ed to participate in the workings of public society only from the safe distances of their palazzo windows. In general, they possessed very little power to counter their husbands’ desires and to directly enter public life. They were victims of an “oligarchy dominated by men, and the laws passed by men reveal not only a class bias but a special arrogance toward women” (Rosenthal “Honest”). On the other hand, the courtesans were able to gain entry into the aristocratic circles of Italian life. Many spent their days in literary salons surrounded by the most prominent men in Italy. Any courtesan of high standing would only associate with the leading men of Italy therefore gaining her access to the innermost circles of Italian culture. They were also allowed much more education than the typical noble woman. Most of the women in the upper classes received some education to prepare her to raise her children honorably and wisely and to ward off the dangers of moral turpitude, but this is where most of their education stopped. In 1587 only 4 percent of the women in Venice attended formal schools, compared to the 26 percent of male children in that same year (Rosenthal “Honest”). Clearly, then, women were not allowed the kind of social mobility that more extensive education would have afforded (Rosenthal “Honest”). Early modern Venice was a world in which literary success depended for the most part on one’s social standing or on one’s ability to rise socially through interpersonal connections and intellectual allegiances. The courtesans, therefore, had to be increasingly more educated in order to succeed. While not receiving any real formal education, they taught themselves and sought promotion as writers and intellectuals within Venetian Renaissance society. They educated themselves in poetry, many writing and publishing their own, politics, and debate, in order to def...
