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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
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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
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association

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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.

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