The Invention of the Renaissance Woman.

By "invention," Pamela Joseph Benson has invoked the "Renaissance and the modern senses of the word," finding in it both a "recovery of the old [woman] and a construction of the new" as they are (re)created by men engaged in the defense of woman (2). She begins her analysis of the defense of woman with Boccaccio who, in De Mulieribus Claris, "intermixed" the lives of wicked and good women and praised "independent," often "extraordinary," women without, however, advocating social or political change. Northern Italian imitators of De Mulieribus Claris, Sabadino degli Arienti, Bartolomeo Goggio, Agostino Strozzi, and Galeazzo Capella [Capra], described an independent woman capable of moral and intellectual equality with men. But, like Boccaccio, they did not argue that equality should lead to social reform. Castiglione perpetuated these conflicted perspectives when he constructed an ideal "donna di Palazzo" in the cortegiano. Celebrated for virtue, learning, and eloquence, she chooses nonetheless to subordinate herself to male demands of enclosure and silence. These tendencies to circumscribe the independent woman, Benson suggests, culminate in Ariosto's Orlando furioso, particularly in the character of Bradamante, who is offered "opportunities for autonomy not available to women in the romance plot of Orlando," but whose choice "to accept Ruggiero's dominion over her resolves the threat that her independence poses to the social and literary structure" (92, cf. 148-49).

In English defenses of women, however, Benson sees the emergence of a new kind of ideal woman, one whose independence does not necessarily threaten male dominion. Thomas More advocated educating women to "improve their spiritual lives" and their moral authority within marriage (158, 160-61, 168-69). The misogynistic Vives, on the other hand, would educate women mainly to preserve their chastity (172). Benson also suggests, however, that specific examples of independent women Vives educes may have subverted his end (176-77) and notes that Hyrde, Vives' English translator, extended the possibility of openness Vives unwittingly provided (179). Elyot, in his Defense of Good Women, went further yet, asserting that woman is man's equal in virtue and education and therefore as able as he to rule--when necessary. But the conservative defenses of women in mid- and late sixteenth-century England engendered by the controversy over women were (perhaps deliberately) self-defeating. Based on old notions of woman's frailty, they endorsed purity and restricted her to nurturing roles (230). Benson's analysis of defenses of woman in England concludes with an examination of the historical and literary debate over the rule of one woman, Elizabeth I. John Aylmer's defense of Elizabeth's rule rests upon the "extraordinary woman" theory, "God's decision to give power to a woman" through the process of inheritance, ratified by custom and consent as well as common and natural law (241-42). Another, more appealing argument in defense of woman, Henry Howard's, never saw publication -- perhaps for political reasons. His argument rests on natural law (and Plato) and contends that "women are endowed with virtues of exactly the same kinds as men and that these virtues qualify them for rule" (246). In the Faerie Queene, Spenser uses Ariosto to deny Ariosto's conclusions, creating in Britomart, especially insofar as she shadows forth the Queen, a vision of "feminine prowess" which could end "the ravages of masculine history for all time" (288, 300).

Benson has provided a knowledgeable exegesis of contradictory ways in which early modern men in Italy and England rationalized women's proven capabilities and virtues. Her study, however, occasionally suffers because of the way in which it was constructed --to demonstrate a thesis itself constrained by inelastic definitions of woman. Her study, furthermore, might have benefited from some consideration of defenses of women written by influential humanists, like Erasmus or Shakespeare, and by some account of the laws and public policies regulating women. But these are cavils. The entire study is informative and its chapters on The Faerie Queene are truly enlightening -- a real contribution to Spenser scholarship.

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS - URBANA