In late sixteenth-century Venice, nearly 60 percent of all
patrician women joined convents, and only a minority of these women
did so voluntarily. In trying to explain why unprecedented numbers
of patrician women did not marry, historians have claimed that
dowries became too expensive. However, Jutta Gisela Sperling
debunks this myth and argues that the rise of forced vocations
happened within the context of aristocratic culture and society.
Sperling explains how women were not allowed to marry beneath their
social status while men could, especially if their brides were
wealthy. Faced with a shortage of suitable partners, patrician
women were forced to offer themselves as "a gift not only to God,
but to their fatherland," as Patriarch Giovanni Tiepolo told the
Senate of Venice in 1619. Noting the declining birth rate among
patrician women, Sperling explores the paradox of a marriage system
that preserved the nobility at the price of its physical
extinction. And on a more individual level, she tells the
fascinating stories of these women. Some became scholars or
advocates of women's rights, some took lovers, and others escaped
only to survive as servants, prostitutes, or thieves.
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