The feminist reader would appreciate The nobility and excellence of women and the defects and vices of men by Lucrezia Marinella, written in 1600. In her work, Marinella ridicules the arguments of men to favoring the defects and vices of women by supporting equally absurd arguments in support of the fact that women are actually superior to men, and that it is men who are defective and vindictive, more than women. It effectively and continually turns men's words against them, using the same sources and authorities. More importantly, this work is a direct attempt to enlighten the misogynistic reader and empower the female one; in short, Marinella wrote this piece in hopes of bringing about social change. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay To highlight the intensity of Marinella's commitment, one might compare this work to Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Women, written two centuries earlier. De Pizan is less concerned with male behavior than with describing female virtue as a universal phenomenon. Although he alludes to various vices and hypocrisies of men, de Pizan focuses on listing as many virtuous women as possible. Marinella, in some passages, makes similar lists, often using the same examples as Boccaccio and de Pizan. But these are short sections, as her goal is to thoroughly refute arguments against the goodness of women rather than present what might appear to be exceptions to a general rule. Furthermore, Marinella is writing in response to a particular work: Dei deonnschi defects (1599) by Giuseppe Passi. His work is one of many in the philosophical and literary tradition of misogyny. Although this work prompted Marinella to compose The Nobility and Excellence of Women, it also appealed to many other authorities, including Aristotle. Marinella's treatise surpasses all others of its kind; no woman before Marinella had been able to create such layered arguments using so many sources, as well as being able to attack men for the same accusations they make against women. Furthermore, Marinella determines exactly how men form their arguments and uses exactly the same method to form hers, with delightful results. This is how Marinella tries to implement change. By using the ridiculous argument form, the men cannot claim that her arguments are fallacious without making themselves hypocritical, since they use the same reasoning she does throughout the book. So they must either accept Marinella's conclusions or they must find another means or foundation on which to base their claims. Through her arguments and her evidence, Marinella demonstrates that the attack on women's vices is unfounded and hypocritical; therefore, she "wins" the debate if no one can refute her treatise as completely as she refutes Passi's. Furthermore, like the men she argues against, Marinella adapts the references to her own ends, evidently deliberately misunderstanding some sources. Essentially, Marinella chooses her sources only for good women and their actions, as well as “understanding” metaphors and allegories that use female figures to represent real women (e.g., Plato's Hydra). Marinella divides her work into two parts, the first to refute accusations against femininity and the second to attack men. It's a really long job. He writes that the first part will be divided into six main chapters, of which the fifth alone will contain enough for eleven separate sections... He divides the second part into thirty-five chapters. Although this book review covers aselected translation, the passages are salient and reveal a lot about Marinella's attacking style. His main method is to reverse the arguments. Male writers of this period generally did not praise men, assuming that any vituperation of women was in effect highlighting male excellence without saying so. Marinella denies the binary, indeed she overturns it, as she does not make a distinction between good and evil men: the same negligence that men have shown. In fact, Marinella writes that "it is very reprehensible for men to jump from the particular to the universal", and that an appropriate title would be "the defects of bad women". Yet the title of the second part of his work is The defects and vices of men, not of evil men. All this is at the center of Marinella's methodical demonstrations. Throughout the book he continues by supporting three main arguments: the first is etymological; the second concerns poetic beauty; and the third is a long list of evil and defective men. Marinella defends the superiority of women by calling attention to several respectable and noble titles: Donna, Femina, Eva, Isciah and Mulier. For each, he discusses the etymology and meanings, and also highlights the ways in which some men appropriate and masculinize the terms (e.g., wearable woman). One of its most salient etymological arguments has to do with femina, which according to Marinella "denotes reproduction or generation... which of all human acts is one of the most worthy and can only be performed by perfect beings such as women." To summarize his argument, he identifies each term, respectively, with “Life, Fertility, Fire, Mercy, and Dominion.” Related to this title appeal is that men honor women who hold titles such as “lady,” “madam,” and so on. Marinella writes that “the object of such honor is always more noble than the person who honors it”. While he conveniently leaves out the fact that there are women who honor men, I am hard-pressed to find an example that does not result from expected and forced obedience, except perhaps bowing to a gentleman. The Petrarchian tradition inspires Marinella's second argument. Emphasize that God created everything, which all has varying degrees of perfection. Interestingly, Marinella takes this idea further and argues that souls are not equal, that is, some souls are superior to others. In another inversion of the binary, Marinella places women's souls above those of men, stating that external beauty directly reflects internal beauty (i.e. the soul). As proof of this, Marinella uses the great poets as authoritative sources, writing that "the greatest poets teach us... the more beautiful the woman, the more they affirm that it is her soul that gives grace and gracefulness to her body". He asks, “if women are more beautiful than men, who…are generally coarse and ill-formed, who can deny that they are remarkable?” Marinella answers her question like this: "compared to women, all men are ugly"; ergo, women are more noble than men. But Marinella doesn't stop there. To ensure that her argument is solid and irrefutable, she reminds her audience that beauty, which comes from the soul, is divine, and divine attributes cannot lend themselves to evil. Although Marinella's argument is logically unfounded, it follows the same pattern used by men and is no more ridiculous than theirs. Marinella dedicates the second half of her work to criticizing men for the same defects they find in women. But before she begins her litany, Marinella makes sure the reader understands why men vilify women the way they do: the reasons include “anger, self-love, envy and insufficient intelligence.” or a combination of these vices that them.