1. Renaissance women inherited the misogynistic stereotypes of previous periods. They were therefor limited in their participation in the humanist movement.

• Men who accepted the traditional evaluation of women promulgated in the ancient texts led the humanist movement.
• The "bulk of Renaissance literature written by men portrays women as dangerous, monstrous, deformed, or unnatural" (source 4, p. 324). Since men were the primary authors, they promoted the misogynistic view of women.
• Prohibition against public service precluded women from obtaining the knowledge of subjects that readers thought worthy (source 17, p. xxi)
• Cultural mores restricted female public utterance, including writing. The foundation of this policy is found in Genesis when Eve seduced Adam through speech. This story was cited as proof that women employed speech to beguile men; therefor good women spoke little. Loquacity indicated unchastity, as did extravagance in dress and jewelry, another form of communication. Women's clothing and ornamentation were strictly to announce the status of their husbands and fathers, not to convey personal statements.
• The emphasis upon chastity greatly inhibited female voices of the Renaissance. In an agnatic society, the daughter as a bride linked two lineages; thus, to assure the legitimacy of heirs and to uphold his family honor, a father had to guarantee the purity of his daughter.
• Public utterance by a female was permissible if a woman renounced any claim to personal thought in her writing. She could claim divine inspiration or pose as a vehicle for divine inspiration. Two medieval mystics, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, provided a model for this type of composition. Julian wrote in the vernacular The Book of Showings which described sixteen visions she exper5ienced during a near fatal illness. The illiterate Kempe dictated her spiritual autobiography The Book of Margery Kempe to a priestly scribe who recorded it in third person. This spiritual tradition can be seen in the translations of theological works by Renaissance women such as Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, who co-translated Psalms into English with her brother Philip Sidney.
• Imaginative written was unacceptable for women because it was thought to "exacerbate the natural female tendency towards deceit" (source seven).
• Renaissance love sonnets were primarily the domain of men since a woman risked being perceived as unchaste if she made public her private passion. Author Mary Wroth, the niece of Mary Sidney Herbert and Philip Sidney, had to struggle with creating a female voice in the male sonnet tradition.
• The closing of convents during the late Middle Ages made spiritual writing by Renaissance women more difficult since they were not provided with a community and atmosphere that encouraged such endeavors.
• Potential women were severely limited by their lack of classical education, which included Latin, the language of scholarship and public service. The motivation behind this restriction was twofold: femaleness was a debased and secondary condition so a woman should not receive the classical education that prepares one for leadership and a learned women was thought to have exceeded her sex or have achieved the virtue of a man (source 4, p. 324)