The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 2, Winter 2019 | Page 43

and Scroll 8 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