women of the Renaissance try to mea-

sure “independence,” “options,” and

Line other indicators of the degree to which

(5) the expression of women’s individuality

was either permitted or suppressed.

Influenced by Western individualism,

these historians define a peculiar form

of personhood: an innately bounded

(10) unit, autonomous and standing apart

from both nature and society. An

anthropologist, however, would contend

that a person can be conceived in ways

other than as an “individual.” In many

(15) societies a person’s identity is not

intrinsically unique and self-contained

but instead is defined within a complex

web of social relationships.

In her study of the fifteenth-century

(20) Florentine widow Alessandra Strozzi, a

historian who specializes in European

women of the Renaissance attributes

individual intention and authorship of

actions to her subject. This historian

(25) assumes that Alessandra had goals

and interests different from those of her

sons, yet much of the historian’s own

research reveals that Alessandra

acted primarily as a champion of her

(30) sons’ interests, taking their goals as

her own. Thus Alessandra conforms

more closely to the anthropologist’s

notion that personal motivation is

embedded in a social context. Indeed,

(35) one could argue that Alessandra did

not distinguish her personhood from

that of her sons. In Renaissance

Europe the boundaries of the con-

ceptual self were not always firm

(40) and closed and did not necessarily

coincide with the boundaries of

the bodily self.