Francisca de Nebrija, Humanist and Academic

Francisca de Nebrija/Lebrija (5 July)

Francisca de Nebrija was the daughter of the humanist scholar Antonio de Nebrija and Doña Isabel Montesinos de Solis. Her father was born Antonio Martínez de Cala, but Latinized his name as "Aelius Antonius Nebrissensis"--"Nebrissensis" the Latin version of his native birthplace, Lebrija. In Spanish, he was thus known as Antonio "de Nebrija" or "de Librija." His daughter's name is similarly confusing, at times given as "de Nebrija," at times as "Lebrija."*

The list of female writers and scholars
appended to Nicolás Antonio's 1672
Modern Spanish Writers
(image from Google Books)

Aside from the name of her father and mother, little else is known about Francisca's life. The reason for posting about Francisca de Nebrija today is thus a bit odd--her father died on 5 July 1522. Since I can find no dates for Francisca's life,  not even a birth date nor death date, I am posting about  her  today.

Although no biographical information survives, Francisca de Nebrija does occupy a place in history, however scant the evidence. What is said about her is brief but often repeated: she was tutored by her father, a distinguished poet and lexicographer, she substituted for him as a teacher of rhetoric at the University of Alcalá, and she may have assisted him in his research and writing. 

The entry for Nebrija in The Feminist Encyclopedia of Spanish Literature indicates she was born in the sixteenth century, but since her father was born in 1444 and died in 1522, at the age of 78, it seems likely that Francisca was born in the late fifteenth century. 

As Emilie Bergmann notes in "Spain's Women Humanists," although "[c]enturies of repetition established the commonplace" about both Francisca de Nebrija and her contemporary, Luisa de Medrano--that they lectured on rhetoric at the University of Salamanca--little evidence survives.

For example, in his massive Modern Spanish Writers (Bibliotheca hispana nova, first published in 1672), Nicolás Antonio includes an appendix, "Gynaeceum Hispanae Minervae," listing the names of Spanish women known for their writing--but whose work had (already) been lost (if you click this link, the appendix begins on p. 337). The five-line entry for "Francisca de Lebrixa" notes that she is the daughter of Antonio "Nebrissensis," that she taught the art of rhetoric, and that her teaching was applauded by all. 

The entry for Francisca "de Lebrixa" in Nicolás Antonio's
1672 Modern Spanish Writers
(image from Google Books)

Such an account of Francisca de Nebrija was still being given in the nineteenth century. In his Escritoras y eruditas Espanolas (Spanish [Women] Writers and Scholars), Diego Ignazio Parada included a brief account of Francisca de Nebrija among other "teachers and writers in Latin prose," writing that she substituted for her father when he was ill and when he was occupied with other business. While noting that no work by her hand survives, Parada suggests that she may well have contributed to some of her father's works.

A note of caution is sounded by Mary Agnes Canon in her 1916 The Education of Women in the Renaissance. In a chapter on the educated women in Spain and Portugal during the Renaissance, she calls Francisca de Lebrija "her father's right hand in his literary labors." She also notes that some scholars have "conjectured" that she might have contributed to her father's work. but, Canon observes, there seems to be "no warrant for the conjecture," since nothing survives.

Which takes us back to Bergmann. Like the scholar Beatriz Galindo, "La Latina," Francisca de Lebrija is a female scholar whose scholarship, unfortunately, has been lost. 

*I am using "Nebrija" as this is the way her name is spelled by Elizabeth T. Howe in her brief entry in The Feminist Encyclopedia of Spanish Literature.

The name of Francisca "de Lebrija" is included on the Heritage Floor in Judy Chicago's massive art installation, The Dinner Party.

Mary Jones and the Great Library War of Los Angeles

Mary Letitia Jones (born 29 June 1865)

Born on 29 June 1865, Mary Letitia Jones was the daughter of a minister, William R. Jones, and his wife, Jane, both of whom had immigrated to the United States from Wales. In the 1870 U. S. Census, four-year-old Mary is living with her family in Wisconsin; by the time of the 1880 Census, the family has moved to Nebraska. 

Mary Letitia Jones,
from the collection of the Los Angeles Public Library

Mary Letitia Jones graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1885 and then attended New York State Library School, founded by Melvil Dewey (of Dewey Decimal fame), where she graduated in 1892. 

After finishing her education and carrying with her a recommendation from Dewey himself, she returned to Nebraska, recruited by James H. Canfield, chancellor of the University of Nebraska. She was hired not only to head the library but to help in the planning of a new library building. By 1895, she was head of a staff of 10 and had doubled the size of the library's holdings. (She also converted the library to the Dewey Decimal system.)

After leaving the University of Nebraska, Jones worked at the University of Illinois and the State Library of Iowa, moving to the Los Angeles area by 1899 to join her family--her father had retired to Pasadena. 

She was soon hired by the Los Angeles Public Library, as an assistant librarian, working with city librarian Harriet Child Wadleigh. When Wadleigh retired, Mary Jones became the city's head librarian. As Nicholas Beyelia notes, Jones was "the first Los Angeles City Librarian working for the Los Angeles Public Library who was both a college graduate and a graduate of library school."

Despite Jones's qualifications and career accomplishments, all did not go well--just five years later, she was asked to resign so that the city of Los Angeles could replace her with a man. Jones refused, noting her reasons in a letter delivered to the library's board of directors:

At first it was my inclination immediately to yield to the request relayed upon me by the president. But, upon reflection, I have concluded that it would not be fitting for me to tender my resignation as the head of a department where only women are employed. When such a resignation is tendered solely on the grounds that the best interests of the department demand that its affairs no longer be administered by a woman. Ever since the adoption of the present city charter, the library has been presided over by a woman with a staff of assistants composed exclusively of women.

Since Jones refused to resign, she was fired. Her firing set off the "the Great Library War." (I love this statement that Jones made to the Los Angeles Times, when she was asked about why she had been replaced by a man: “Those directors seem as crazy after a man as though they were a board of old maids.”)

This "war" certainly demonstrates sexism and misogyny--but there is a healthy bit of nepotism and favoritism as well, and of course the usual chicanery, harassment, espionage, and bureaucratic finagling. It engulfed the city, but the war went beyond the city's limits, eventually bringing Susan B. Anthony to town!

Susan B. Anthony, "laying down the law,"
Los Angeles Herald, 13 June 1895

After she was fired, Jones left Los Angeles, at least temporarily. She went next to Berkeley, where she taught at the university for two years, then headed to Bryn Mawr, where she was head of the library for six years. In 1920, she returned to Los Angeles, where she helped to set up the Los Angeles County Library system. During the first world war, she helped to create a library on a local military base, Camp Kearney. Jones remained in Los Angeles after retiring and died, age 80, in 1946. 

I could write much more here--I always tend to write more than I plan to write! But, truth be told, I would be taking information from the incredibly readable, detailed blog of Nicholas Beyelia, who has posted a four-part series. That's where you need to go to read much more of this incredible story! For the first part of Beyelia's account of the Great Library War ("Have You Met Miss Jones?"), click here.

You may also be interested in Susan Orlean's The Library Book, which tells of the 1986 fire in the Los Angeles Public Library that destroyed 400,000 books (and damaged 700,000 more). Orlean also writes about the library's history, including the story of Mary Letitia Jones. 

Olympia Morata, Scholar, Teacher, and an "Italian Heretic"

Olympia Fulvia Morata (died 26 October 1555)

Olympia Fulvia Morata was the daughter of the Italian humanist Fulvio Pellegrino Morato. A Mantuan, he was exiled from the city by 1517 (for unknown reasons) and made his way to the Este court in Ferrara. There he was appointed to oversee the education of the two youngest sons of the duke, Alfonso I. And there, in Ferrara, he married Lucrezia Gozi. Their eldest daughter, Olympia Fulvia Morata, was born in 1526; her father provided her with an excellent classical education. 

Olympia Morata, c. 1550

But in 1532, Morato left Ferrara--again, the reasons aren't clear--and took his family to Vicenza, in the Veneto, where he secured a post as a public master of Latin. He also gave lectures, wrote, and published.

During the years of his absence from the Este court, Morato also spent time in nearby Venice and began not only expressing anti-clerical views but also opening his home to young intellectuals for discussions of the work of religious reformers like Erasmus, Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin.

All of which drew attention from the Council of Ten in Venice, anxious about the dangerous effect of teachers like Morato on the religious views of their students. Papal legates arrived in Venice in order to investigate, and prosecutions followed. Although Morato was not accused of heresy, he felt himself to be in some danger and, after six years of absence, he returned to Ferrara.

Back in Ferrara, Morato was once again appointed to oversee the education of two young sons of the Este court, these the children of the new duke, Ercole II, and his mistress, Laura Dianti. Morato also took up a position teaching rhetoric, oratory and Latin authors at the University of Ferrara.

The court to which Morato returned had become a refuge and support for religious dissidents, especially those fleeing from France. The duchess of Ferrara, Renée of France, had grown up under the influence of her aunt, Marguerite d'Angouême, a supporter of French Huguenots. Renée had carried her reformist views with her to Ferrara, and she had begun to shelter to religious dissidents, including John Calvin, whom she met in 1536 as he fled persecution in France. She also fostered intellectuals, like the poet Vittoria Colonna, who found themselves investigated for their religious views.

Soon after her father's return to Ferrara, between 1539 and 1541, Olympia Morata joined the court of the duchess of Ferrara, where she was to be the companion of Renée's daughter, Anna d'Este. There she continued her studies, earning praise as a prodigy of learning. As Jennifer Haraguchi notes in her biographial essay on Morata, the young woman, still in her early teens, "was considered a 'fanciulla prodigio,' and won the praise of many intellectuals for her fluency in Latin and Greek."

A poem from this period reflects on Morata's aspirations and her sense of herself:

And I, though born female, have left feminine things,
     yarn, shuttle, loom-threads, and work-baskets.
I admire the flowery meadow of the Muses,
     and the pleasant choruses of the twin-peaked Parnassus.
Other women perhaps delight in other things,
     These are my glory, these my delight.

While at the ducal court, Morata shared tutors and texts with the young Anna, but these educational opportunities came to an end in 1546 when Morata returned home to take care of her sick father. After his death in 1548, Olympia Morata attempted to return to court, but she met with obstacles--her father's interest in Protestantism (some sources indicate he converted to Calvinism before his death) and her own religious sympathies may account for some of the problems. But during Morata's absence, Anna d'Este had been married to a French prince, a member of the Guise family, and had left Ferrara--Morata was no longer needed as a companion. And, finally, increasing pressure on the Calvinist sympathies of the duchess may also have prevented Morata's return.

Having lost her father, her friend, and her position at court, Morata remained in her mother's house, and it seems to have been during this period that she herself became a Protestant. She continued her correspondence with other intellectuals, including one through whom she met a student who had come to study medicine in Ferrara, Andrew Grunthler of Schweinfurt.

In 1550 she married Grunthler, and within a few years the two left Ferrara, taking Morata's younger brother with them, at least in part to evade the Inquisition. Grunthler found a position in Schweinfurth, a Protestant town, where he was physician to Spanish troops that had been stationed there. The couple were caught between opposing forces in the city when religious tensions broke out into war--a Protestant town, pillaged by the Spanish soldiers garrisoned there, trying to withstand the emperor's troops that were besieging Schweinfurth. The city suffered famine, bombardment, plague, and fire.

They were eventually able to escape to Heidelberg, where Grunthler took up a medical lectureship. Olympia Morata began to tutor Latin and Greek.

She did not live long, however. She died on 26 October 1555, just twenty-nine years old. Two months later, her husband and brother were also dead. She is buried, with her husband and brother, in St. Peter's Church, Heidelberg.

Much of Morata's work was lost--some during the siege of Schweinfurth and the hasty flight from the city, some when Renée of France's archive at the ducal court was destroyed in 1559 by the Roman Inquisition. But Morata's husband sent Morata's surviving work to Celio Secondo Curione, who had been Fulvio Morato's friend and who had been one of Olympia's most dedicated supporters and a life-long correspondent.

An Italian humanist scholar, Curione had fled the Inquisition himself, eventually winding up at the University of Basel. Curione published Olympia Morata's collected work (in editions of 1558, 1562, 1570, and 1580): fifty-two letters (most written in Latin), two dialogues (in Latin), two declamations (in both Greek and Latin), eleven poems (eight in Greek and three in Latin), translations of seven Psalms (in Greek), and the first two stories of Boccaccio's Decameron (in Latin).

Curione's 1580 edition of
the works of Olympia Morata

For Haraguchi's essay, part of the University of Chicago's Italian Women Writers database, click here. An extended account of Morata's life and work, in addition to a complete edition of her texts, is Holt N. Parker's The Complete Writings of an Italian Heretic. 

Jules Bonnet's full-length biography of Morata, The Life of Olympia Morata: An Episode of the Revival of Letters and of the Reformation in Italy, is dated in style and tone (it was originally published in 1854), but it is still a useful source. The biography is prefaced with an extended account of the Reformation in the Italian states, a geographical area not often considered by those reading about the Protestant Reformation. There is also an excellent contextual essay focusing on Renée of France and her daughter, Anna d'Este. And best of all? You can access the entire book via Google Books! (Click here.)

Frances Wright, Abolitionist and Reformer

Frances Wright, Social Reformer, Writer, and Lecturer (born 6 September 1795)

Frances Wright was born in Dundee, Scotland, the daughter of Camilla Campbell and James Wright, a "free-thinking radical and revolutionary." Whatever direct influence her father may have had on her thinking is limited, however--by the time that she was three years old, both of her parents had died.

An 1824 portrait of a young Frances Wright,
painted by George Inman

But, in addition to his radical political views, James Wright was also a wealthy manufacturer, so his children were not left as impoverished orphans after the loss of their parents.

With a significant inheritance, James Wright's two daughters were taken to England by their maternal aunt, who was their guardian. Since she herself was young, the girls lived with their aunt in their maternal grandfather's home.

Fanny Wright returned to Scotland when she was sixteen and was educated there by her great-uncle, James Milne, a moral philosopher. Milne was educated at the University of St. Andrews and was teaching at the University of Glasgow.

In Scotland, Fanny Wright spent her winters studying and writing, her summers in the Scottish highlands. She read widely, having access to the library of the university--she was particularly interested in reading about America and the American Revolution.

She also began to write, beginning with what is described as "youthful romantic verse." But in August 1818, when she was twenty-three years old, Fanny Wright sailed for America with her sister, Camilla, for a two-year tour of the United States. In New York, she produced her play Altorf: A Tragedy, dramatizing the struggle for Swiss independence. (The play was published the following year in Philadelphia.) 

Once she returned to Scotland, she published an account of her trip, Views of Society and Manners in America (1821) and A Few Days in Athens (1822), which has been described as "a novelistic sketch of a disciple of Epicurus that outlined the materialistic philosophy to which she adhered throughout her life." 

Her account of her American trip earned her praise and attention--in particular that of the Marquis de Lafayette, whom she met in France in 1821. She accompanied the Revolutionary War hero when he returned to America in 1824, and she traveled with him when he was entertained by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Wright had been shocked to witness the brutality of slavery on her first visit to the United States. When she returned, it was with the purpose of purchasing, educating, and emancipating slaves, establishing them in a community outside of the United States. As she remarked while traveling in Mississippi in 1825, “The sight of slavery is revolting everywhere. But to inhale the impure breath of its pestilence in the free winds of America is odious beyond all that imagination can conceive.”

The image of Frances Wright that appears in
Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al.,
A History of Woman Suffrage

While planning the community for freed slaves, Wright had visited Robert Owen's utopian community of New Harmony, in Indiana.

She was impressed by Owen's ideas about cooperative labor and universal education--these notions formed the basis of the community she established, the Nashoba Commune, just outside Memphis, Tennessee.

She also published a tract outlining her proposal for ending slavery: A Plan for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in the United States Without Danger of Loss to the Citizens of the South.

Nashoba was founded in 1826, but the initial optimism underlying its foundation was lost after Wright herself left, suffering from bouts of fever and still campaigning for support.

The trustees in whose hands she had placed the organizing and running of the community seem to have failed her--there were reports of floggings, sexual misconduct, and unhappiness of parents who lost control of their children. The community had collapsed by 1829, and Wright escorted the remaining emancipated slaves to Haiti, settling them there with promises for their freedom and independence.

(As an interesting note: in order to recover her health, Frances Wright had gone back to England--there she met Frances Trollope, about whom I have posted [click here]. Trollope returned with Wright to Nashoba, but she was shocked by conditions, disillusioned with the project, and soon left.)

Returning to the United States, Wright rejoined Owen and, with him, began publishing the Free Enquirer, a newspaper advocating equal rights for women, women's suffrage, education for women, birth control, and liberalized divorce laws. She also condemned capital punishment and worked toward educational reform--with Owen, she argued for the establishment of a system of free state boarding schools offering a religion-free curriculum and industrial skills in addition to traditional subjects. 

Also with Owen, she founded the Working Men's Party, supporting small farmers, artisans, and workers in early factories in New York. Those opposing this progressive party gave it the most insulting name they could devise: the Fanny Wright Party.

In 1831, her sister Camilla's health failing, Frances Wright returned to France. There she married a French physician, Guillaume D'Arusmont, whom she had met when they were at New Harmony. The couple had a child, Frances Sylva, born in 1832. The family returned to the United States in 1835 and took up residence in Cincinnati. But by then the marriage failed, and Wright began the long process of divorce.

In the mean time, after her return to the United States, Frances Wright delivered public lectures opposing slavery. In 1836 and 1838 she campaigned actively for the Democratic Party, She also became involved in the Popular Health Movement, in particular arguing for the inclusion of women in health and medicine. 

In 1836 she published her last book, Course of Popular Lectures, again arguing strongly for the rights of women: 

However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion, that, until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike, assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly. It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential. If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance. Let women stand where they may in the scale of improvement, their position decides that of the race. 

Wright's health failed again after her efforts in the 1838 elections, and she withdrew from her active life. 

In 1850 she was finally divorced from her husband, but it came at a particularly high cost. Given divorce laws, which Wright had fought to reform, her earnings from her lectures and royalties belonged to her husband. 

She died just two years later, on 13 December 1852, after a fall on the ice. She was fifty-seven years old.

Wright was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery,
Cincinnati, Ohio

In addition to the entry on Wright in the Tennessee Encyclopedia, to which I've linked above, you might also be interested in the biographical note on Wright in the Encyclopedia Britannica (click here).

Celia Morris Eckhardt's 1984 biography, Fanny Wright: Rebel in America, is out of print, but used copies are readily available.

Wright's own work is also easy to find. There are a number of print-on-demand editions available (through Amazon, for instance), but her work work is available the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg.

Luisa de Medrano, the First Female Professor?

Luisa de Medrano (born 9? August 1484)

Born in Atienza (Guadalajara), Spain, some time in August 1484--on 9 August, according to some sources--Luisa de Medrano was one of the doctae puellae (learned young women) favored by Isabella of Spain, who attracted and supported a number of such well-educated women to her court. (Women like Beatriz Galindo, about whom I have already posted.)

In Juan de Pereda's Sibyls of Atienza,
the face of the sibyl on the left has been
identified as belonging to Luisa de Medrano

Medrano was the daughter of Diego López de Medrano and Magdalena Bravo de Lagunas.

Her paternal family was one of the "Twelve Lineages of Soria," a chivalric military order established in the Middle Ages.

Little biographical information is available in English, and my Spanish is more than a little rusty, but the bare outlines of Lucia de Medrano's story emerge nonetheless. 

After Luisa de Medrano's father and grandfather were killed during the campaign to conquer Granada, at the battle of Gibalfaro (1487), her mother and her eldest sister, Catalina, were established at the court of Isabella of Castile. The rest of the Medrano children--eight of them, including Luisa--were likely to have been too young to have served at court, but seem to have joined other noble children, including those of the Spanish monarchs.

Medrano received an extraordinary humanist education, probably tutored by a professor associated with the University of Salamanca. According to an account of her life in El Mundo, Medrano may have been present at the reception for Christopher Columbus, celebrating his return from his first voyage, and she is likely to have met Beatriz Galindo.

In 1508, when she was twenty-four years old, Luisa de Medrano addressed scholars at the University of Salamanca. The event was noted by the rector of the university, Pedro de Torres: "Ad 1508 die 16 novembris hora tertia legit filia Medrano in Catedra Caconum" ("on November 16, 1508, at the third hour, read the daughter of Medrano").

The nature of this event isn't clear--Medrano may have read a lesson, perhaps on Latin or even canon law, or she may have actually have taken up a position, likely for the year 1508-09, following the departure of the scholar Antonio de Nebrija. In either case, Medrano is regularly cited as the first (known) female professor at a European university.

A further tribute was offered by the Italian scholar Lucio Marineo Sículo, who taught at the University of Salamanca (1484-96), in a 1514 letter to Luisa de Medrano: 

Ahora es cuando me he convencido de que a las mujeres, Natura no negó ingenio, pues en nuestro tiempo, a través de ti, puede ser comprobado, que en las letras y elocuencia has levantado bien alta la cabeza por encima de los hombres, que eres en España la única niña y tierna joven que trabajas con diligencia y aplicación no la lana sino el libro, no el huso sino la pluma, ni la aguja sino el estilo.

[Now I have been convinced that Nature did not deny women intelligence ("wit"), because in our time and through you it can be proven that in letters and eloquence you have raised yourself head high above the heads of men, that in Spain you are unique, a young woman who works with diligence and application not in wool but in the book, not with the spindle but the pen, not the needle but the stylus.*]

In a will written in 1527, Magdalena Bravo de Laguna, Luisa de Medrano's mother, notes her daughter's recent death. If she died in 1527, Luisa de Medrano was just forty-three years old. 

Medrano is said to have written poetry and philosophy, but if so, none of her work has survived.  

Today an institute of secondary education in Salamanca is named for her, the Institute of Lucia de Medrano. The Luisa de Medrano International Prize, named in her honor, is awarded by the Instituto de la Mujer, Castilla-La Mancha. In announcing the name of the prize, the awards committee noted that Medrano was "the first female professor of a European university." 

Logo for the prize named in honor of
Luisa de Medrano

*Sorry for any inaccuracies in my translation!

There is a brief biography in Spanish (click here), as well as a novel, María López Villarquide's La catedrática.

Update, 23 March 2021: The comment from Ana (see below) points to the 2019 essay by Ana María Carabias Torres, "Beatriz Galindo y Lucía de Medrano: ni maestra de reinas ni catedrática de derecho canónico" ("Beatriz Galindo and Lucía de Medrano, Neither a Teacher of Queens Nor a Professor of Canon Law") Investigaciones Históricas, época moderna y contemporánea 39 (2019): 179-208. The piece is in Spanish, but here is the article abstract, in English: 

Study of documentary sources that have lead a majority of researchers to believe that Beatriz Galindo, “La Latina,” was Queen Isabella the Catholic’s teacher, and that Lucía, or Luisa de Medrano, was a professor of Canon Law at the University of Salamanca. In this article we try to prove that none of this has been true, through critical analysis of primary documentary sources. 

A .pdf of the article is available online--to access it, click here. 

In light of Professor Carabias Torres's analyses, I've added a question mark to the title of this post!

M

ARÍA

C

ARABIAS

T

ORRES

Oh, Yay! More Great News for Women! 2017 Edition!

The World Economic Forum's 2017 Global Gender Gap Report

The World Economic Forum has just published its annual Global Gender Gap Report. Published every year since 2006, the report "benchmarks 144 countries on their progress towards gender parity across four thematic dimensions: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment."

Of course, we'd like to believe that women are closing the gap--that, all over the world, despite the obstacles they face, women are making progress. 

Unfortunately, that is not the case. Last year, assuming "[a]ll things held equal," the global gender gap was projected to close in 83 years. But things did not hold equal--today, "with current trends, the overall global gender gap can be closed in exactly 100 years [emphasis added] across the 106 countries covered since the inception of the Report" (viii).

Let's start with the good news, or at least the sorta good news: "On average, the 144 countries covered in the Report have closed 96% of the gap in health outcomes between women and men." This is the "smallest gap," but the numbers remain unchanged since last year. Still, "the gap is larger than it stood in 2006" (25), when the first Global Gender Gap Report was published.

And now, the bad news: 

on current trends, the education-specific gender gap could be reduced to parity within the next 13 years. The widest gender gap, in the political dimension, is also the one exhibiting the most progress, narrowing by 9% since 2006, despite a slowdown in progress this year. On current trends, it could be closed within 99 years [emphases added]. (25)

And now (because that's the kind of woman I am), the worse news:

Some of the most challenging gender gaps remain in the economic sphere. At the current rate of change, and given the continued widening of the economic gender gap already observed last year, it will now not be closed for another 217 years [emphasis added]. This year, the economic gender gap has reverted back to where it stood in 2008, after a peak in 2013. (25)

As for the U.S.? Don't look for them in the "top ten"--that is, the countries which have succeeded in "closing more than 80% of their overall gender gap" (14-15). Those countries? Iceland, Norway, Finland, Rwanda, Sweden, Nicaragua, Slovenia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

Where is the U.S.? It's ranked at 49 among the 144 countries in the global report--right below Bangladesh and Peru, right above Zimbabwe and Jamaica. 

If you want to see the complete list of rankings, look for Table 3 (10-11). And you can see the "country score card" for the United States, found on p. 334.

For my blog post on last year's Global Gender Gap Report, click here.

More Really Great News on the Gender Pay Gap--This Time on a Global Scale

The World Economic Forum's 2016 Global Gender Gap Report

The World Economic Forum has just published its eleventh annual Global Gender Gap Report--this report has been published since 2006 and measures women's progress in 144 countries. *

Here's one way to make lemonade out of lemons . . . 

In its analysis, the index focuses on fourteen variables in four areas: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; health and survival; and political participation.

The differences between men and women are enormous. Over all, women are worse off than men by 31.7%. 

Here's the good news, according to the report. On average, "the 144 countries covered in the Report have closed 96% of the gap in health outcomes between women and men, unchanged since last year, and more than 95% of the gap in educational attainment, an improvement of almost one full percentage point since last year and the highest value ever measured by the Index" (7).

But here's the bad news: 

However, the gaps between women and men on economic participation and political empowerment remain wide: only 59% of the economic participation gap has been closed—a continued reversal on several years of progress and the lowest value measured by the Index since 2008—and about 23% of the political gap, continuing a trend of slow but steady improvement. Weighted by population, in 2016, the average progress on closing the global gender gap stands at a score of 0.683—meaning an average gap of 31.7% remains to be closed worldwide across the four Index dimensions in order to achieve universal gender parity. (7)

And here's the worse news (because I'm a glass-half-empty kind of person): "Out of the 142 countries covered by the Index both this year and last year, 68 countries have increased their overall gender gap score compared to last year, while 74 have seen it decrease. It therefore has been an ambiguous year for global gender parity, with uneven progress at best."

And now the worst news of all: at the rate things are going, it will take 83 years to close this gender gap. But that's for all four areas--the pay gap won't close for another 170 years! Or so . . . 

And don't assume that the U.S. scores high on this index--the U.S. saw a 17 point drop on last year’s score. And it places only 45th in the global table. 

And when it comes to those pesky kinds of unpaid labor--like household tasks and childcare, for example--women still do much more than men.

* This blog post used to contain links to all the relevant data in and quotations from the 2016 report, but as of January 2021, those links no longer worked ("Error establishing a database connection"). However you can still read and download the entire report at the World Economic Forum by clicking here.

Annabella Milbanke Was Not Crazy!

Annabella Milbanke, Lady Byron (17 May 1792-16 May 1860)

I've written before about the seminar in the British Romantics I was enrolled in as an undergraduate. The professor was a retired specialist in the writers of the period--he was a wonderful man, teaching the seminar gratis because he loved teaching. And I loved the course--but the approach was typical for its time. Tortured men of genius bedeviled by difficult women who threatened their genius. Any and all extremely bad behavior--and there was a great deal of it--was excused because THEY WERE MEN OF GENIUS.  

Annabella Milbanke,
about the time of her marriage

And I've already written about one of those "dangerous" women, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, a sixteen-year-old who was seduced by and eloped with the married Percy Shelley.

I've written about the "unhinged" Lady Caroline Lamb who stalked Byron.

I also wrote about my enlightenment about the women in the so-called Shelley circle after I read Janet Todd's Death and the Maiden: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle.

Even so, I hadn't considered Anna Isabella Milbanke, the young woman who married Byron. Without even thinking about it, I had been hanging onto the stereotype of Annabella, as she was known, which I had absorbed in that long-ago seminar. Annabella was the uptight, prudish, "Princess of Parallelograms" who just didn't understand a man of genius like Byron. Sheesh. (Byron himself referred to her as Clytemnestra, the monstrous wife who murdered Agamemnon in his bath when he returned from the Trojan wars.)

I have just finished Julia Markus's excellent new biography, Lady Byron and Her Daughters. I can't recommend it enough. 

The biography was not only compulsively readable, but it revealed a woman who was, in her own right, remarkable. Not remarkable only for her beauty, not remarkable as the discarded wife of Byron, not remarkable for the juicy details of her abusive marriage, but remarkable as a creative, talented thinker who accomplished a great deal in her life.

I will only summarize here--recognizing their daughter’s intellect, her parents provided an excellent tutor, with whom she studied classical literature, philosophy, science, and mathematics. She herself wrote poetry. She educated her accomplished, brilliant daughter, Ada, now recognized for her contributions to computing and computer programming. 

Annabella Milbanke not only devoted herself to rearing her daughter, she also offered financial support to Augusta Leigh, Byron's half-sister, and she rescued, supported, and educated Medora Leigh, Byron's daughter with his half-sister. 

Annabella Milbanke was socially conscious, interested in education for those who could not afford private tutors, designing and founding infants schools. She was also a supporter of prison reform and the abolition cause--she attended the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention, where she met Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She also met Harriet Beecher Stowe, who traveled to England in 1853, after the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin--Stowe became a great admirer.

Even if you're not as naive as I was, and even if you think you might not be interested in reading about "Byron's wife," I encourage you to read Markus's biography. It's riveting--and a great insight into the status of women in the nineteenth century. (Despite physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, a woman had little recourse in the nineteenth century--and she had virtually no legal right to her child. Separating from Byron was an act of courage and determination, but it also took strong family support and expert legal representation.)

Annabella Milbanke, Lady Byron, was truly an accomplished and fascinating woman.

And might I recommend Julia Markus's website? You can find her at "Julia Markus writes." Or, more simply, by clicking here.

Beatriz Galindo, "La Latina"

Beatriz Galindo, scholar and tutor (birth of her pupil Catherine of Aragon, 16 December 1485)

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Catherine of Aragon, and so I thought I would post today not about the woman who would become part of Henry VIII's marital misadventures, but instead about the woman who was her tutor, the humanist scholar Beatriz Galindo.

Beatriz Galindo's date of birth is not known--estimates range generally from 1464 to 1474.

A fifteenth-century portrait of
Beatriz Gallindo

Born in Madrid, she was the daughter of a family of the lesser nobility, and it seems that her parents intended Beatriz for the religious life. 

To further her understanding of the prayers, music, and ritual of the cloister, she began to study Latin, but, given her manifest gifts, she received Latin instruction at the grammar school of the University of Salamanca, where she and Luisa de Medrano were among the first female students. 

Galindo acquired further training from the University of Salerno, where she received diplomas in philosophy and Latin. Although the information I have is fragmentary (and sometimes contradictory), it seems that both Galindo and Medrano lectured at the University of Salamanca, Medrano in poetry and history, Galindo in rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine. Galindo is credited with having written Latin poetry and commentaries on Aristotle, though only a few letters and a will survive.

By 1486, her reputation had brought Galindo to the attention of Queen Isabella of Castile. Well aware of her own educational deficiencies, Isabella brought the scholar to court, where she would tutor the queen in Latin. Galindo seems also to have become something of an advisor to Isabella and perhaps also to have served as her secretary at times. 

In addition, Galindo became the tutor for Isabella's daughters, with most sources focusing on her training of the two youngest, Juana and Catalina (later Catherine). Isabella also appointed Galindo as the director of a school for the children of the nobility that the queen had established at court. 

In 1491, Galindo married the courtier and captain Francisco Ramirez (nicknamed "il Artillero"), her dowry supplied by the Spanish monarchs--sources vary as to whether she had two children or five children. (Or whether the widowed Ramirez had three children, and then the couple added two more, for a total of five.)

The surviving façade of the
Hospital de la Concepción de Nuestra Señora

Widowed after 1501, she retired from the court and dedicated herself to the foundation of charities, notably the Hospital de la Concepción de Nuestra Señora (the Hospital of the Conception of Our Lady), popularly called the hospital of la Latina. Galindo drafted the organization's constitution and rules for government. (The hospital and adjoining convent were destroyed in the early twentieth century when the streets were widened, though the façade was preserved.) 

She also founded the Convento de la Concepción Jerónima (also called the Convento de La Latina) in 1509 for nuns of the Hieronymite order.

Beatriz Galindo died in Madrid on 23 November 1534.

One of the most reliable sources is an article from a 2006 edition of a supplement to El Mundo, which you can read by clicking here.

Update, 23 March 2021: A comment from a reader, Ana, points to the 2019 essay by Ana María Carabias Torres, "Beatriz Galindo y Lucía de Medrano: ni maestra de reinas ni catedrática de derecho canónico" ("Beatriz Galindo and Lucía de Medrano, Neither a Teacher of Queens Nor a Professor of Canon Law") Investigaciones Históricas, época moderna y contemporánea 39 (2019): 179-208. The piece is in Spanish, but here is the article abstract, in English: 

Study of documentary sources that have lead a majority of researchers to believe that Beatriz Galindo, “La Latina,” was Queen Isabella the Catholic’s teacher, and that Lucía, or Luisa de Medrano, was a professor of Canon Law at the University of Salamanca. In this article we try to prove that none of this has been true, through critical analysis of primary documentary sources. 

A .pdf of the article is available online--to access it, click here. 

Dhuoda of Uzès: Writing to Save Her Life?

Dhuoda of Uzès (son William born 29 November 826)

Almost everything we know about the ninth-century Frankish noblewoman now known as Dhuoda of Uzès is recorded in the book she completes on 2 February 843. The day is specified in Dhuoda's text, the year conjectural: as she dates it, her work was "finished four days before the Nones of February, the feast of the Purification of the holy and glorious Mary, always virgin, under the favorable reign of Christ and in the hope for a God-given king." (After the death of Louis the Pious, the son of the Emperor Charlemagne, his three sons went to war with one another, a war that ended in August 843--thus Dhuoda's "hope" for an end to the question of who was to rule suggests she was finishing her book before the matter was decided.)

Detail from a late-tenth- or early-eleventh-century

fragmentary manuscript of Dhuoda's handbook

(Bibliothèque nationale de France)

At first glance, the kinds of details we might want to know about Dhuoda are few: she was married to Bernard of Septimania at the imperial court of Aix-la-Chapelle in June of 824. After her marriage, she seems to have been taken to the town of Uzès, in southern France near Nîmes, where she spent the rest of her life.

Dhuoda tells us nothing at all about her parents, about her childhood, or about how she came to be married to Bernard. 

On 29 November 826 Dhuoda gave birth to her first son, William. On 22 March 841, she gave birth to a second son in Uzès. Scholars now indicate that child may have been named Bernard, but Dhuoda herself did not know his name. In writing to her older son, she says, "And when your little brother, whose name I still do not know, has received the grace of baptism in Christ, do not hesitate to teach him, to educate him, to love him, and to call him to progress from good to better."

Between the birth of her two sons, Dhuoda's husband, Bernard, who had been a close counselor of Louis the Pious, encouraged the emperor's son Pepin to rebel against his father--the civil war that followed (831-833) resulted in Bernard's loss of possessions and titles. During a subsequent revolt, this time by the emperor's son Lothair (833-834), Bernard remained loyal to Louis, and in 835 his titles and possessions were restored.

Still, Bernard's disloyalty--and suspicion that he had a sexual relationship with the emperor's wife, Judith--had resulted in more than the loss of his possessions. As one scholar notes, Bernard was "punished through his sister Gerberga"--a nun in the convent of Chalon-sur-Saône, in 832 Gerberga was accused of witchcraft, thrown into "a wine cask," and tossed into the river to drown.

Although Bernard survived, about the year 840 he removed Dhuoda's fourteen-year-old son, William, from her care and sent him as a hostage to the court of Charles the Bald, the third son of Louis the Pious, likely as a guarantee of his (Bernard's) continued good behavior. Later, after the birth of their younger son--even before he has been baptized, as we have seen--Bernard removed the infant from Dhuoda's care as well.

Isolated and now separated from her children, Dhuoda begins to write. As she tells us, she begins the composition of her "little book" on 30 November 841; or, rather, in her words, "This little book was begun in the second year after the death of Louis, the late emperor, two days before the Kalends of December, on the feast of St. Andrew, at the beginning of the holy season of the Lord's Advent."

As you can see, she also begins her book on the day after William's birthday. 

Dhuoda is quite specific about what her book is--it is, she says, a handbook, "the handbook of Dhuoda, which she sent to her son William." In this, she emphasizes the intimate, personal, nature of her work. It is the physical link that connects them, even though they are physically separated (Dhuoda is not even sure where William is): 

I wish that you eagerly take this work in your own hand and fulfill its precepts, after my hand has addressed it to you. I wish you to hold it, turn its pages and read it, so that you may fulfill it in worthy action. For this little model-book, called a handbook, is a lesson from me and a task for you.

As a woman, Dhuoda struggles with her role as author. She knows that her son has books "to read, ponder, contemplate, study, and understand," and she knows that he has, as well, "learned men" who will teach him--but she writes as his mother.

It still doesn't mean her task is easy. Many scholars have noticed the hesitations that are characteristic of the texts of medieval women writers, and Dhuoda's is no exception. The many and varied "beginnings" of her Liber manualis seem to represent, visibly, the difficulties and obstacles she faces--almost as if she needs to gather momentum, she starts with an incipit textus ("Here begins the text"), followed by an incipit liber ("here begins the book"), then an epigraph (Latin couplets with an acrostic that reads Dhuoda dilecto filio vvilhelmo salutem lege, "Dhuoda sends greetings to her beloved son William. Read."), then an incipit prologus ("Here begins the prologue"), and, finally the praefatio ("preface"). Only after all this can she "begin."

The Nîmes manuscript; a fourteenth-century

manuscript survives in Barcelona,

a seventeenth-century copy also survives

(Bibliothèque nationale de France)

Eleven books of advice, recommendations, cautions, instructions, information, and love follow: "Loving God," "The Mystery of the Trinity," "Social Order and Secular Success," "Moral Life," "God's Chastisement of Those He Loves," The Usefulness of the Beatitudes," "The Deaths of the Body and of the Spirit," "How to Pray and for Whom," "Interpreting Numbers," "Summary of the Work's Major Points," and "The Usefulness of Reciting the Psalms."

In the penultimate chapter, "Summary of the Work's Major Points," we again see Dhuoda's hesitations--as if she dare not sever the connection of the handbook, the only link between her and her son. This book opens with Latin verses "On the age you have attained," in which she begins, "You have now reached four times four years" (thus 29 November 842). Then there is another acrostic, each line of verse, she says, "begun with the letters of your name." Then there is a "postcript," beginning "Here the words of this little book conclude." 

Except Dhuoda can't end. She adds another section, headed "Returning to myself, I grieve." (Here too she refers simply to William's "little brother," suggesting that she still does not know the boy's name.) This section ends, "This handbook ends here. Amen. Thanks be to God." 

But then there is more. A list of members of Bernard's family. Then an epitaph, which she asks that William make sure is written on her grave--an epitaph that not only names her ("Formed of earth, in this tomb / Lies the earthly body of Dhuoda. / Great king, receive her.") but that also includes her name in an acrostic.

After all these "conclusions"--and what, really, could be more conclusive than her epitaph?--there's Book Eleven, on choosing and reading Psalms. And then one final conclusion: "Thanks be to God, the handbook for William ends here in the word of the gospel: It is consummated."

In the pages of her handbook, Dhuoda reveals her erudition--she is writing in Latin prose, composing in Latin verse (including the multiple acrostics), and demonstrating her familiarity with the Vulgate Bible, the writings of the Church Fathers, including Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great, her knowledge of Latin classics and Christian classics (such as the Rule of St. Benedict), and her familiarity with the work of Carolingian scholars like Alcuin. 

She conveys her knowledge of court culture and etiquette, something of her sense of diplomacy, and even hints at the reasons why Bernard has placed her in Uzès (she has been acting in Bernard's interests, and she indicates that, in order to "defend the interests" of her "lord," she has negotiated many loans, "not only from Christians but also from Jews"--she wants William to make sure all of these debts are discharged if she dies before she has completely discharged her obligations to her creditors.)

But I have to admit that I am most deeply moved by Dhuoda's emphasis on the physical connection that her writing maintains with her distant son. It is, as she frequently says, a book that travels from her hand to his. I love her repetitions of "I am your mother." William may have books and advisers, but "I am still your mother."

And, finally, I am deeply moved by Dhuoda's voice, reaching out to us over the course of the centuries. She is writing to William. She hopes William will share her book, certainly with his younger brother. But she also, it seems to me, imagines us: 

And as for any other who may someday read the handbook you now peruse, may he too ponder the words that follow here so that he may commend me to God's salvation as if I were buried beneath these words.

Find here, reader, the verses of my epitaph: 

† D † M † [the abbreviation for dis manibus, "into God's hands"]

Detail, with Dhuoda's "epitaph,"
Nîmes manuscript

(Bibliothèque nationale de France)

 And again, one last plea: "Reader, if you are found worthy to see Christ in eternal happiness, pray for that Dhuoda who is mentioned here."

Dhuoda seems to have died not long after she completed her handbook (throughout the work she refers to her illness and declining health). I don't know that I am "worthy" in the terms that Dhuoda sets, but I do offer my prayers for her.

Dhuoda's work is available in Carol Neel's Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman's Counsel for Her Son, whose translation I have relied on here.

By the way, in case you were wondering: Bernard of Septemania rebelled again and was executed in 844. Dhuoda's son William was killed in 850, as Neel writes, "in an attempt to avenge his father." The younger son, whose name Dhuoda did not know, may be Bernard Plantevelue--if so, although he too tried to murder Charles the Bald (in 856), he was pardoned by Charles the Fat, granted the title of margrave of Aquitaine, among others, married Ermengarde of Auvergne, and had two children, William of Aquitaine, known later as William the Pious (he founded the Benedictine abbey of Cluny), and Adelinda, who married and had three children. If this is Dhuoda's son, he at least managed to live until 886 or 889. 

Update, 29 November 2021: Through the wonders of digitization, the Carolingian fragment of Dhuoda's manual (Manuscrits de la bibliothèque Carré d'art de Nîmes, formerly Ms 393) is now available through the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which authorizes its non-commercial use. The digitized manuscript was made available on 23 February 2020, so I have been able to update this post with new images and provide links so that you can view them (and the rest of this fragment of Dhuoda's text) yourself. 

Mary Astell and the Early Modern Debate about Women

Mary Astell (born 12 November 1666)

Mary Astell seems, at first glance, an unlikely participant in the noisy, contentious, and very public debate about women in early modern England. 

Born on 12 November 1666, Mary Astell was the daughter of Peter Astell, a successful coal merchant, and his wife, Mary Errington, who was the daughter of George Errington, another successful Newcastle coal merchant. 

As a daughter born into such a comfortably situated, well-connected family, the young Mary Astell might have been expected to marry, raise children, and live out her life quietly, in equally comfortable obscurity. But the modest good fortune of her family did not last, Mary Astell never married, she raised no children, and rather than living and dying in obscurity, she came to be one of the most celebrated women in London.

Not a great deal is known about Astell’s childhood. As a girl, she would have received conventional training in household chores and basic reading and writing skills. Although she received no formal schooling, she was tutored by her uncle, a Cambridge-educated curate who introduced the young Astell to the study of philosophy and theology, among other subjects less conventional for a young girl. 

After Astell’s father, Peter Astell, died in 1678, the fortunes of the family quickly declined; what resources could be found went to providing for her brother’s education and legal training. According to Astell’s biographer, Ruth Perry, there were “no such prospects” for Mary Astell, who “was a burden to her family, and neither marriage nor independence seemed possible.” 

What happened next, however, seems no less possible. When she was in her early twenties, Astell left Newcastle and her mother’s home, traveled to London, and made a life there for herself.  There, without the benefit of family connections, a wealthy husband, or a secure financial future, Astell found friends, intellectual companions, and supporters. And there, between 1694 and 1709, Astell published, in rapid succession, a series of works on a variety of philosophical, theological, and political issues.

But it is Astell's passionate and lifelong advocacy for women that is her most enduring legacy. Throughout her life, in her personal relationships as well as in her role as a public intellectual, Astell defended women, advocated for women, and, to the greatest extent possible, moved from advocacy for to action on behalf of women. 

Perhaps nowhere is her feminist position more clearly articulated than on the title page of her first publication, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies: she addresses herself to women, her aim is “the advancement of their true and greatest interest,” and she identifies herself as “a lover of her sex.” In this work, Astell proposed the establishment of an educational institution for women aimed solely at fulfilling their needs, a place where women could withdraw from a harsh and threatening world controlled by men and organized to suit men's desires, irrespective of women's. 

In Some Reflections on Marriage, published in 1700, she focused her attention on the institution of marriage. For Astell, marriage is a divinely ordained state, a "Christian institution," the only way to perpetuate humankind. But, she asks, "if marriage be such a blessed state, how comes it . . . there are so few happy marriages?"

When her analysis is complete, there is not much to recommend the institution, at least from a woman's perspective. Marriage is necessary since it represents "the only honorable way of continuing mankind." But, as Astell observes, the woman who marries "ought to lay it down for an indisputable maxim that her husband must govern absolutely and entirely and that she has nothing else to do but please and obey." Her radical conclusion? If she cannot accept marriage "as it truly is," then a woman might choose not to marry; perhaps, Astell suggests, it is not good for a woman to marry."

With the assistance of a number of women who would be her life-long friends and companions, Astell opened a charity school for girls in 1709. Housed in the Chelsea Royal Hospital, the school Astell founded would survive until 1862. In 1712, Astell acquired her own house in Chelsea, on Paradise Row. 

The last decades of her life were quiet. Aside from her work with the Chelsea school, she attended church every day. She made plans for a book on natural philosophy to be written for women by women. She owned a parrot. She wrote letters. In 1718, she became ill and spent several months recuperating in Sussex. As she grew older, she gave up her own home but remained in Chelsea, living with her oldest friend, Lady Catherine Jones. 

She was well enough, early in 1730, to be able to make the walk from Chelsea to St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields to hear the sermons of a new vicar, Zachary Pearce. But at some point, she developed breast cancer and had a mastectomy. She survived the surgery but died two months later, May 9, 1731, a few months short of her sixty-fifth birthday. 

In her groundbreaking biography of Mary Astell, published in 1986, Ruth Perry notes that when she first started to research Astell’s life, “only four of her letters had been preserved in the two great libraries of Britain, the Bodleian at Oxford and the British Museum, and these had been saved because they had been addressed to prominent men of the period. . . .” During her research, Perry was able to locate more letters and a “few more poems and fragments,” saved not because they had been written by “the celebrated Mary Astell,” but “because they were part of the estates of Astell’s wealthy friends.” 

At the time of Astell’s death in 1731, no one published “letters and poems in honor of the incomparable Mary Astell”; no one saved her manuscripts, her correspondence, her books, or her papers. There are no surviving likenesses of Astell. She was not buried with the famous and the great in Westminster Abbey but quietly in Chelsea, in the burial ground at Chelsea Old Church. The exact site of her grave is unknown; today her name is on a plaque inside the church. 

What survives is the work—and Astell’s singular life. 

Ruth Perry's excellent biography, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist, is now out of print, but used copies are readily available.

For my edition of A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, click here. For my edition of Some Reflections upon Marriage, click here

.