Female Virtue Research Articles

Navigating cultural and gender aspects of stigma among women living with HIV in Vietnam

Women living with HIV often face intersecting challenges of stigma and gender inequality. In Vietnam, this issue is potentially exacerbated by the patriarchal culture. From December 2021 to March 2022, we conducted in-depth interviews with 30 women living with HIV in Hanoi to better understand their experiences and the coping mechanisms to navigate HIV stigma, cultural beliefs and gender norms. The interviews explored various topics including women’s social and family roles in Vietnam, HIV-related beliefs, stigma and its impact on one’s health and coping strategies. Participants reported stereotypes that assumed that women living with HIV had either engaged in sex work or behaved promiscuously. These stereotypes render them vulnerable to judgement and discrimination owing to widespread expectations of female virtue. As a result, women living with HIV often enacted non-disclosure and self-isolation to avoid stigma. This self-stigmatisation negatively impacted their healthcare-seeking, employment opportunities and ability to fulfil traditional family-caring roles. Conversely, many participants exhibited resilience with the support of family and peers. Overall, the complex interplay between gender, culture and HIV stigma underscores the importance of developing culturally appropriate, multifaceted approaches to engaging family and peers, modifying gender-based discriminatory social practices and enhancing women’s self-efficacy and empowerment in Vietnam.

Paradoxical Philogyny: The Comtesse de Murat’s Defense of Women and Female Friendship in Dialogue with François Poullain de la Barre and Gabrielle Suchon

In her memoirs, the Comtesse de Murat replies to the long list of misogynist accusations made in Abbé de Villiers’s Mémoires de la vie du comte D*** avant sa retraite (1696) by criticizing gender inequalities and by emphasizing female virtue. This article focuses on Murat’s positive representation of female friendship, whereby she denounces Villiers’s allegation that women’s affection is guided by greed. While Murat’s protagonist proves the contrary through her devoted comradeship with Mademoiselle Laval, not all female relationships in Murat’s memoirs are portrayed in a favourable light. The protagonist’s femme de chambre, for example, confirms Villiers’s critique of female covetousness and disloyalty. Even the relationship between the protagonist and Mademoiselle Laval is tarnished by sapphic allusions that are, however, outwardly denied. This article analyzes Murat’s paradoxical representation of women that builds on pro-feminist arguments by François Poullain de la Barre and Gabrielle Suchon. Yet, this paradox is lessened in Murat through the attribution of immoral acts to both sexes. Furthermore, the intimate connection between Mademoiselle Laval and the protagonist lends itself to a double entendre that advocates for homoeroticism and a preference for female-centred communities over heterosexual relationships.

Cnoty samic w De natura animalium Eliana

The Virtues of the Female in Aelian’s De natura animalium In De natura animalium, Aelian describes the animal world in a manner that succumbs to the tendency to anthropomorphize that is rooted in the human mind – a phenomenon currently widely discussed in ethological and cognitive research. The author observes a female animal seeing in her the features of a woman. However, Aelian’s understanding is not superficial. At the same time, he tries to penetrate the perceptual environment of the male of a particular species and look at the female through his eyes. In some cases, the male animal analyzes the behaviour of a female, e.g., his female owner. In Aelian’s work, natural observations overlap with the author’s moral reflections (personal and as a product of his era) creating a set of virtues that could be assigned to the female sex. In the approach proposed by Aelian, these virtues are not always stereotypical, because apart from female virtues that are obvious in ancient culture, there are also less obvious ones: physical strength and courage, independence, speed in action, activity, as well as beauty that is a product of splendour. In De natura animalium, the traditional catalogue positive features attributed to the female sex seen through the prism of natural observations is modified.

Od dobrej pani do apostołki kultury. Ewolucja postaw polskich ziemianek kresowych wobec ludności wiejskiej w XIX w.

From the Good Mistress to the Apostle of Culture. The Evolution of the Attitudes of Polish Female Landowners vis‑à‑vis the Rural Population in the Nineteenth Century During the nineteenth century, the personal model of a Borderlands female landownerwas transformed as a result of changes that were economic (enfranchisement), socio‑cultural, and political. The Polish manor house within the Stolen Lands in the nineteenth century became a stronghold of Polish culture, Catholicism, and patriotism, effectively protecting its inhabitants against Russification. Throughout the nineteenth century, the role of the landowner’s manor house remained unchanged, but the relations between the manor and the common people were transformed. Female inhabitants of manors in the first half of the nineteenth century played the role of the “good mistress.” They took care of their subjects, organized refreshments during the holiday season, acted as philanthropists, founders of almshouses, and suppliers of “manor pharmacies.” This pattern began to change in the post‑enfranchisement era. At the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, Polish female landowners became the organizers of secret folk schools, initiated vocational courses, nurseries, and rural theatre and singing clubs. More and more educated women from the Borderlands became involved in social activities for the benefit of the countryside. In this article, I show the evolution of “female virtues” through the prism of relations between the manor house and the local community. The sources for the text are Borderland memoirs, educational publications, and surviving correspondence.

Cierpliwa, słodka i skromna. Cnoty niewieście w XIX w. według Klementyny z Tańskich Hoffmanowej i jej Pamiątki po dobrej matce czyli ostatnich jej rad dla córki

Patient, Sweet, and Modest: Female Virtues according to Klementyna z Tańskich Hoffmanowa and Her Pamiątki po dobrej matce (A Memorial of a Dear Mother, or Her Last Pieces of Advice for Her Daughter) in the Nineteenth Century Klementyna Hoffmanowa (née Tańska) published her handbook Pamiątka po dobrej matce (A Memorial of a Dear Mother) in 1819. This collection of advice for girls and young women was an extremely popular publication and went through ten editions in the nineteenth century. Although the author was an educated woman interested in public affairs, in the Pamiątka she propagated a model of a woman subordinated to a man, fulfilling herself on a private level and, importantly, developing certain qualities to satisfy her family and husband: “My daughter! Do not worry that you belong to the weaker sex; her destiny is beauty: after all, she can be a beloved and useful woman. Nature endowed man with power, because it entrusted him with the defence of the weaker, opposing injustice, the punishment of vice […] God created woman more tender and weaker: she should soothe, soften, and make a brave companion happy” (p. 9, 7th edition). In the Pamiątka we find advice on health, appearance, duties, godliness, but also on the female sex and its qualities. In the second part of the guide, Hoffmanowa devotes chapter three to feminine virtues (“On the Virtues Needed by a Woman,” pp. 75–90); however, advice on the canon of desirable features and values can be found throughout the entire collection. “The virtue proper to our sex is sweetness; rare in a man, it seems impossible for a woman to do without it […] Sweetness is not only a charm, but also a weapon for us” (p. 79, 7th edition). In addition to sweetness, the author draws attention to patience, modesty, and cheerfulness, and in the event of “days of numbness in our lives,” which do not encourage cheerfulness at all, she recommends prayer and beseeching God for new strength. Hoffmanowa’s guidebook is worth looking at in the context of its proposed moral model, both in terms of its substantive richness and the frequency of its reprintings. While the proposed model of a woman might not have been shocking in 1819, its tenth edition in 1883 was in contrast to the developing women’s movements and women’s emancipation.

Das Bild der tugendhaften Frau als Ehefrau und Mutter in ausgewählten lateinsprachigen Epithalamien und Epitaphien des 16. Jahrhunderts

A Virtuous Woman in the Renaissance In this article, I analyze selected texts of epithalamia and epitaphs, on the basis of which we can conclude that it is no accident that male poets paid so much attention to women in these two genres. This is so because in wedding songs they needed a virtuous wife, and in funeral songs they had to prove that they had found one. In both types of works, the catalogue and the laudatio of female virtues are very similar. The difference is visible in the description of appearance, which in epitaphs is of secondary importance, because the body disintegrates after death, unlike the immortal soul. In the sixth epitaph to Elżbieta Szydłowiecka, Piotr Rojzjusz emphasizes the grace and beauty of the deceased, but puts them between two other virtues: kindness and holiness. All virtue lay at rest in the grave with this beautiful woman. The funeral laudatio coincides with the laudatio in wedding songs. The woman was to be the model of a good wife, a mother, and a Christian. The topos of the good wife required of her: good birth, love for her husband, piety, decency, honesty, modesty, unconditional obedience to her husband, and lack of a quarrelsome disposition (the epitaphs lack pulchra and pecuniosa). The topos of a good mother, however, includes giving birth and raising children. A good mother had to be pious, modest, and caring for her family and children. In each of these roles, the description of virtues is strongly prescriptive. A woman becomes a being programmed by nature and patriarchal society to fulfill the role of an obedient daughter, a virtuous wife, a caring mother, and a good housewife.

"I had resolved that I would be virtuous, though I was a slave": Enslaved Women, Feminine Virtue and the Sexual Economy of US Slavery

Abstract: This article traces the powerful currency of notions of feminine virtue among enslaved women in the antebellum US South. Early nineteenth-century white American ideas of "female virtue" were limited to white womanhood and legitimized US white supremacist and patriarchal imperialism. Exploited for their reproductive and productive labor, enslaved women were denied the assumption of feminine virtue. Rather, they were positioned at the center of slavery's sexual economy. Yet, enslaved women developed a transnational and multifaceted understanding of feminine virtue that they enlisted and passed on to their daughters as a form of subversion. This article argues that enslaved women's concerns with and actions around virtue reveals a strategy through which they struggled for sexual autonomy.

Reply to My Critics

ABSTRACT In this article, I engage with the queries, comments, and suggestions raised by my commentators. In response to Lähteenmäki, I focus on Descartes’ understanding of the role of prejudice in our pre-Meditation experiences to explain how an engagement with the Meditations can change the mind’s understanding of itself. In relation to Boeker, I highlight that for Locke expressions of esteem should ideally be based on insights afforded through the use of reason. I address Clay’s concerns by arguing that it would be reductive to conceive of Humean sympathy as a mere conversion process. In reply to Alweiss, I focus on Rousseau’s arguments from human nature and the tension arising from them when seen in relation to his understanding of male and female virtue. To engage Reichert’s concerns about Herder’s expansive conception of knowledge, I argue that for Herder coherence plays a crucial role in justifying sympathetically acquired beliefs. I finally re-examine Kant’s distinction between Wille and Willkür, and the causes he takes to be responsible for giving reason a special tendency, to respond to O’Shea’s questions about maxims.

Will she or won’t she? The ambivalence of female musicianship in two paintings by Bernardino Licinio (1489–1565)

Abstract This article examines the depiction of sexual propo­sition, the corruption of female virtue and the ambivalent allurements of secular music in a pair of 16th-century Concert paintings by the Venetian artist Bernardino Licinio. It argues that Licinio’s multi-figure concerts, centred on the music-making of young women, both parody and invert the classical elegiac theme of the pauper amans, the impoverished poet-lover who condemns the power of wealth and bestows poetry instead of gold on his beloved, only to be rejected due to her vanity and materialism. The pauper amans theme appears in several 16th-century Venetian strambotti and early madrigals, which are decidedly satiric in tone. In his paintings, Licinio reverses the familiar roles of poet and beloved, and the refined music of the virtuous-seeming young woman is challenged by the dissonant sound of her older male admirer shaking a purse full of coins or by his bold physical advances, which impede her playing. The dissonant and crude gesture of offering her coin payment equates the young woman’s art of music with her sexuality. It alleges not only her corruptibility and low status as a piece of merchandise for sale, but also debases the spiritually elevating art of music, with its noble and abstract figurations of love. The motif of the shaken purse with its ‘music of gold’ first appears in the Venetian dialect comedy La buelsca (c.1514), and is repeated in a series of later songs and poems centred on the subject of the grasping, mercenary prostitute in the 1520s and 30s. Licinio’s paintings play with such popular literary and musical themes but ultimately prefer visual ambiguity and unresolved narrative tension to their frankness and specificity.

Irish Literature in Transition, 1700-1780, ed. Moyra Haslett

<i>Irish Literature in Transition, 1700-1780</i>, ed. Moyra Haslett

Empowering Change: Gender-Based Violence and Legal Measures in Pakistan

This article discusses the predicament of women in Pakistan inside a strongly rooted patriarchal system in a concise manner. It discusses the pervasiveness of patriarchal notions, such as societal conventions, gender segregation, and the relationship between female virtue and family reputation. Patriarchal ideals are well-engrained in Pakistani society, relegating women to a position of subordination. The patriarchy uses techniques such as gender segregation, restricted social norms for women, and an ideology that associates female virtue with respect for one's family to keep women under control. This study investigates different sorts of violence against women, including honor killings, sexual assault, acid assaults, abduction, and domestic abuse. According to a 2011 Thomson Reuters Foundation poll. Pakistan is the third most dangerous country for women. The author also emphasizes the inextricable link between patriarchy and violence, as well as the critical importance of increasing women's role in culture, politics, and the economy, and discusses the legal measures adopted by the State to combat and reduce such violence.

The Matter of Virtue: Women's Ethical Action from Chaucer to Shakespeare

The Matter of Virtue: Women's Ethical Action from Chaucer to Shakespeare

Christopher Smart, Concordia Discors , and the Figure of the Distressed Woman: Sentiment and Sentimental Parody in the Student and the Midwife

Abstract: This essay discusses the two magazines with which Christopher Smart was most closely associated: the Student, or Oxford and Cambridge Monthly Miscellany (1750–51) and the Midwife, or The Old Woman's Magazine (1750–53). I focus specifically on the rarely discussed sentimental vignettes depicting female virtue in distress that are interspersed through both magazines. Although Smart did not write all of these tales—he produced the Midwife almost single-handedly but was one of several contributors to the Student —the ones he did compose show him to be a shrewd literary projector, responsive to market forces and an emerging demographic of sentimental readers. Curiously, however, Smart tends to surround sentimental depictions of distressed women with humorous parodies of virtue in distress. In these parodies, the predatory and diabolical men of sentimental narratives are replaced by comic, bumbling admirers; at the same time, innocent and naive female victims give way to experienced and aggressive old maids. Although Smart was inclined to satire, I argue that these tales do not, despite initial appearances, offer an underhanded attack on the sentimental tradition by comically parodying the pathetic tale. Smart may not have been a sentimentalist at heart, but neither was he opposed to sentimental narratives per se. So, what then? This conundrum can be resolved by considering both Smart's overarching commitment to miscellaneity and his concomitant desire for unity in diversity. Smart is strongly critical of other midcentury magazines, primarily because of their disconnected character. While actively promoting miscellaneity, Smart also works to create a sense of connection amongst disparate pieces in the Student and the Midwife , thereby achieving a kind of unity in an inherently fractured form. It is in this light that we should understand Smart's tendency to juxtapose sentimental vignettes with comic parodies. While obviously contrasting in tone, such tales are nevertheless fundamentally connected. As such, Smart's curious combination turns out to be part of a larger project to counter key weaknesses of the magazine form and, in the process, to achieve credibility for an otherwise disreputable genre.

‘Monsters are they in Nature’: Female Masturbation and Constructions of Femininity in the Early Eighteenth Century England

AbstractSerious alarm about female masturbation first emerged during a transitional period for beliefs on female sexuality. This article examines the gender history of masturbation through the shifting constructions of femininity at work in early anti‐masturbation discourse. While the founding work of the anti‐masturbation campaign (Onania, 1716) portrayed female autoeroticism as a significant concern, existing scholarship pays limited attention to how anti‐masturbation sentiment interacted with early modern femininities. This article explores this conflicted relationship in the early years of the movement, with a comparative analysis of how Onania and one of its most vocal critics portrayed female masturbation. Onania, which stemmed from a traditional paradigm of negative femininity, regarded all women as innately lustful and likely to masturbate. Onania Examined, and Detected, a critical tract embracing the increasingly dominant paradigm of positive femininity, denounced these claims as an unacceptable slur on female virtue. Nevertheless, its characterisation of the female masturbator reveals the continuing influence of traditional misogyny, with negative femininity repurposed as a deviation from a naturalised virtuous norm. This close analysis of early anti‐masturbation discourse reveals the cultural process of navigating a transitional phase in the construction of gender, which addressed old anxieties by incorporating them into a new paradigm.

Art in the Time of Pandemic: Elisabetta Sirani, Artistic Agency, and Capitalist Social Reproduction

Art in the Time of Pandemic: Elisabetta Sirani, Artistic Agency, and Capitalist Social Reproduction

Heroines and Local Girls: The Transnational Emergence of Women’s Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century

Heroines and Local Girls: The Transnational Emergence of Women’s Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century

Marriage Ties in England in First Half of 17th Century: Sermons to Newlyweds by Thomas Gateaker

The author of the article examines the evolution of ideas about marriage and matrimonial duties in the 17th century in England. The study is based on sermons to newlyweds published in the 1620s by the famous moderate Puritan Thomas Gataker: “A Summary of Marital Responsibilities” (1620), “A Good Wife is a Gift of God” (1620/23), and “A Perfect Wife” (1623). It is emphasized that these sermons are a rich source of early modern marriage. Addressing them allows us to understand the origins of changes in traditional gender practices introduced by the Puritans in the 17th century. The author demonstrates that, unlike Anglicans and Catholics, Puritans put the friendship between a man and a woman in the first place for the purpose of marriage, which serves as a salvation from loneliness, and not the birth of children. The author also concludes that the Puritans relied on traditional ideas about the patriarchal foundations of the marriage union, but the place and role of women in it was actively revised and fe-male virtue began to take its rightful place in a pious community.

Happy Marriages Are Blessed in the Heavens, Unhappy Ones Cause Poverty: A View on Women in Usun-Debeskertu-Khan’s Instructions

This study examines traditional ideas of women and marriage, based on the instructions attributed to one of the rulers of the epoch of the “Religious Kings”—Usun-Debeskertu-Khan, and his ministers. The focus is made on female virtues, the most important of which is adherence to duties in relation to the husband and children. The standards that noble women had to comply with were higher than those concerning other women, but still quite realistic, as attested to by historical records. Negative female traits were said to be caused by untamed emotions, which cause one to forget about commonly accepted norms of behavior. The analysis of the instructions relating to marriage suggests that they were especially influenced by Buddhism, which, using various forms of instruction, including didactic writings, endowed marriage with a new, spiritual content. There were three forms of marriage, tentatively described as “divine”, “earthly”, and “infernal”. The causes of happy and unhappy marital unions were believed to be mainly related to women’s properties mentioned in the instructions. Marital harmony was said to depend mostly on the woman.

Chaucer and Religious Controversies in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras

Chaucer and Religious Controversies in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras

Chaucer and Religious Controversies in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras

Chaucer and Religious Controversies in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras