Women's Separation Of Renaissance Women

Outside of the domestic realm, scholarly men established control over Renaissance women. For example, esteemed poet Lady Wroth was forced to remove her book Urania from distribution within two months of publication because Edward Lord Denny filed grievances about the content of her literature (Farrell et al. 155). Urania was a book concerned with the implications of women’s separation from men, such as a confusion about one’s true identity and a societal disregard for women (Farrell et al. 155). The fact that a man’s disapproval was a deciding factor in discontinuing a publication a woman worked hard to accomplish proves that placing women in a position of subservience to men in the culture of 16th century England allowed men to silence Renaissance women. The imposition of men in women’s scholarship is also made apparent in female

Although men permitted women to make contributions to the Renaissance, such as writings and public readings, they did not allow women to develop careers based off of such showcases nor did they welcome these works to “philosophical speculation” (Gibson 20). The fact English culture endorsed the view of female inferiority in such works implied that Renaissance men did not regard female Renaissance works as serious scholarship. Therefore, women were often prohibited from publishing prose under their own names, as seen in the fact that the majority of female Renaissance authors were published under the title “Anonymous” (Farrell et al. 158). This anonymity left women unable to receive accolades for their work and made it difficult for them to build a career and make a name for themselves in the Renaissance realm. Discrediting female writers and inhibiting them from advancing their intellectual careers was another way in which women were limited from participating in the Renaissance by male overseers due to their cultural status of