How did women contribute to Italian humanist society?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The ideal answer should include:
- While at all levels of culture their role might still be relegated to the domestic side of life, they were increasingly better educated and therefore better able to assert themselves.
- Laura Cereta wrote Defense of Liberal Instruction for Women in which she argues that women are capable and can use their free will in the pursuit of learning.
- Lucretia Marinella was one of the most prolific writers of her day. She published many works, including a pastoral drama, musical compositions, religious verse, and an epic poem celebrating Venice's role in the Fourth Crusade, but her sometimes vitriolic polemic against men is unique in the literature of the time. The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men is a response to a contemporary diatribe, The Defects of Women, written by her Venetian contemporary Giuseppe Passi.
- Veronica Franco first gained notoriety in the 1570s at a renowned Venetian literary salon where male and female poets read and exchanged their works. Her poetry celebrates her sexual expertise as a courtesan and, in the slightly veiled imagery of the courtly tradition, promises to satisfy her interlocutor's desires.