Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T09:04:41.087Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Resisting Marriage, Reclaiming Right: An (Early) Modern Critique of Marriage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2022

KELIN EMMETT
KELIN EMMETT*
Affiliation:
LANGARA COLLEGE kemmett@langara.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Moderata Fonte's dialogue The Worth of Women (1600) contains stinging critiques of marriage and the dowry system as well as of women's inequality. I argue that Fonte's critique of male dominance, particularly in marriage, employs a modern method of argument, which anticipates the later contractarian critiques of political authority. Given that women are naturally men's equals, Fonte argues that men's de facto authority over women is illegitimate and based on force. Moreover, by treating marriage as an artificial institution rather than as a natural institution, Fonte anticipates later feminist arguments that criticize the modern contract tradition for its failure to extend its critique of other forms of authority to patriarchal marriage, instead positing a natural basis for women's subordination to men. In light of this history, Fonte's critique of patriarchy is especially interesting: it challenges the patriarchal family structure and the institutions that collude to diminish women's agency, and this challenge to male authority is similar to later (male) challenges to de facto political authority.

Keywords

Fontesocial contractmarriageauthorityequalitytyranny
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , Winter 2022 , pp. 721 - 740
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*This article is the eighth in a special series of commissioned articles on women in the history of philosophy. The seventh article ‘Émilie Du Châtelet on Illusions', by Marcy P. Lascano, appeared in Volume 7, Issue 1, pp. 1–19.

I am grateful to Lisa Shapiro, Karen Detlefsen, and Marguerite Deslauriers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am also much indebted to two anonymous reviewers for this journal for their very thoughtful feedback; the final version of this paper owes much to their contributions.

References

Bobbio, Noberto. (1993) Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law Tradition. Translated by Daniela Gobetti. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Boršić, Luka, and Karasman, Ivana Skuhala. (2015) ‘Isotta Nogarola–The Beginning of Gender Equality in Europe’. The Monist, 98, 43–52.Google Scholar
Botting, Eileen Hunt. (2006) Family Feuds Wollstonecraft, Burke, and Rousseau on the Transformation of the Family. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Broad, Jacqueline, and Green, Karen. (2009) A History of Women's Political Thought in Europe 1400–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Melissa. (1978). ‘Early Liberal Roots of Feminism: John Locke and the Attack on Patriarchy’. The American Political Science Review, 72, 135–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Constance, Jordan. (2005) ‘Renaissance Women Defending Women’. Literature Criticism From 1400–1800, 118.Google Scholar
Cox, Virginia. (1995) ‘The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice’. Renaissance Quarterly, 48, 503–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Virginia (1997) ‘Moderata Fonte and the Worth of Women.’ In Cox, Virginia (ed. and trans.), The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Deslauriers, Marguerite. (2019) ‘Patriarchal Power as Unjust: Tyranny in Seventeenth-century Venice’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 27, 718–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fonte, Moderata. (1997) The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men. Edited and Translated by Cox, Virginia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. (1983) ‘Oppression’. In The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Freedom, California: The Crossing Press), 1–16.Google Scholar
Hampton, Jean. (1997) Political Philosophy. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Hirschmann, N., and McClure, K., eds. (2007) Feminist Interpretations of John Locke. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. (1994) Leviathan. Edited by Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Asher. (1987) Rousseau, Nature, and History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Jagger, Allison. (1983) Feminist Politics and Human Nature. New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
James, Carolyn. (2011) ‘Margherita Cantelmo and the Worth of Women in Renaissance Italy’. In Green, Karen and Mews, Constant J. (eds.), Virtue Ethics for Women, 1250–1500 (Dordrecht: Springer), 145–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Joan. (1982) ‘Early Feminist Theory and the “Querelle des Femmes”, 1400–1789’. Signs, 8, 4–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Margaret. (1991) Women of the Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolsky, Stephen. (1993) ‘Wells of Knowledge: Moderata Fonte's Il merito delle donne’. The Italianist, 13, 57–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolsky, Stephen D. (1999) ‘Moderata Fonte's Tredici Canti del Floridoro: Women in a Man's Genre’. Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, 118.Google Scholar
Kolsky, S. (1999) ‘Moderata Fonte's Tredici Canti Del Floridoro: Women in a Man's Genre’. Rivista di studi italiani, 17, 165–84.Google Scholar
Kymlicka, Will. (2002) Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Locke, John. (1993) Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Goldie, Mark. London: Orion Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Marinella, Lucrezia. (1999) The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men. Edited and translated by Dunhill, Anne. Chicago: Chicago University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okin, Susan Moller. (2013) Women in Western Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole. (1988) The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Price, Paola Malpezzi. (1994) ‘Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella and their “Feminist” Work’. Italian Culture, 12, 201–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, John. (2007) Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Edited by Freeman, Samuel. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riley, Patrick. (1982) Will and Political Legitimacy: A Critical Exposition of Social Contract Theory in Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. (1979) Emile. Edited and translated by Bloom, Alan. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. (2011) The Basic Political Writings. Translated by Cress, Donald. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. (2004) Paternal Tyranny. Edited and translated by Panizza, Letizia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tyrrell, James. (1681) Patriacha non Monarcha. London: Richard Janeway.Google Scholar
Schochet, Gordon. (1969) ‘The Family and the Origins of the State in Locke's Political Philosophy’. In Yolton, John (ed.), John Locke: Problems and Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 81–98.Google Scholar
Shanley, Mary. (1979) ‘Marriage Contract and Social Contract in Seventeenth Century English Political Thought’. The Western Political Quarterly, 32, 79–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Allen. (1991) ‘Editor's Introduction’. In Elements of the Philosophy of Right by Hegel, G. W. F.. Edited by Wood, Allen. Translated by Nisbet, H. B.. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar