WAS THERE PROGRESS TOWARD EQUALITY BETWEEN THE SEXES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE?

1. WAS THERE PROGRESS TOWARD EQUALITY BETWEEN THE SEXES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE? • Literacy rates rose among women, but not as rapidly as they did among men. • Lutherans placed new emphasis on the need for companionship between spouses. • Women remained excluded from almost all skilled trades and professions. • (See Merry Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, 1993.)

2. Raphael,Madonna of Belvedere(1506)

3. Hans BaldungGrien,“Adam and Eve”(1520s)

4. Lucas Cranach the Elder,“Judith with the Head of Holofernes” (ca. 1530)

5. Caravaggio, “Judith Beheading Holofernes” (ca. 1598)

6. Bordone, “Venus and Mars with Cupid”(a Venetian courtesan, 1559/60)

7. Tintoretto, “The Origin of the Milky Way” (1570)

8. Lucas Cranach the Elder,“Ill-Matched Couple”(1520-22)

9. Rubens,“The Last Judgment” (1617):removed from the Jesuit church in Neuburg in 1653 for its “offensive nudities”

10. GeertruydtRoghman,“Woman Spinning”(1640s)

11. “The School Room” (1526):A Protestant vision of the ideal school for both boys and girls; in fact, there were very few schools for girls….

12. A Midwife’s Manual from 1545:The birthing cradle and illustrations of the most common positions of the fetus

13. Frans Hals, “Married Couple in a Garden” (ca 1622) Lutherans argued that the tale of Adam’s rib symbolized the need for companionship between spouses, and Catholic writers soon adopted a similar ideal.

14. “Recipe for Marital Bliss” (ca. 1680): The husband should beat the wife for laziness, talkativeness, vanity, or chasing after other men; the wife should beat the husband for drunkenness, laziness, or failure to support his family.

15. SofonisbaAngissola, “Portrait of the Artist’s SistersPlaying Chess” (Cremona, 1555)

16. Judith Leyster,Self-Portrait,ca. 1635

17. Judith Leyster,“Carousing Couple”(1630)

18. Judith Leyster,“The Proposition” (Amsterdam, 1631)

19. Anne Bonny (1725):This famous Irish woman pirate was based in the Bahamas. She retired to South Carolina, married, and lived 80 years.

20. A French knitwear workshop, 18th century:Women prepare the yarn at the spinning wheels, and the family father weaves the yarn into cloth

21. Men and women work side by side in this metalworking shop.

22. Women managers run this fancy Parisian dress shop in the 18th century, when more and more middle-class customers sought to emulate court fashion

23. “In the Salon of Madame Geoffrin in 1755”(the milieu in which the idea of women’s equality arose)

24. FRENCH WOMEN’S LIFE CYCLES, 1750 and 1960 From Joan Scott and Louise Tilly, Women, Work, and Family (New York, 1978). In Europe there was no mass movement for women’s equality before the 1880s….

25. Lucas Cranach the Elder,“An Allegory of Melancholy” (1528)

26. Entrance to SalpêtrièreHospital, founded in Paris in 1656 By 1780 it was the largest hospital in the world, with 10,000 patients, many of them suffering mental illness, plus 300 imprisoned prostitutes.

27. Inmates of Salpêtrièrewho typify “dementia, megalomania, acute mania, melancholia, idiocy, hallucination, erotomania and paralysis” (1857) In the 19th century 80% of lunatics committed to asylums were women…