Women in the European Renaissance

The European Renaissance. The European Renaissance was a cultural and intellectual movement that took place between the 14th to the 17th century. This was a time of reformations, changes in culture, and flowering of the arts and sciences. Many people have different views of this historical era but I believe that times fell harder on the renaissance women. Therefore, I do not believe women enjoyed the Renaissance.

Most of the Renaissance women's lives were occupied with giving birth. That may have seemed like something beautiful but it came with conditions.

First, women were not to have illegitimate children. If a woman was to have her child illegitimately, she would be taxed, imprisoned, or banished from her community. In order to save themselves, women would try to hide or kill their babies, but unfortunately would get in trouble for committing infanticide. This was very hard for women during these times.

Although it was custom for Renaissance women to give birth, there were still things to go wrong. Mortality was an issue for both the child and mother. The percentage of death for women during childbirth was 10%. Also during those times, children would die from diseases such as influenza, tuberculosis, and starvation. This was also pretty harsh for women to have a risk of.

Marriage was also something that, for women, could be both beautiful and brutal. Wives, of course, were expected to respect and serve their husband. Though the expectations were not mutual, wives could not complain. Along with that, husbands were allowed to beat their wives. Even under those circumstances, divorce was almost impossible during those times unless under extreme conditions.

Poor Renaissance women probably had life worse because even as a child they seemed to be burdens on their families and on society. Poor Renaissance women did not obtain jobs very easily. In order to provide for themselves they took jobs such as prostitution and servants in households.

Something that was also really hard for women were witch-hunts. Witch-hunts were the search for someone who is doing wrong. Women who were poor, older, uneducated, illiterate, didn't fit in, who practiced folk medicine, folk charms, or chanting were accused of being witches. They were accused with meeting regularly with the devil, flying broomsticks, killing infants, and dancing naked. There was no way that a woman could convince her community that she's not a witch, so therefore she was stuck. She would be continuously tortured until she told the people what they wanted to hear and once she admitted to her being a witch, the punishment for her was death. This was extremely unrealistic to have happened to women in those times.

I believe that women of the Renaissance were treated completely unfair as far as with their education, occupation, marriage options and birth options. They had rules that they were expected to follow and and laws they were