the...

Girls brought up solely by their mothers—Old theory of early marriage—Education, especially physical and moral—Opinion of moralists and physicians: counsels of Anne of France—Ut...

The husband lord and master: his absolute authority—The stick—The wife’s insignificance—The husband’s grievances against marriage—The wife’s grievances—Beware love!—_Modus viven...

Individualistic and anti-philosophic spirit of France—Flourishing of the salons—Reign of money: legitimated in Italy—The Roman programme—French society—Proposed remedies against...

Is platonism dangerous for women?—Double system for catching men: passion and sensibility—To spread love the end of life and the secret of happiness—Platonic virtue—Criticism of...

Science consists in extracting the element of happiness from everything, first of all from oneself—Beauty a social duty—Charm has no physical rules—Women slight or the reverse;...

The science of dining—Table-talk—Balls and dancing: custom of kissing—Protests of the Reformers—Church—Pilgrimages—Gardens and country life—Flowers—Pugs and parrots—The horse—Hu...

The library—Curiosity divided and dilettante in character—Taste for tales, jest-books, romances—The old poets—Music—Instruments, the human voice—Intellectual music—Harmony—Sacre...

Art of conversation: its supreme rôle—Women’s triumph—Tone of conversation—Philosophical spirit—Variety of form—Subjects of conversation—French conversation—Quips and cranks—Con...

Women remain strangers to the keener activities: war, justice—Women, political in spite of themselves—Isabella of Aragon—Jeanne of Aragon—Anne of France—Return from ambition to...

The good old times—Moral degeneration—Ambition, money—Evil, to be cured homœopathically as in Italy, or allopathically as in Germany?—Virtue, must it necessarily be tiresome?—Ra...

Conquest of men by mind—Army of intellectual women—Isabella d’Este—Anne of France—Margaret of France: her theory—The friends and guests of Margaret—Intellectual headquarters of...

Results of feminine influence—Literature in praise of women—Pompeo Colonna—Two schools of taste: passion, sensibility—Castiglione—Literature of conversation—Fugitive poems—Templ...

Progress of religious sensibility—Women compared to the moon—Entrance of the sentimental spirit—Free enquiry at Rome and in Italy—Philosophic religion—Entrance on the scene of w...

Scorners of mystic liberalism—The savants—Reproaches addressed to the liberal party: paganism, materialism—Women’s struggle against these tendencies—The monks: the monastic spir...

There are two ways of dealing with the heart of a woman. You may have confidence in it, believe in it, regard it as a real element of strength and happiness, uplift and develop...

“Woman, in my judgment, is the stumbling-block in a man’s career. To love a woman and yet do anything worth doing is very difficult, and the only way to escape being reduced by...

Their mission as mothers, thanks to the precautions of which we have spoken, did not weigh very heavily upon the women. The tide was set against large families; in the country,...

If the sons were destined almost inevitably to disappoint their mothers’ hopes, the daughters were to compensate for that disappointment. We must crave pardon for entering into...

The most troublesome question to be settled in regard to feminism is that of the authority of the husband. Legally, the husband was head of the household, an idea which found re...

Women had become habituated to a passive and secondary part. They desired to escape from it, they felt the need of activity and a freer air, their wings were growing and they ad...

The doctrine we have just indicated never excited any very determined opposition as a theory; its adversaries reserved their objections for its practical working. The New Law, i...

Before we can make others happy we must draw upon the sources of happiness in our own nature and in the world around. It is reason’s ungracious way to show us the realities of l...

Meanwhile, there is a life to live, there are things to do! A woman must get happiness from the exercise of all her activities, both spontaneous and enforced—even more than from...

It is all very well for a woman to be beautiful, to lend grace to the world, to diffuse sweetness and light; but this would be but a vain show if she did not with jealous care n...

This was the goal, the sanctuary of happiness, nay, bliss itself. All that we have hitherto spoken of led up to this all-engrossing object, for love was the supreme end, and spe...

The foregoing pages will have enabled the reader to see how little the platonist women sought to exert a direct influence in affairs. They aimed rather at moral and social influ...

The moral purification of society is assuredly one of the conditions of happiness; hence it was one of the chief ends of platonism. The 16th century, unfortunately, was one of t...

Women approached intellectual questions in the same dilettante spirit as questions of affairs; and this dilettantism was their chosen method. It was waste of time to speak to th...

The influence of women declared itself in certain well-marked results. In the first place, it led to the germination of what may be called a technical literature: that is, of wo...

The great effort that we have sought to portray resulted finally in a profound religious revolution; starting from a crisis in belief, it led to a transformation of Christianity...

“I would a thousand times rather believe in and pursue an ideal, even though too high, than miss or betray it,” said Montalembert. Many persons in the 16th century were of a dif...