Here are my responses to Vives, de la Cruz, and Pizan.
#1 In the third chapter of Vives' book, I see several passages that suggest that women's education is beneficial to the State and that education ought to be available to women of all social classes:
a)Vives praises several well-known women, ancient and contemporary, for their diligence and skill in spinning, weaving, and needlework: Hannah (Samuel's mother), Penelope, the Macedonian queens, Queen Isabella of Spain, and Catherine of Aragon. By commending these aristocratic women for mastering an accomplishment that some might consider plebian, Vives implies that education (in textile work, at least) should be available to both upper and lower-class women.
b)In advocating the study of cooking, Vives blames Belgian men's fondness for taverns on the "negligence and laziness of their women in cooking meals." Hence, Vives suggests that women's ignorance of cooking can contribute to men's laziness and neglect of their families, and, indirectly, to the instability of the nation.
#2 In the writings of Pizan and de la Cruz, much of the speaker's authority comes from repeated appeals to scriptural passages and to prominent church authorities--both well-known figures such as Jerome (B/H 786) and the generic "mistress's confessor" (B/H 550). The salient difference is in the uses the two authors make of the evidence. While Pizan uses Biblical evidence unquestioningly to reinforce truths widely accepted ("By long forbearing is a prince persuaded"; "Love thy neighbor as thyself,") de la Cruz encourages her readers to approach the Scriptures more critically--not to challenge the infallibility of the Bible itself, but to inquire into the cultural contexts in which its authors wrote, and, if necessary, to challenge common interpretations.
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Jerrell's Mini-trace:
ReplyDeletePosted as a comment to Mary's because I thought her response to number 2 were my thoughts precisely!
One) The chapter which discusses the question of what is “proper” for a Christian woman to read (and what is not) is an interesting way of looking at this question. For though a woman should be well-read, it is important that she be only prolific in certain literatures—nothing which would lead her astray with mentions of the prowess of men in combat, for instance. After all, “what room do these thoughts leave for chastity, which is defenseless, unwarlike, and weak?” (73) This is the eternal double edge of Vives’ treatise: women are to be educated but the purpose seems to be more for the preservation of their chastity and so they would not stray from the path of righteousness, rather than their liberation from, say, the will of their patriarchs. Indeed, Vives goes on to posit that there is no real artistic merit in books of that nature besides, and that people only indulge in them to have something to compare their own moral superiority to! Indeed aesthetics doesn’t seem to have any place in the education of a young woman (I suppose this is the ‘real learning’ referred to below), lest she be lead to the path of destruction by reading something that may actually hold her attention. Why else would there be such a strong warning near the end of the chapter against allowing a young woman to choose her own literature?
Two) Indeed, it seems that a challenge to Scriptural authority is the main break between Pizan and De la Cruz. What is more interesting is how these thinkers differ in their actual opinion of what constitutes education. Indeed, De la Cruz's educated woman is one who can examine and take apart common or inherited assumptions about Scripture (and if I may go out on a limb) and perhaps other things. She sees women as making inroads in almost every field (language, history, rhetoric, etc) and thus sees the generation of knowledge as more "progressive"
"Progressive" here in opposition to Pizan's well-educated woman, who is "arrested" by common understandings of Scripture. This may simply be the differing natures of the excerpts we have for the women (Pizan's being more an instruction and De La Cruz a defense of method), but Pizan does not appear to think of women as agents who can create and challenge knowledge, but must instead work as an intermediary of those who have the ability (privilege) to do so.
Hope I didn't steal too much from you Mary.