LIB 202 LIB202 Week 1 Journal The “Ideal Lady” as a Social Construct (Ashford University)
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The “Ideal Lady” as a Social Construct. Due by Day 7. Throughout this course, we will discuss gender as a social construct which means a person’s gender (as distinct from a person’s sex) is shaped through a socialization process that includes characteristics and behaviors prescribed for a certain sex. From the moment a baby is placed in a pink blanket or a blue one, our culture begins to socialize a person as woman or a man. Over the centuries, in the debate on women’s nature commonly termed the woman question,theorists have claimed women’s nature is thus and so: women have no souls, women are the weaker sex, women should be limited to a domestic life, etc. In Week One, we looked at the gender ideology that emerged during the Renaissance period as the “ideal lady.” Many sources defined women’s and men’s roles in society, and Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier was one of them. Kelly-Gadol in her article on women and the Renaissance explains:
In his handbook for the nobility, Baldassare Castiglione’s description of the lady of the court makes this difference in sex roles quite clear. On the one hand, the Renaissance lady appears as the equivalent of the courtier. She has the same virtues of mind as he and her education is symmetrical with his. She learns everything—well, almost everything—he does: “knowledge of letters, of music, of painting, and . . . how to dance and how to be festive." Culture is an accomplishment for noblewoman and man alike, used to charm others as much as to develop the self. But for the woman, charm had become the primary occupation and aim. (1977, p. 17)
For this week’s journal assignment, choose one of the creative women from our required sources (either text or multimedia) and in three to four pages discuss how the gender ideology of the “ideal lady” impacts her creative expression. As you explore this question, consider some of the following questions to help you focus on the relevant issues: What role does she play in her life (courtesan, wife, mother, nun, aristocrat, etc.)? How does that role support or discourage her creative expression? Does she resist or comply with the expected norms of her gender? How do creative women create within the defined roles and images of the Renaissance period? As a reminder, we want to look at women creating culture, not at the way the Renaissance women were created by male artists and writers.
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