The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 2, Winter 2019 | Page 46

The Saber
mankind.” 33 Women were deemed to be
too emotional and, therefore, incapable
of rational thought and judgment; they
could not make reasonable decisions
about public affairs and this disqualified
them from full citizenship. Only men
could be full citizens. Therefore, women
were to have no role in the polis; they
could not participate in government
matters, nor could they be lawyers,
teachers, or administrators. According
to Aristotle, they were expected to remain
“silent,” stay in the private sphere
of domesticity, and marry to maintain
alliances and raise children. 34 As a patriarchal
society, both in the private and
public spheres, submission and silence
were, therefore, a woman’s virtue while
eloquence was a man’s virtue, according
to Aristotle, for eloquence would help a
man run the government. By contrast,
any woman who displayed eloquence,
like Isotta, was as an anomaly and
deemed socially destructive. 35
Moreover, an eloquent woman
disrupted the social norms of society
and was seen as usurping male virtues
and claiming power, which was only
meant for men. Only men were allowed
to display their eloquence in public,
where women were banned. Although
historians Francis Sparshott and Irina
Deretic have recently argued that Aristotle
did not devalue women and disregard
their position in Italian society, 36
his philosophies about the positions
and contributions of men and women
in society were taken literally in medieval
Italy, since they had been woven
throughout the culture since the fourth
century and the scholastic curriculum
since the thirteenth century. However,
2