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The Renaissance: The Roles Of Women During The Renaissance

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Gender is a concept which corresponds to the allocation of behaviours, roles, ideas and attitudes according to a sexual category. So the fact of being a woman or a man influences the way the person will be raised.
The Renaissance (also called Early modern period) is a period situated between the middle Ages and the classical period, that is since the end of the 15th century until the 18th century. During this period, there is a profound transformation and a big social renewal in Western Europe. This movement begins first of all in Italy, before gaining France and then the rest of Europe. The Renaissance finds its origin in the demographic growth, the urbanization and the appearance of the bourgeoisie. Jules Michelet, a French historian, is …show more content…

The society, and more precisely men, didn’t understand why the ‘weaker vessel’ should be educated, and thought it wasn’t important. Thus, women did not receive a very important education. Girls went to school to learn the basics, like reading and sometimes writing, but never stayed long . Girls were taught how to be good wife and a good mother, and to take care of her household. Fletcher explains that a woman ‘had been well-trained for the role of household manager in adolescence’ . Nevertheless, some women had the privilege to be properly educated. The best example would be Margaret Roper, who was Thomas More’s daughter. He encouraged her to study a lot of subjects traditionally taught to women, but also subjects seen as “male” subject, such as …show more content…

Indeed, Montaigne, a French philosopher and humanist, had a harder opinion on the idea of women’s education. For him, women should only study what is necessary to know how to be patient, obedient and resigned. According to him, the only thing, which women have of superior, is beauty . Montaigne shows two reasons to prove that women should have a limited access to knowledge. First of all, he thinks that they are not capable to reach the intellectual level of men. Furthermore, an over-educated woman could then surpass the intellectual abilities of her husband . It is thus necessary, for the good of the social order to limit their access to knowledge. In continuation, Vivés, a Valencian scholar and humanist who lived in the sixteenth century, recommended an education based on readings and writings, but added women shouldn’t neglect household work, such as learning how to cook or to hold a needle for example. Their only task was to please their husbands by using their natural charms and their conversation, they had to help them in domestics affairs and they had to raise the children in a Christian way

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Judith Sargent Murray was a feminist long before the term was even invented. She lived through the American Revolution and was one of the first Americans to advocate for women’s equality. Her writing was carefully constructed to engage her audience and capitalized on the post-revolutionary fervor espousing the principle that all men are created equal. Murray’s essay effectively argued for gender equality through the use rhetorical style of logos.

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The Renaissance, a period of intellectual, political, and artistic rebirth, may have left women behind. The “Renaissance man” is the idea a well-rounded individual who is the best version of himself. This concept of humanism also encourages this ideal “Renaissance man” to be an active member of his community. Document D: Women And The Renaissance by Anthony Esler explains that the division between “the ‘domestic sphere’ of women and the ‘pubic sphere’ of men” originates in Athens. Ancient Greece was the perfect model of society in the eyes of Renaissance thinkers, which explains why the idea of “civic humanism” in the Renaissance only applies to men.

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Imagine you're in the year 1398, you are painting a picture but it looks all the same as the other ones. You look over at your friends and something makes them stand out. The strokes look different and there is a whole other perspective of the world we thought we knew. During the years 1300-1650 was when the Renaissance took place. The Renaissance was a period of big change when art and literature became popular and many advances were made.

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Ha Nguyen AP Euro Mrs. Broffman DBQ The Renaissance, which is a french word for “ “, had begun to take way in the fourteenth century, Europe, where it influence were still spreading until the late sixteenth century. Study of the classicals, mostly the Greco-Romans, were increasingly popular among the people of Europe; humanism was then starting to take shape. In the Renaissance the values and purposes of education was emphasized by humanists, who wants to use it to improve society, economic increased, and above all, to be able to restore religious beliefs.

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This meant that a goal men had was to better the human condition physically and mentally, which included bettering the human condition for women too and that education for not just men was considered. Before this time period, women were encouraged to lead on traditional roles of being housewives and caring for their children, but it was during the turn of the century that women were looked upon differently. “Sir Thomas More was one such advocate and is held responsible for the decision to advance the education of upper class English women of the 16th century in such subjects as “classical literature, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, physics, logic and rhetoric (Hasan).” It was humanism that allowed women to recieve an education, and in exchange advance their knowledge in the sciences enough to make discoveries and conclusions big enough to be credited by

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When translated to english the French word renaissance means rebirth. This is a perfect description of the event. The Renaissance was a time of rebirth for people between the 1300s and the 1600s, in Florence, Italy. A time of education and self discovery. The Renaissance served as a transitional time between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age.

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Over time, the period saw a general upsurge in literacy rates. For example in France between 1680 -1780 literacy rose from 29% to 47% for men and from 14% to 27% for women. These figures can be interpreted as evidence of a lack of opportunity for women to become literate and this essay argues that gender difference was caused by the social restrictions placed on women within a largely patriarchal society. It suggests that printing did not necessarily have the same impact for women as it did for their male counterparts.

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Many supporters of women’s education were opposed to women rising as social or political equals of their male counterparts. The rationalization of women’s rights to education were based on religion and sexism rather than gender equality as a whole. Even popular advocates discouraged women leaving their current social-spheres. Because of this, higher education was not a leading cause of the woman suffrage

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During this time, people believed that women were only good at cooking, cleaning, or nurturing their children and couldn’t do much else. Because people thought this way, women were uneducated unless they were in the upper class. Wealthy women would sometimes have private tutors that would teach them.

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The Renaissance is a period in Europe from the 14th to 17th century. It was considered the time between the Middle Ages and modern history. It all started as a cultural movement in Italy in the late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe, which started the beginning of the Early Modern Age. There are many highly interesting periods of history but the level of artistic and architectural production during this time is amazing. So much that centuries later they continue to capture the public 's imagination.

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Schools and Universities have been until very recently a male preserve, which has effectively excluded all but a handful of upper-class women from the resources of the official culture. Many educationalists as late as the nineteenth century believed that a woman needed to be literate enough to read her Bible, but could not aspire to the arrogance of authorship.

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