The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 2, Winter 2019 | Page 43
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before she made her body generally
available for promiscuous
intercourse, she had first permitted—and
indeed even earnestly
desired—that the seal of
her virginity be broken by none
other than her brother, so that by
this tie she might be more tightly
bound to him. Alas for God in
whom men trust, who does not
mingle heaven, when she, who
sets herself no limit in this filthy
lust, dares to engage so deeply in
the finest literary studies. 25
The letter was a clear indication of the
negative attitudes of Venetians towards
unmarried learned women who dared
step out of the private sphere of domesticity
and into the public sphere in
Venice. Combined with her pursuit of
becoming a humanist scholar and her
intelligence, while remaining unmarried,
Isotta was vilified like a criminal.
Her gender and her society’s ideas
about her gender played too significant
a role for her to be a humanist scholar, a
career that men dominated.
Isotta was condemned even further
for reaching out to Guarino in an
attempt to repair her reputation. She
lamented to him in a letter about how
she was “jeered throughout the city,
my sex mocks me, nowhere do I have
a restful place ...” 26 King suggests that
those women mocked Isotta out of jealousy
for going against her culture’s gender
ideals. 27 Isotta begged him to “put a
stop to these cruel tongues that call me
a tower of audacity and say that I should
be sent to the ends of the earth.” 28 His
immediate response was to admonish