Renaissance marriage, De Officio Mariti, Vives, Institutione Feminae Christianae, division of labour

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obligations towards their wives, and his allowance of a degree of authority to wives within the domestic sphere. ³⁰⁶ When pushed to their furthest limits these two precepts expose the double standard of equality within inequality that permeates much Renaissance writing upon marriage.

The double standard is evident in the writings of Vives who in one place praises women as instructors and counselors of their husbands and in another deprecates women’s aptitude for teaching. In De Officio Mariti, as translated by Paynell, he describes the ideal wife “as a most faythful secretary of thy cares & thoughtes, & in doubtfull matters a wise & a harty counseler” (sig. Svi^v). In Richard Hyrde’s translation of his De Institutione Feminae Christianae this argument is contradicted when it is claimed that,

a woman shulde nat teache, leste whan she hath taken a false opinion and beleve of any thyng, she spred hit into the herars, by the autorite of maistershyp, and lightly bringe other into the same errour, for the lerners commenly do after the teacher with good wyll. (Bk 1, IV. xix)

The discrepancy is perhaps explained by the gender of his imagined audiences. The two views are more reconcilable when see in their context as two discrete pieces of advice pitched at two separate readerships, the former at husbands and the latter at wives; just as Peter addresses his two injunctions separately; firstly to husbands and secondly to wives. As such, their respective objectives might be to persuade men to allow their wives a degree of agency and sound judgement, and to persuade women to accept their husbands’ authority and superior judgement.

The next two pairs of answer-poems that I discuss engage with such precepts regarding the respective duties and obligations of husband and wife and their different attitudes towards the balance of power and the division of labour within marriage might be

³⁰⁶ See n.283. Houlbrooke (1984) writes, “A number of writers, especially after the Reformation, reminded husbands that they should never insist upon the utmost extent of their authority. Especial care was needed in criticism or reproof, which was only to be given privately and when the wife was in a suitable frame of mind”, p.97.

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