Renaissance Of Women

You all must know about the renaissance, but today we will talk about the renaissance of women. If we recall a discussion of Renaissance England, what are the major things that come to our mind? We think about a whole lot of writers who were mostly men. We think about politicians, we think of the affairs of the state. We find that, we remember that it was mostly a male space in spite of a female monarch ruling in between.

There are also this socio-cultural spaces such as inns, taverns or theatres which are dominated by men as playwrights, as stage actors and even as audience.

We also find the emergence of coffee houses also catering largely to a male public. So we begin to note that there is a conspicuous absence of women in throughout our discussion. We do not find any space being accorded by literary historians or theorists to the women writers especially during the canonical discussion of literary history which we had been having mostly in the previous sessions.

So some earlier writers had begun to theorize this and give a proper reason for these, for the absence of these women from these literary and cultural landscapes. It could be because of the low literacy rates or maybe they did write but they were only available in manuscripts.
They did not get their works published and hence it was not available for dissemination, for popular consumption. Maybe these manuscripts were circulated only within a certain familiar and perhaps even limited to a familial circle just meant for private consumption.
And there is also a possibility that they only wrote non-canonical forms which excluded their writings from the canonical literary and critical surveys. Maybe they wrote only letters, diaries, private memoirs and journals. And also there was this possibility that a female author on account of her gender was more open to censorship and more open to, more prone to be a victim of lot of restrictions than her male counterpart.

So there could be these various reasons and this leads us to ask this question, “did women actually have Renaissance” in this age which was celebrated for its secularism, for its free expression, for its artistic excellence and all kinds of good things which were to mark the period.

The title of this article “Renaissance Of Women” is drawn from an essay with the title “Did Women Have A Renaissance?” by Joan Kelly Gadol which was published in 1997.

This was a very influential research, this was a result of a very influential and significant research work in which Kelly Gadol argued that, argued that women's historical experiences differ radically from that of men. And she also argued of that the possibility, the expansion of possibilities of options in verse which were the hallmark of the Renaissance Period these were open and available only for men.

Women were completely excluded from this celebration of Renaissance which happened not just in Britain but also in other parts of Europe. And for instance, if we talk about the Renaissance concept of courtly love - it was much celebrated and also marks the inaugural moments in terms of literary and artistic expression.

We note that in this, it was structured in such a way that it was only a celebration of women's passivity and virginity and it was always from the men's point of view excluding what kinds of emotions could have gone through the Renaissance woman during that time.
And this absence of women on the literary and cultural landscape of Britain has been the interest of scholars, researchers and historians since then.

It has led to a plethora of writings and the same. Soon after we find a number of research works trying to unearth the forgotten and the lost narratives of the Renaissance time and also to foreground the woman's voices and the presence of women writers of those times. It is also important for us to know what the status of the woman was during the Renaissance period. They obviously had no political rights and, this is in spite of a female monarch who ruled over them for quite some time. And they were not lived to, permitted to live independently.

A woman living on her own was quite a rare thing during those times. The marriages were considered as mandatory because the woman had to stay under either the control of her father or later under the control of her husband. The sexuality of women were also very heavily regulated and mediated. Any disobedience or any, any non-adherence to these principles could lead to severe kind of punishments.

Women's behavior during this time, we find being used as an important instrument of social control as well. It ceases to be a private matter and even the state and the society to a very large extent begins to interfere and take decisions on her behalf. If we look at the number of women who were accused of being witches during the Renaissance period, it is quite alarming.

So this was the status of women in an age which was celebrating all kinds of free and secular thinking and rational spirit.
So did women actually have a Renaissance or not?
What kind of educational facilities did women have during this time?
Some of them had access to education and those were the women who were mostly from noble families. But even when we talk about education, it is not in the way that a man had access to education.

Women in general, irrespective of whether they hailed from a noble family or from a wealthy family, they were completely denied of any access to university education.
The little education that they received especially through private.
. . that little education that they received mostly through private tutors, it was only meant for preparing them for gender roles, for being a good daughter, for being a virtuous wife or being a good, or for being a very pious, pristine woman who would also contribute to the growth of the nation.