DIFFERENT IS JUST DIFFERENT
History of the Body
Dr. Valerie Allen
12 April 1995
Carolyn Hendry
Ian Maclean, in his The Renaissance Notion of Woman, details the various influences that shaped religious, ethical, medical and social commentary during the Renaissance years of Europe. He quotes from writers of the time who sought to explain and explore how they felt and why they thought as they did. Aristotle's influence is widely demonstrated as are the thoughts of Galen. These Renaissance men described a social, theological and political attitude of intolerance toward women. Questions about whether women were of the same species as men, whether women could be held morally responsible for their actions, and whether women were culpable for the sins of men--were all exhumed and debated. It was assumed that the duty of woman was to get married and produce children--for they were written of as either virgins preparing for marriage or married mothers with children. The unattached woman--even the widow--was an enigma to men and, in some sad cases, persecuted as a witch.
It was startling for me to discover just exactly how dull and unobservant these writers appear to have been. Their energy in rehashing old questions is undeniable, but there is no glimmer of original observation and discernment. I am troubled as I read through Maclean's long chronicle of the most esteemed thinkers of the time to find that this intensely creative period in Europe's history saw leaders and philosophers who were content to simply reaffirm centuries' old prejudices. Women were different. Different was bad.
My six year old son came in to watch me typing a few minutes ago.
"What are you writing?" he asked me.
"I'm writing a paper for my class," I answered, hoping that he would be satisfied with a minimal answer and leave me alone.
"What is it about?" he continued.
I paused a moment and looked over from my computer screen, "It is about how some men felt about their moms a long time ago."
"Oh." A short pause. "OK, tell me."
"What? How they felt?" I asked him.
"Yes."
"They thought that their moms could only be married and have babies and that they couldn't do anything else," I summed up my interpretation.
"That wasn't very nice," he observed. Another pause.
"Mom," he asked, "Are boys smarter than girls?"
At this point I stopped trying to type and we reviewed the "everyone is different--not necessarily better, just different" talk that I have had with him and his two older sisters many times before. He left to brush his teeth, and I was left to ponder why it is that DIFFERENT is not usually interpreted as DIFFERENT, but as BETTER or WORSE.
Several of the authors that Maclean reviews are noted as "feminist" writers--maintaining that women are not less than men, but their equal or, in rare cases, better than men. By and large, though, there is a tacit acceptance of the fact that women are men's inferiors and destined by biology, theology and public policy to remain as prisoners of their womb and its product. There are even virtues that are delegated to women, separate from those assigned to men. Honesty is not honesty--it depends upon whether it is a woman being honest with her husband or a husband protecting his wife by hiding the truth about the world outside the home. In the first case, dishonesty is called lying. In the second, it is called beneficent protection. Maclean relates that some virtues that are required of men, apparently, do not even matter in women:
According to Tasso, each sex has a dominant virtue, one which both sexes need to practice, but which is more important to one than to the other.
The dominant virtue is chastity in the case of women, and courage in the case of men. The dominant vice for each sex becomes the antithesis of the dominant virtue (lack of chastity, cowardice), and the most excusable vice the antithesis of the dominant virtue of the other sex. Thus for men it is most unforgivable to be cowardly, and most forgivable to be unchaste; for women the vice of impudicitia is most to be abhorred, and cowardice the least reprehensible vice. Chastity and courage are seen, therefore, in some sense as contrary virtues when placed in a sexual context. (Cambridge University press, 1980, p 62).
Women have, apparently, been destined to possess different (lesser) virtues than men and, therefore, to occupy a different (lesser) role than men in the formulation of earth's mortal history. Women could not inherit; they could not think or persuade. Those few who did occupy places of power (such as Elizabeth I, Cleopatra) were held as laudable exceptions to the rule and as proof that women as a group did possess traces of some worthy, masculine traits. These women were allowed to influence the world of men by being masculine--they were educated as men were and did not produce children. They were different from other women--they were better, like men. "The princess is . . . a man by virtue of her birth, and hence the masculine standard of morality applies to her" (p 62). Men were encouraged to study, to travel, and to participate in physical, social and political life. Women were taught that "if time cannot be spent in continuous household tasks of spinning, sewing and embroidery, they recommend only edifying reading and denounce novels and poetry" (p 65).
It is no wonder that the Renaissance writers considered women as "notionally the inferior of the male" (p 44) and themselves "naturally" justified in excluding her "from public, life, responsibility and moral fulfillment" (p 44). She was different from men--weaker, more emotional, full of moist humors and a feeble intellect. Woman was nothing without the man. Without marriage a man might fight in battle, rule a country, administrate in the offices of the church, inherit his father's land and procreate (an action which, outside of marriage, was reprehensible in women because they alone bore visible manifestation of unchastity). "In all practical philosophy, the female sex is considered in the context of the paradigm of marriage. . . . Marriage is subjected to much examination and discussion in the Renaissance . . . but they rarely suggest that it is subject to radical change" and it is "one of the strongest barriers to conceptual change concerning the status of woman" (p 66). Women were different from men and, therefore, less than man. In an odd quirk of reasoning, "Postel (1505?-1581) argues that woman's weaknesses and imperfections are advantageous to her, since she naturally strives after perfection (whereas man, when he courts woman, courts an object less perfect than himself)" (p 22). So, not only are women less than men, but it is a good thing that they are thus.
Anyway. Maclean's documentation of man's ignorance of women does help me to understand where the deeply imbedded attitudes that currently surface in religious, political, social and medical dialogues have come from:
--Women were relegated to the status of a lower-life form for centuries.
--Men were brave while women were chaste. --Marriage was an enlightening, necessarily limiting institution that allowed women to join with their superiors in a bond that produced further generations of men.
I see now how "far" women have indeed come in this last hundred years. At least on the surface, women are politically, financially, and religiously credited as existing on the same plane as men. We are intelligent. We can inherit property. We can teach and think and reason. We are morally responsible for our actions. Above all, we have inherited the opportunity to fulfill that responsibility as we teach our sons and daughters that DIFFERENT is not WORSE or BETTER--it is, indeed, just DIFFERENT.
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