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The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Chicago Series
Paternal Tyranny
Sharp-witted and sharp-tongued, Arcangela Tarabotti (1604-52) yearned to be formally educated and enjoy an independent life in Venetian literary circles. But instead, at sixteen, her father forced her into a Benedictine convent. To protest her confinement, Tarabotti composed polemical works exposing the many injustices perpetrated against women of her day.
Paternal Tyranny , the first of these works, is a fiery but carefully argued manifesto against the oppression of women by the Venetian patriarchy. Denouncing key misogynist texts of the era, Tarabotti shows how despicable it was for Venice, a republic that prided itself on its political liberties, to deprive its women of rights accorded even to foreigners. She accuses parents of treating convents as dumping grounds for disabled, illegitimate, or otherwise unwanted daughters. Finally, through compelling feminist readings of the Bible and other religious works, Tarabotti demonstrates that women are clearly men's equals in God's eyes.
An avenging angel who dared to speak out for the rights of women nearly four centuries ago, Arcangela Tarabotti can now finally be heard.
Paternal Tyranny , the first of these works, is a fiery but carefully argued manifesto against the oppression of women by the Venetian patriarchy. Denouncing key misogynist texts of the era, Tarabotti shows how despicable it was for Venice, a republic that prided itself on its political liberties, to deprive its women of rights accorded even to foreigners. She accuses parents of treating convents as dumping grounds for disabled, illegitimate, or otherwise unwanted daughters. Finally, through compelling feminist readings of the Bible and other religious works, Tarabotti demonstrates that women are clearly men's equals in God's eyes.
An avenging angel who dared to speak out for the rights of women nearly four centuries ago, Arcangela Tarabotti can now finally be heard.
182 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1654
About the author
Arcangela Tarabotti
9 books5 followersFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcange...
Arcangela Tarabotti (24 February 1604 – 28 February 1652) was a Venetian nun and Early Modern Italian writer. Tarabotti wrote texts and corresponded with cultural and political figures for most of her adult life, centering the issues of forced enclosure, and what she saw as other symptoms and systems of patriarchy and misogyny in her works and discussions. Tarabotti wrote at least seven works, though only five were published during her lifetime. Because of the politics of Tarabotti’s works, many scholars consider her “a protofeminist writer as well as an early political theorist.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcange...
Arcangela Tarabotti (24 February 1604 – 28 February 1652) was a Venetian nun and Early Modern Italian writer. Tarabotti wrote texts and corresponded with cultural and political figures for most of her adult life, centering the issues of forced enclosure, and what she saw as other symptoms and systems of patriarchy and misogyny in her works and discussions. Tarabotti wrote at least seven works, though only five were published during her lifetime. Because of the politics of Tarabotti’s works, many scholars consider her “a protofeminist writer as well as an early political theorist.”
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 18, 2017
A man once told me that feminism has ruined male/female relationships because now women don't find men impressive. My immediate reaction was to question exactly when it was in human history that women found men 'impressive'. Pretty sure Arcangela Tarabotti makes my point for me.
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April 1, 2023I first heard about Arcangela Tarabotti while studying up on Renaissance Venice for THE CITY BEYOND THE GLASS: the tl;dr is that Arcangela (b.1604) lived at a time when up to 80% of Venetian noblewomen were forcibly placed in convents so that their family fortunes would not be "wasted" on endowing them for marriage. Arcangela was one of these, and she was in a white-hot fury because of it.
Both male and female were born free, bearing with them, like a precious gift from God, the priceless bounty of free choice. If in God’s eyes woman is not less privileged than you with respect to her physical or spiritual qualities, why do you wish her to seem created with such great inequality, you enemies of the truth, proclaiming her to be subject to your impulsive, mad whims? In short, woman is deserving of less respect than you only when you have reduced her to this state by your scheming.
PATERNAL TYRANNY is partly about the injustice and trauma of this experience, but Tarabotti takes aim more broadly at misogyny in early modern Europe. The result is quite an experience. Tarabotti wields logic (well of course women aren't as sensible as men, if they're kept ignorant and sequestered) as well as scripture (actually, the Bible places all the blame for the Fall on Adam, not on Eve) with razor-sharp precision to dismantle the patriarchy of her time. And not just of her own time, but ours: as hard as I've worked to dismantle some of the religiously-justified misogynist thinking I used to accept unthinkingly, with all the help given by the many women who've trod this path before me, Tarabotti still pushed at my thinking. For instance, one major turning-point for me was the realisation that limiting women to certain callings is a tacit assumption that women are incapable of hearing from the Holy Spirit in terms of discerning a vocation. Tarabotti, however, goes even further, linking the diversity of creation to the glory of God and both with individual female calling:
Why, then, do you defy the works of the Most Just One by decreeing that many women should live all together, alike in dress, dwelling place, food, and conduct, when the Lord of Lords makes it a miracle of His infinite wisdom for all things He created to be different? Why do you want to bend to your whim contrasting wills created so by nature? It is nothing less than wanting to change and correct the deeds of a Creator who cannot err.
PATERNAL TYRANNY does not speak explicitly about Tarabotti's own experience and how it affected her, but reading between the lines it's possible to glean hints of spiritual abuse and moral injury. She speaks with feeling of being told it was God's will to take monastic vows when she felt no calling, and other passages illumine the guilt she must have felt at being a bad nun as she struggled to accept her fate. Imprisoning a young woman in a convent against her will, Tarabotti argues, is tantamount to sending her directly to Hell - since it forces her into a "marriage" to a bridegroom she can never be fully committed to. As a Protestant with certain objections to the Catholic idea of nuns as being brides of Christ, I of course don't see eye to eye with Tarabotti on this, but I don't need to in order to realise what brutal injury this must have caused to her own and many other consciences.
Despite this and other differences of opinion with Tarabotti (her insistence that women are naturally modest and chaste would be one of the others), PATERNAL TYRANNY was a fascinating and enlightening work. I honestly did not expect to find a 17th century nun raised in a society like that making such bold and sophisticated arguments for the equality of women, to the point of arguing that women should become lawyers and judges. Most of all, however, I find myself in awe of the strength and hopefulness Tarabotti's faith, which survived under all the abuse and trauma she must have suffered, and even learned to see hope and encouragement in Scripture which must have been so often used against her. It was a privilege to meet her in this book.
Both male and female were born free, bearing with them, like a precious gift from God, the priceless bounty of free choice. If in God’s eyes woman is not less privileged than you with respect to her physical or spiritual qualities, why do you wish her to seem created with such great inequality, you enemies of the truth, proclaiming her to be subject to your impulsive, mad whims? In short, woman is deserving of less respect than you only when you have reduced her to this state by your scheming.
PATERNAL TYRANNY is partly about the injustice and trauma of this experience, but Tarabotti takes aim more broadly at misogyny in early modern Europe. The result is quite an experience. Tarabotti wields logic (well of course women aren't as sensible as men, if they're kept ignorant and sequestered) as well as scripture (actually, the Bible places all the blame for the Fall on Adam, not on Eve) with razor-sharp precision to dismantle the patriarchy of her time. And not just of her own time, but ours: as hard as I've worked to dismantle some of the religiously-justified misogynist thinking I used to accept unthinkingly, with all the help given by the many women who've trod this path before me, Tarabotti still pushed at my thinking. For instance, one major turning-point for me was the realisation that limiting women to certain callings is a tacit assumption that women are incapable of hearing from the Holy Spirit in terms of discerning a vocation. Tarabotti, however, goes even further, linking the diversity of creation to the glory of God and both with individual female calling:
Why, then, do you defy the works of the Most Just One by decreeing that many women should live all together, alike in dress, dwelling place, food, and conduct, when the Lord of Lords makes it a miracle of His infinite wisdom for all things He created to be different? Why do you want to bend to your whim contrasting wills created so by nature? It is nothing less than wanting to change and correct the deeds of a Creator who cannot err.
PATERNAL TYRANNY does not speak explicitly about Tarabotti's own experience and how it affected her, but reading between the lines it's possible to glean hints of spiritual abuse and moral injury. She speaks with feeling of being told it was God's will to take monastic vows when she felt no calling, and other passages illumine the guilt she must have felt at being a bad nun as she struggled to accept her fate. Imprisoning a young woman in a convent against her will, Tarabotti argues, is tantamount to sending her directly to Hell - since it forces her into a "marriage" to a bridegroom she can never be fully committed to. As a Protestant with certain objections to the Catholic idea of nuns as being brides of Christ, I of course don't see eye to eye with Tarabotti on this, but I don't need to in order to realise what brutal injury this must have caused to her own and many other consciences.
Despite this and other differences of opinion with Tarabotti (her insistence that women are naturally modest and chaste would be one of the others), PATERNAL TYRANNY was a fascinating and enlightening work. I honestly did not expect to find a 17th century nun raised in a society like that making such bold and sophisticated arguments for the equality of women, to the point of arguing that women should become lawyers and judges. Most of all, however, I find myself in awe of the strength and hopefulness Tarabotti's faith, which survived under all the abuse and trauma she must have suffered, and even learned to see hope and encouragement in Scripture which must have been so often used against her. It was a privilege to meet her in this book.
August 6, 2018
"I shall not wheedle you into finding excuses for me, nor inveigle you into believing my sincerity. In any case, once you have lost liberty, there remains nothing else to lose".
Imagine a world in which you can find yourself consigned to a convent as a child, and because of the sacred nature of the vows you have taken, can never be released. Such is the world of Arcangela Tarabotti, born with a limp, whose father (from whom she inherited her disability) subsequently abandoned her to a convent because she was deemed to be unmarriageable. But in Paternal Tyranny, she strikes back.
She strikes out not only at the custom of sending unwanted daughters to nunneries but criticises more generally the status of women and how they are portrayed in society - correctly pointing out that it is all very well criticising women for being ignorant but then by not giving them the education they need to rise above this, they cannot prepare cases in their own defence. Such limitations mean that nobody really knows what women are capable of. Scripture is her primary tool in providing counter arguments; from making the case for Adam being responsible for the fall not Eve, for highlighting examples of male inconstancy, David in particular is singled out, to her praise of the steadfastness of the female followers of Jesus at the events during the passion narrative and her adoration of the Mother of God. She also tugs at your heart strings with accounts of how she feels that she, and others like her, have been condemned to hell in both this life and the next, because of the nature of her confinement and the damage that it is doing to her soul. As quoted above, having lost her liberty, she felt she had lost everything.
It is really quite sad to see how often she feels she has to justify her orthodoxy in the book. She criticises named heretics (including Luther and Henry VIII) by name and stresses that for those who have chosen it that the life of a nun is unparalleled on Earth. This reminds me somewhat of the long version of Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, written after the first anti-heracy legislation in England. By challenging many key orthodox positions Arcangela Tarabotti was potentially endangering herself. Indeed, in 1661, after her death, her work was placed on the "index" effectively banning Catholics from reading it. A frightened male tyranny struck back.
This entire work is a fiery work of passion. I have a developing interest in the works of women from the medieval and early modern eras that cry out for the rights of women and this book is a welcome addition to my bookshelf.
Note: I have a small comment about one of the editorial footnotes from page 124. Tarabotti writes: "...whose descendant Abram lied to King Abimelech, saying his wife Sara was his sister." The footnote corrects her and states that "Abram lied to the pharaoh in Egypt about his wife, not to Abimelech". Actually Abraham lied twice so they are both correct/inaccurate! The reference to Abimelech and Sarah is in Genesis 20:1-7, especially 20:2.
Imagine a world in which you can find yourself consigned to a convent as a child, and because of the sacred nature of the vows you have taken, can never be released. Such is the world of Arcangela Tarabotti, born with a limp, whose father (from whom she inherited her disability) subsequently abandoned her to a convent because she was deemed to be unmarriageable. But in Paternal Tyranny, she strikes back.
She strikes out not only at the custom of sending unwanted daughters to nunneries but criticises more generally the status of women and how they are portrayed in society - correctly pointing out that it is all very well criticising women for being ignorant but then by not giving them the education they need to rise above this, they cannot prepare cases in their own defence. Such limitations mean that nobody really knows what women are capable of. Scripture is her primary tool in providing counter arguments; from making the case for Adam being responsible for the fall not Eve, for highlighting examples of male inconstancy, David in particular is singled out, to her praise of the steadfastness of the female followers of Jesus at the events during the passion narrative and her adoration of the Mother of God. She also tugs at your heart strings with accounts of how she feels that she, and others like her, have been condemned to hell in both this life and the next, because of the nature of her confinement and the damage that it is doing to her soul. As quoted above, having lost her liberty, she felt she had lost everything.
It is really quite sad to see how often she feels she has to justify her orthodoxy in the book. She criticises named heretics (including Luther and Henry VIII) by name and stresses that for those who have chosen it that the life of a nun is unparalleled on Earth. This reminds me somewhat of the long version of Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, written after the first anti-heracy legislation in England. By challenging many key orthodox positions Arcangela Tarabotti was potentially endangering herself. Indeed, in 1661, after her death, her work was placed on the "index" effectively banning Catholics from reading it. A frightened male tyranny struck back.
This entire work is a fiery work of passion. I have a developing interest in the works of women from the medieval and early modern eras that cry out for the rights of women and this book is a welcome addition to my bookshelf.
Note: I have a small comment about one of the editorial footnotes from page 124. Tarabotti writes: "...whose descendant Abram lied to King Abimelech, saying his wife Sara was his sister." The footnote corrects her and states that "Abram lied to the pharaoh in Egypt about his wife, not to Abimelech". Actually Abraham lied twice so they are both correct/inaccurate! The reference to Abimelech and Sarah is in Genesis 20:1-7, especially 20:2.
February 10, 2013
This is a difficult book to rate because I read it not for edification or enjoyment as much as I did for historical study. Basically, this is the arguments of an enraged nun against involuntary cloistering of women that apparently was taking place in early modern Italy.
I won't take time to summarize all her arguments, but by the end of it, I realized that debates like this are kind of pointless on both sides--any time you take a stand for symbolic significance of something, the other side can just as easily flip the symbol around. So yes, there was a lot of deconstruction going on in early modern Italy, and it can get tiresome to read after a while.
I won't take time to summarize all her arguments, but by the end of it, I realized that debates like this are kind of pointless on both sides--any time you take a stand for symbolic significance of something, the other side can just as easily flip the symbol around. So yes, there was a lot of deconstruction going on in early modern Italy, and it can get tiresome to read after a while.
January 24, 2025
It is my new goal in life to make everyone read Arcangela Tarabotti. I’m not an early modernist but by god, she’s so much fun. This has everything: protofeminist polemic, righteous anger, classical references, effusive adoration of the Virgin Mary, naming and shaming misogynists, delightful biblical commentary, and referring to the Beloved Disciple as an honorary woman because he was loyal to the end at the cross. Exactly the sort of thing one would hope and expect an angry early modern nun to write.
January 28, 2023
I love reading a first hand account of what life, especially for women, was like so long ago. It’s interesting to see how many of the same issues and arguments are still around today. I want to read Inferno Monacale next.
September 12, 2015
inspiringly furious
October 7, 2015
ESSENTIAL READ IF YOU ARE INTO PROTO-FEMINIST CATHOLICISM
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews