Historians who study European
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.
