Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society

Chojnacki, Stanley

ISBN 10: 0801863953 / ISBN 13: 9780801863950

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 01KTXZB21ATKQ3M

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801863953
• ISBN 13: 9780801863950
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Very Good
• Dimensions: 2.3W x 15.2H x 22.9D centimeters 2.3 centimeters width by 15.2 centimeters height by 22.9 centimeters depth

About this title

Synopsis

In Women and Men in Renaissance Venice Stanley Chojnacki explores the central role played by women in holding Venetian patrician society together. Family relations, marriages, and dowries were the areas in which women interacted dynamically with men. The three parts of the book discuss the involvement of the state in those interactions; the social and economic consequences for women; and their unexpectedly varied consequences for men of the patriciate.

The society Chojnacki describes is at once socially complex and highly regulated. On the one hand, women of the Venetian nobility, like patrician women in other cities, were subordinate to their fathers and husbands. But unlike their counterparts elsewhere, Venetian patrician women exercised much control over their own wealth and property and were key players in family strategies. Thanks to advantageous state regulations regarding dowries and marriage practices, Venetian women influenced their fathers' financial and social choices, which in turn affected their fathers' and husbands' attitudes and behavior toward them. Because limited family resources favored some daughters' marriage prospects at the expense of their sisters', the family and marriage practices of the Venetian nobles led to a range of vocations for women, as well as for men.

About the Author

Stanley Chojnacki is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.