«Della natura et essenza del donnesco sesso». Ontologia della differenza di genere in Lucrezia Marinella

« Of the Nature and Essence of the Female Sex ». Ontology of Sex Difference in Lucrezia Marinella · The principal purpose of this paper is to argue that a manifest ontology of sex difference dominates Lucrezia Marinella’s The Nobility and Excellence of Women (1600). In particular, in chapter Two (‘The Causes That Produce Women’) and chapter Three (‘Of the Nature and Essence of the Female Sex’), she combines Aristotle’s theory of the four causes with the Platonic doctrine of ideas, arguing that different ideas of men and women are in God’s mind before creation. Marinella rejects the traditional view that the distinction between man and woman is based on physiology, and that a woman is merely a defective male (mas occasionatus). By contrast, she maintains that men and women are different not only as to bodies, but also as to souls, emphasizing that corporeal beauty is a manifestation of the superiority of female souls. In this perspective, Marinella implicitly establishes the female ideal as another model of human nature, in alternative to the traditional male-centered model. This is one of her most original contributions to the querelle des femmes.