Quotes From The Past: The Foolish Women
Quotes From The Past: The Foolish Women
“If people saw the world as it really was, they would neither love themselves nor one another”
Erasmus’ Praise of Folly 1511
Erasmus' Praise of Folly is a satirical work where he, speaking as a woman named Folly, described foolishness in their world. Women weren’t allowed to speak publicly at this time, so for Folly to do so was in itself foolish. To speak publicly, unless you were royalty, would have mean you were unchaste, a whore. Satire or not, whether Erasmus actually meant any of the insults, doesn’t really matter. It offers a good insight into what was common enough behavior to be written about and what was considered foolish. Women, unsurprisingly, were fools, beautiful fools.
Women were beautiful, yes, but only to please their husbands. “Besides, what greater or juster aim and ambition have they than to please their husbands? In order where-unto they garnish themselves with paint, washes, curls, perfumes and all other mysteries of ornament.” Just like today, the only reason a man could think of for a woman to wear makeup and do her hair was to please a man. More likely, many men, because women were sex-crazed whores, but more on that later.
Beautiful women used that beauty to tyrannize great men, “by their unparalleled beauty, by the charm where of they tyrannize over the greatest tyrants.” Regular men weren’t free from their tyranny. Women withheld sex, the thing women were put on earth to do, unless a man bothered to act as though he was interested in her. Erasmus complaining of, “how a man must hug, and dangle [entice], and kittle [tickle], and play a hundred little tricks with his bed-fellow when he is disposed to make that use of her that nature designed her for.”
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