For, with education, the individuality of women in the upper classes
was developed in the same way as that of men. Till the time of the
Reformation, the personality of women out of Italy, even of the highest
rank, comes forward but little. Exceptions like Isabella of Bavaria,
Margaret of Anjou, and Isabella of Castile, are the forced result of
very unusual circumstances. In Italy, throughout the whole of the
fifteenth century, the wives of the rulers, and still more those of the
Condottieri, have nearly all a distinct, recognizable personality, and
take their share of notoriety and glory. To these came gradually to be
added a crowd of famous women of the most varied kind; among them those
whose distinction consisted in the fact that their beauty, disposition,
education, virtue, and piety, combined to render them harmonious human
beings. There was no question of 'woman's rights' or female
emancipation, simply because the thing itself was a matter of course.
The educated woman, no less than the man, strove naturally after a
characteristic and complete individuality. The same intellectual and
emotional development which perfected the man, was demanded for the
perfection of the woman. Active literary world, nevertheless, was not
expected from her, and if she were a poet, some powerful utterance of
feeling, rather than the confidences of the novel or the diary, was
looked for.
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