"When women are seen with pen in hand, they are met immediately
with shrieks commanding a return to that life of pain which their
writing had interrupted, a life devoted to the women's work of
needle and distaff."
Archangela Tarabotti
Archangela, born February 24, 1604 in Venice, Italy was a Benedictine nun and a writer. The eldest of nine children, her father forced her to give up her dreams and enter the convent because she was lame and considered unmarriageable. It was also custom among the Italian republic’s richer families. Archangela took her final vows under protest and spent her life protesting the practice of forcing young girls to enter a convent against their will.
Her book, 'Paternal Tyranny' was not only a passionate condemnation of the family who dumped her into the convent, but also a carefully argued carefully argued declaration against the oppression of women by the Venetian patriarchy. She died of consumption in Sant'Anna on February 28, 1652, at the age of forty-eight. Archangela was a feminist who lived way before her time.
"See for yourself the absolute truth of my words! Go and ask one of
these [male] children, who as yet cannot put two syllables together, let
alone a whole word: "What will become of your sisters?" Immediately,
without a moment's hesitation, prompted by that cunning disposition
shaped by his father's upbringing, he will say, "They'll become nuns,
because I want to be rich." -- book 1, 74
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