A feminist broadside if ever there was one, Fonte's best known work, The Worth of Women (1600), deserves wider recognition among women.

      By the end of the sixteenth-century, the defense of woman had become its own genre, complete with its own arguments, authorities, and stock literary devices - the retelling/reinterpreting of the creation story in Genesis and listing of important/famous women. Typical topics included the exclusion of women from educational opportunities and the limited career opportunities open to women (marriage, religious orders, and prostitution). A few of the more radical works addressed the problems of women in unsatisfying marriages.

      Fonte used a popular literary style, the dialogue, to breathe new life into the defense genre by injecting new issues, new arguments, and new characters into the drama. In her dialogue, a group of women from the best Venetian families spend 2 days talking about the pros and cons of marriage which degenerates in a discussion of men, their merits and failings. The characters range from young maidens, one of whom is engaged to be married soon, to experienced widows, both young and old. Some women are committed to the institution of marriage while other women can only be described as separatist feminists.

      The moderator of the debate, the dowager of the party, divides the six women into 2 teams, 3 pro marriage-men and 3 con marriage-men. The teams are somewhat uneven. The pro-marriage/men team is represented by a newly wed who is still enthralled with her new husband, a naive virgin, and an older woman who is dissatisfied with her own marriage. The con marriage/men team includes a young widow determined never to remarry, a distinctly-jaded, middle-aged married woman, and a scholarly maiden who has renounced marriage to devote herself to a life of study. Based on the strength of their arguments, the anti-marriage faction would definitely win any formal debate. However, as a sop to public opinion, Fonte allows most of her characters to eventually decide for marriage/men.

      The debate take place over 2 days. On the first day, the topic is restricted to marriage and men. On the second day, Fonte allows her characters to discuss all of the topics that any educated male of the time would discuss - science, religion, politics, history - in order to show that women are intellectual beings capable of being educated and of engaging in intelligent conversations. In a sharp break with the typical work in the defense tradition, her characters use every opportunity to encourage women both to become educated and to use that education to enter a wide range of professions, such as medicine. The stated aim for the digressions on day 2 is to identify some means of curing men of their hostility to women. Witty, often downright funny, the reader should never forget that Fonte's subtext was quite novel, indeed, daring, and was meant to be taken seriously.

      On a more somber note, Worth is Fonte's literary testament to us. She died in childbirth at the age of thirty-seven the day after she completed the manuscript for The Worth of Women. Eight years after her death, her daughter, Cecelia, published Worth when interest in the woman question was renewed by the publication of the misogynistic tract, The Defects of Women by Giuseppe Passi.

      A few excerpts from The Worth of Women

      Cornelia replied, ". . . But we should not think that they behave like this only towards our sex, for even among themselves they deceive one another, rob one another, destroy one another, and try to do each other down. Just think of all the assassinations, usurpations, perjuries, the blasphemy, gaming, gluttony, and other such vicious deeds they commit all the time! Not to mention the murders, assaults, and thefts, and other dissolute acts, all proceeding from men! And if they have so few scruples about committing these kind of excesses, think of what they are like where minor vices are concerned: just give a thought to their ingratitude, faithlessness, falsity, cruelty, arrogance, lust, and dishonesty." page 61

      " 'Do you really believe," Cornelia replied, 'that everything historians tell us about men - or about women - is actually true? You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth except by accident. And if you consider, in addition, the envy and ill will they bear us women, it is hardly surprising that they rarely have a good word to say for us, and concentrate instead on praising their own sex in general and particular members of it, as a way of praising themselves. But, even accepting that there have been many men who have gone wretchedly to their deaths while flaunting their love for a woman, do you believe that the real reason for their downfall is the overwhelming passion they feel for the woman? Not on your life! The cause of death is their overwhelming rage at not having been able to achieve their end and not having enjoyed the victory they so longed for: the triumph of deceiving and ruining these women whom they purported to love. As evidence of this, you'll find that very few men, if any, have died for love after achieving the supreme end of love." page 77

      Leonora: ". . .For a woman, when she is segregated from male contact, has something divine about her and can achieve miracles, as long as she retains here natural virginity. That certainly isn't the case with men, because it is only when a man has taken a wife that he is considered a real man and that he reaches the peak of happiness, honor, and greatness. The Romans in their day did not confer any important responsibilities on any man who did not have a wife; they did not allow him to take up a public office or to perform any serious duties relating to the Republic. Homer used to say that men without wives were scarcely alive." page 91

      "It really is something," said Cornelia at this point, "that men disapprove even of our doing things that are patently good. Wouldn't it be possible for us just to banish these men from our lives, and escape their carping and jeering once and for all? Couldn't we live without them? Couldn't we earn our living and manage our affairs without help from them? Come on, let's wake up, and claim back our freedom, and the honor and dignity that they have usurped from us for so long. Do you think that if we really put our minds to it, we would be lacking the courage to defend ourselves, the strength to fend for ourselves, or the talents to earn our own living? Let's take our courage into our hands and do it, and then we can leave it up to them to mend their ways as much as they can: we shan't really care what the outcome is, just as long as we are no longer subjugated to them. And then, having achieved equality, we'll be in a sufficiently strong position to mock them as they now mock us; and we'll have a thing or two to say about how they spend a thousand years combing and setting the few paltry hairs they have on their heads and their chins; and how they wear their cravats so long and drooping one minute that they can easily be taken for napkins or kerchiefs, and so tight around their necks the next that they make them look like so many puppets; or how they sometimes wear their breeches so tight with their long doublets that they look like frogs, and sometimes wear them so loose that they could easily jump around inside them. And what's more, many of them have now taken to wearing platform shoes almost as high as the ones they are always criticizing women for wearing. And there are endless more silly fashions and crazes of theirs - far too many to go into." page 237

      Moderata Fonte (Modesta Pozzo), The Worth of Women, 1592, part of the series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, series editors Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)

For a longer excerpt, check out my booknotes file The Worth of Women

Along with Nagarola, Fonte was mentioned in Women and the Alphabet (1859) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Return to Women's History Month 1999 Table of Contents

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