Erasmus in his Dialogues depicts women as eager to rise out of their conditions of servitude. However much he tempers the force of his argument by continual jokes and pleasantries, yet he seems to sympathise with the female complaint that woman herself has abandoned her cause, leaving the husband to decide all matters of importance and voluntarily resigning all liberty, consigning herself to a life of religious devotion and household duties. The consequence is that men regard them as mere playthings and even deny them the name of human beings. The woman who voices this complaint enumerates the various occupations for which her sex would be fit, and winds up by saying that "there is nothing in what she has said which does not deserve serious and mature consideration."
In "Abbates et Eruditiae" Erasmus anticipates the problem of female education as it would present itself in later ages. He foresees that there will come a time when women, dissatisfied with the state of bondage, will seek improvement by demanding an education. The innate masculine egoism, however, will realise that learning will make women less submissive to male authority, and they will resist any innovations by which their supremacy may be endangered. The coming struggle is thus foreshadowed by one of the most prominent among the philosophers of the Renaissance, and his sympathies are, upon the whole, with the female sex. He is the first to see the close connexion between the moral worthlessness of females and their need of an education. To remedy the frivolity of women he demanded that girls should be taught some useful occupation, so as to keep them from idleness and its concomitant vices. He also wished for a more liberal intellectual education to be supplied in the family, and, should that be impossible, by the husband.
In full accordance with the above is the main drift of the third of the great humanist's works which show a tendency favourable to women: his "Christian Marriage", which made its appearance in 1526. It resolutely prefers the state of matrimony to that of religious celibacy and makes the possibilities of conjugal happiness dependent on the cultivation of the female soul.
Works like the above could not fail to draw to the problem the attention of the reading public, and to make it a favourite topic of controversy. France especially proved an extremely fruitful soil, and the French nation became interested in a regular "querelle des femmes" which inspired a great many pens, and culminated in the third Book of Rabelais' Pantagruel. The habit of reviling the female character and satirising the female weaknesses was of mediaeval growth, and may be found illustrated among many other examples in that portion of the "Roman de la Rose" which is the work of Jean de Meung, in the "Lamentations de Matheolus", of which the late professor van Hamel issued a new edition in 1892, and in a great many "fabliaux". It also prevailed in England with great persistence for several centuries.[3] But the somewhat puerile invective became a controversy in France when about the middle of the 15th century the female sex found some staunch defenders among the male French authors. Martin le Franc's "Champion des Dames", composed between 1440 and 1442, aroused a great deal of hostile criticism, mostly in the prevailing satirical form and culminating in the "Grand Blason des Faulces Amours" by Guillaume-Alexis, and some sympathy, as in the "Chevalier aux Dames", an allegorical poem; while some authors, like Robert de Herlin in his "Acort des mesdisans et biendisans" tried to reconcile the two parties.
After 1500 the growth of the Renaissance spirit soon caused the controversy to enter into a new phase. The interest it commanded remained undiminished and towards the middle of the century it even increased to immense proportions, without, however, leading to any pronounced tangible results. The progress of learning caused the argument to become intensified into a more serious, philosophical cast. One of the champions of the female sex, at the time when the "quarrel" had reached its acute stage, François du Billon, who also made use of the allegorical device to level his threats at the heads of the revilers of women in his "Fort inexpugnable de l'honneur fëminin", narrates how three of the worst sinners are taken prisoner by the gallant defenders of the fortress. They are Boccaccio, Gratien Dupont, seigneur de Drusac, whose "Controverses", written in 1534, are full of the fiercest invective against women, and Jean Nevizan, author of a Latin treatise, published in 1521, of which the very lengthy title may be advantageously condensed into "Sylva nuptialis". Nevizan's work shows the Renaissance spirit of enquiry into the stores of antiquity in its mention of a great many sources from Christ to Plato and itself became a source of inspiration to Rabelais.
In the years that followed the champions of feminism became identified with the Platonic idealists who were bent upon spiritualising love[4], whilst its adversaries tried to uphold the ancient "gaulois" traditions with their lower estimate of womanhood. The publication (in 1542) of Antoine Héroët's "Parfaicte Amye", with its Platonic notions, heralded a new phase in the history of the "Querelle des Femmes". In its metaphysical tendencies this brief treatise contains a delicate analysis of the emotions attendant upon the pure passion, the chief inspirer of virtue which brings us nearer to God. It ushered in the acute stage, during which not one of the great authors remained silent on a question which occupied so many minds. The different contributions to the problem under discussion were soon combined in one volume under the name of "Opuscules d'Amour". The poets and poetesses of the "école lyonnaise", Maurice Scève, Pernette du Guillet, Louise Labé, and others, ranged themselves among those who tried to introduce a purified love-ideal and also Marguerite, Queen of Navarre[5] joined the controversialists in her poetry. So general did the interest taken in the issue become, that Rabelais interrupted the narrative of his Pantagruel to contribute his reflections on the subject in the Third Book (about 1546). He took his cue from Nevizan's "Sylva nuptialis" in introducing the problem as a consequence of speculations regarding the marriage of Panurge. Rabelais proved himself on the whole an anti-feminist, and we have du Billon's authority for the fact that the name "Pantagruéliste" was considered equivalent to that of enemy to the cause of woman.[6]
If we except Christine de Pisan, Marie de Jars de Gournay, and "la Belle Cordière," the Lyons poetess Louise Labé, the number of French female authors was not greatly increased by the Renaissance movement. But the number of women of the higher classes who took part in the great intellectual movement grew all over Europe, particularly in France, England and Spain. One of the most erudite Frenchwomen of the time was Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, (1492-1549), sister to Francis the First, who welcomed to her court the greatest scholars of the day, and who was herself no mean poetess. It would not be difficult to extend this list with more names of high-placed women who owed their intellectual development to the instruction of special preceptors. Education of this kind became the privilege of the female aristocracy. The schools for the most part refused to admit women; in the convent learning was discouraged because a spirit of free inquiry mostly led to heresy, and for the women of the lower classes nothing at all was done. Their more fortunate sisters learned to speak and write Latin, Greek and Italian, and after 1600 also Spanish, and the abuse by women of Italian words while pretending to speak their own language called forth a strong reaction in 1579, the year which saw Euphues, and the beginning of its influence at the Elizabethan court.
The tendencies of the Reformation pointed in the same direction; they encouraged a spirit of free inquiry and were directly opposed to those of the monastic education. Under Luther's influence a number of lay-schools for girls arose in Germany and the early Reformation thus tried to fill up the gap in female education which the Renaissance had left. Unfortunately the political condition of France in the late 16th century was most unfavourable to educational reform owing to the violence of the religious wars, and it was not until after the Edict of Nantes that a number of Huguenot schools arose. The outlook in the opening years of the 17th century was far from bright; great misery prevailed everywhere, in addition to which the internal wars had brought about a general decay of morals which threatened to become the country's ruin. It was at this critical stage in the history of France that woman had become sufficiently confident of her powers to claim a beneficial share in all matters of social importance.[7] For the first time in history the Woman Question reached an acute stage. The seventeenth century, which witnessed the deepest abasement of English women, will always be remembered in the history of France as the time of the first self-conscious vindication of female rights. This vindication—except in one or two isolated instances—did not take the form of a direct appeal; it adopted the persuasive method of furnishing convincing evidence of woman's capacity to hold her own both intellectually and morally and even to supply certain elements which were lacking among the opposite sex, for the benefit of French society.
We have seen that in the late sixteenth century the problem came to be a much-discussed one in French literature, which it remained all through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. M. Ascoli, in the "Revue de synthèse historique" (Tome XIII) has published an extensive bibliography of no fewer than ninety-seven works of a feminist or anti-feminist tendency written between 1564 and 1773, which proves conclusively that the intellectual condition of women remained a subject of contemplation. The thirst for knowledge, as we have seen, had imparted itself to a small category of women whose circumstances enabled them to share the literary pursuits of their menfolks. But even the boldest of these earliest champions in their wildest dreams did not go beyond that enfranchisement of the mind which—however important in itself—is only the indispensable first step in female emancipation. Until quite late in the 16th century no women had entered the field as the avowed champions of their sex against the arrogant assertions of male supremacy. The alleged inferiority of women was a theme of frequent discussion only in the works of male authors, who further degraded the sex by the bantering, often insolently satirical tone of their contentions. But no woman had come forward to test the evidence on both sides, far less to enter into competition with men on behalf of her sex. The growing taste for literature had done little or nothing to improve the social position of women; it unfortunately limited itself to a few privileged women, leaving the rest of womanhood in the obscurity of hopeless ignorance. Thus matters stood when in the first quarter of the seventeenth century two events of great importance in the history of feminism took place, of which the first, abortive though it was, and therefore predoomed to barrenness, represents a deliberate attempt by a woman to constitute herself the champion of her sex; the second being something in the nature of a social experiment, which, without aiming definitely at the attainment of an exclusively feminist ideal, did more to improve the condition of women than any more direct endeavour. I refer to the work of Marie de Jars de Gournay, and to the establishment of the first salon by Catherine de Rambouillet.