Analysis Of Merry Wiesner In Women And Gender In Early Modern Europe

Merry Wiesner in Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe offers a glance of the lives of men and women in the period of ~1500-1750, but more notably an examination of how a field develops across her textbook’s three editions. Dividing her book into three parts revolving around body, mind, and soul, she focuses on showing the static state of female involvement in history for the period, where women might influence men, but ultimately found themselves dominated by male dominated gender hierarchy. (311) While many of her ideas do not present novelty in the field, her aim never sought it. What Wiesner does present, and she does so masterfully, is a strong description of the field, its future, its important questions, inclusion of minorities in

Adding to her discussion of the field’s origins, she begins this section with the conception of European ideals of women and their roles through the Bible and philosophers like, Augustine. She then discusses the Renaissance phenomenon of la querrelle des femmes when Boccaccio in 1380 reopened discussions of women’s virile spirits in frail bodies making them like men as highest compliment in De mulieribus Claris, and its follow up by Christine de Pizan. (20) These laws and many writers involved in this querelle show an early interest in trying to understand women in a society formed around religions based on male privileges, which she notes stemming from the dual stories of Creation in the Bible and church men like Tertullian. (15-16) Economically, women’s bodies most often occupy domestic based work roles, but, Wiesner argues their access to capital and consumption offers more interesting and bountiful historical