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On the Woman Question in Machiavelli

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Michelle Tolman Clarke
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Extract

Although Machiavelli has been widely condemned as a misogynist, his three central political works feature dozens of women who engage in efficacious and often praiseworthy political action. To appreciate fully the character and value of their activity and ultimately Machiavelli's views on women as potential political agents, one must first carefully attend to his conception of animo. Usually translated as “spiritedness,” animo represents the natural assertiveness, energy, and resoluteness that forms the basis of virtù if properly disciplined – usually by a city's modes and orders. By examining the plight of women, however, Machiavelli turns to those persons who stand outside the city's political institutions and thus tend to exercise unbridled animo, for better or for worse. In addition to revealing his deep preoccupation with political outsiders, Machiavelli's appreciation of the political problems associated with womanhood also discloses one of his most radical impieties-the denaturalization of gender norms, an impiety we are only beginning to appreciate today

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , Spring 2005 , pp. 229 - 255
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Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2005

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References

The author would like to thank Vickie Sullivan, John McCormick, Steven Smith, Jennifer Pitts, Bryan Garsten, Justin Zaremby, Tyler Krupp, Catherine Zuckert and Walter Nicgorski, and the anonymous reviewers from The Review of Politics for their helpful comments and suggestions. An earlier version of this article was presented at NEPSA and the Yale Political Philosophy Colloquium.

1. Letter 294 from Guicciardini, Francesco, Faenza, , to Machiavelli, Niccolò, 7 August 1525, Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, ed. and trans. Atkinson, James B. and Sices, David (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), p. 361Google Scholar.

2. Machiavelli, Niccolò, Florence, , to Vettori, Francesco, Rome, 10 June 1514, The Letters of Machiavelli: A Selection, ed. and trans. Gilbert, Allan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 163Google Scholar.

3. Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince, trans. Harvey Mansfield (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985), chap. 25, p. 101. Hereafter noted 25.101Google Scholar.

4. Okin, Susan Moller, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 6Google Scholar; Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel, Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli (1984; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 109, 115–37 passimGoogle Scholar; Elshtain, Jean Bethke, Women and War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 32–33, 56–59Google Scholar; Brown, Wendy, Manhood and Politics: A Feminist Reading in Political Theory (Totawa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988), p. 117Google Scholar.

5. For Machiavelli's, thoughts on the divisiveness of love and sexuality, see especially his chapter on “How a State is Ruined Because of Women” in the Discourses, trans. Mansfield, Harvey C. and Tarcov, Nathan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996Google Scholar) where he notes that love and sexuality bring “harm to those who govern the city” and specifically the “ruin of tyrants” (bk.III, chap.26, sec.2; hereafter noted III.26.2). Consider also the conflict between the Buondelmonti, and the Uberti, in the Florentine Histories, ed. Banfield, Laura F. andMansfield, Harvey C., Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988Google Scholar), bk.II, sec.3. Hereafter noted II.3.

6. Elshtain, , Women and War, p. 58Google Scholar.

7. Foremost among these reconsiderations are Saxonhouse, Arlene, Women in the History of Political Thought (New York: Praeger, 1985Google Scholar); Zuckert, Catherine, “Fortune is a Woman—But So is Prudence: Machiavelli's Clizia,” in Finding a New Feminism: Rethinking the Woman Question for Liberal Democracy, ed. Jensen, Pamela Grande (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), pp. 23–37Google Scholar; and Marcina, Vesna, “Machiavelli, Civic Virtue, and Gender,” in Feminist Interpretations, ed. J.Falco, Maria (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), pp. 309–36Google Scholar.

8. Elshtain, Jean Bethke, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981Google Scholar); Mclntosh, Donald, “The Modernity of Machiavelli,” Political Theory 12 (1984): 184–203Google Scholar; O'Brian, Mary, “The Root of the Mandrake: Machiavelli and Manliness,” in Reproducing the World: Essays on Feminist Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), pp. 103–32Google Scholar; Nederman, Cary J. and Morris, Martin, “Rhetoric, Violence, and Gender in Machiavelli,” in Feminist Interpretations, pp. 267–85Google Scholar.

9. Although Wendy Brown notes that Machiavelli “divorced politics from ethics” and “reincorporated into political thought…the body,” she finds that “the particular constructions of body, desire, and need in Machiavelli's politics are profoundly gendered” (Manhood and Politics, p. 71Google Scholar). Leonore Coltheart maintains that Machiavelli supplemented his turn away from traditional ethics with a heavy endorsement of manliness meant to preclude the disenfranchisement of men (“The Virago and Machiavelli,” in Stereotypes of Women in Power: Historical Perspectives and Revisionist Views, ed. Garlick, Barbara, Dixon, Suzanne, and Allen, Pauline [Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992], pp. 141–55Google Scholar). R. Claire Snyder argues that civic identities are not “pre–political” for Machiavelli, yet “virtù is…constructed in fierce opposition to femininity” which in turn “requires the exclusion of feminine individuals” and the elimination of “any so –called feminine feelings” (“The Citizenship of Civic Practices,” Feminist Interpretations, pp. 213–46Google Scholar). Even John Juncholl Smith, who writes that “we can with little difficulty find instances of virtù” among the women in Machiavelli's narratives, insists that they “had virtù but did not use it functionally, and are therefore detestable and ‘effeminate’ in Machiavelli's view” (“Beyond Virtù,” Feminist Interpretations, pp. 287–308Google Scholar).

10. Pitkin, , Fortune Is a Woman, p. 305Google Scholar.

11. Ibid., 5.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., p. 110, emphasis mine.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., p. 109, emphasis mine.

16. Ibid., p. 136, emphasis mine.

17. Ibid. See also pp. 190–92, 230–33, 304–306, 324. Pitkin goes on to argue that, ultimately, employing machismo to elicit a commitment to public life reveals itself to be a poorly engineered device: the alienation of femininity this move entails ultimately denies the generative process from which cities (themselves feminine) are born, undermines the mutuality necessary to sustain communal autonomy, and obfuscates the limitations motherhood puts upon claims regarding autonomous masculinity (pp. 22, 240–41, 294, 301–303, 305).

18. Ibid., p. 109. Pitkin is not alone in her disappointment. Jean Bethke Elshtain, for example, maintains that “Machiavelli's occasional references to women are of little theoretical importance” (Women and War, p. 59Google Scholar). Arlene Saxonhouse, although more hesitant, also agrees that “[t]he images of women loom large in Machiavelli's explicitly political works, but women themselves play a relatively minor role” although she later adds that “[a] few specific women do stand out in Machiavelli's historical examples, particularly in the chapter on conspiracies in The Discourses (III.6)” (Women in Political Thought, pp. 155,164Google Scholar). Susan Moller Okin, who suggests her book ”might be compared with the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” because she “transform[s]” women “who have always been minor characters in the social and political theory of a patriarchal world” into “major ones,” does not find such possibilities in Machiavelli (Women in Western Political Thought, p. 12Google Scholar).

19. A substantial literature exists defending the deeply political character of Machiavelli's plays and poetry, especially La Mandragola (Flaumenhaft, Mera J., “The Comic Remedy: Machiavelli's Mandragola,” Intrepretation 7[1978]: 33–74Google Scholar; Hulliung, Mark, “Machiavelli's Mandragola,” Review of Politics 40 [1978]: 43–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lord, Carnes, “On Machiavelli's Mandragola,” Journal of Politics 41 [1979]: 806–827CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mansfield, Harvey C., “The Cuckold in Machiavelli's Mandragola,” in The Comedy and Tragedy of Machiavelli: Essays on the Literary Works, ed. Sullivan, Vickie B. [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000], pp. 1–29Google Scholar). Indeed, scholars have interpreted the character of Lucrezia –a woman “fit to govern a kingdom”–as an exemplar of Machiavellian virtù (D'Amico, Jack, “The Virtù of Women: Machiavelli's Mandragola and Clizia,” Interpretation 12 (1984): 261–73Google Scholar; Barber, Joseph A., “The Irony of Lucrezia: Machiavelli's Donna di virtù,” Studies in Philology 82 [1985]: 450–59Google Scholar; Behuniak-Long, Susan, “The Significance of Lucrezia in Machiavelli's La Mandragola,” Review of Politics 51 [1989]: 264–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

20. I do not include the female deities to whom Machiavelli also refers, including Juno, Egeria, Ceres, ”Our Lady,” and Venus (Discourses, 1.12.1,1.11.2, and III.6.2,; Florentine Histories, VII.34 and VIII.36Google Scholar).

21. Surprisingly, however, Pitkin does admit that Caterina Sforza possesses virtù (Fortune Is a Woman, p. 250Google Scholar). For a more pessimistic assessment of Machiavelli's presentation of Sforza, see Hairston's, Julia L. “Skirting the Issue: Machiavelli's Caterina Sforza,” Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000): 687–712CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. For discussions of the relationship between animo and virtù, see Mansfield's, Harvey C. “Machiavelli's Political Science,” APSR 75 (1981): 304CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Machiavelli's Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 40–41Google Scholar.

23. See Strauss's, LeoThoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 200 and 333n59Google Scholar for Machiavelli's (dis)use of the word “anima.” See also Mansfield, , Machiavelli's Virtue, pp. 40–41 and 276Google Scholar.

24. For a useful discussion of thumos, one might consult Caswell's, CarolineStudy of Thumos in Early Greek Epic (New York: E.J. Brill, 1990Google Scholar). Note also that the bridge between the Greek concept of thumos and Machiavelli's use of animo is further strengthened by the fact that Machiavelli himself appropriates the Platonic metaphor of horsemanship (Republic 342c, 375a, 412b, 413dGoogle Scholar) in Discourses, II.18.2Google Scholar, where he compares the discipline of spirited men with the breaking of spirited horses. In place of thumos, Machiavelli refers to animo.

25. Machiavelli, , Prince, Epistle Dedicatory and 26.105Google Scholar.

26. Ibid., 7.30.

27. Machiavelli, , Discourses, I.3.2Google Scholar.

28. Ibid., 1.41.1.

29. Machiavelli, , Prince, 3,15 and 13.56Google Scholar.

30. Ibid., 15.62.

31. For policies, see Discourses, I.53.2. For men, see Prince, 9.41,19.72 and 19.76Google Scholar.

32. Machiavelli, , Discourses, I.27.1Google Scholar.

33. Ibid., III.31.T, III.31.1–3.

34. Ibid., II.Preface.3.

35. Ibid., 1.60.1.

36. Ibid., 1.43.1. and III.1.3. Note, too, that Machiavelli describes both Manlius Capitolinus and Manlius Torquatus in terms of their animo (III.8.1 and III.22.1).

37. Consider, for example, 1.24,1.29.3 and 1.31.1.

38. Among these informal mechanisms, Machiavelli includes the pagan religion (Discourses, I.15Google Scholar); “New Voices That Are Heard” (III.14.T, III.14.1) and various other “accidents” and “new inventions” wielded by prudent captains (III.14.3); and the occasional “humane act full of charity” resembling the beating given to the Falisci schoolmaster at the hands of his own students. Regarding the last point, Machiavelli considers it “a true example” of how much more effective a show of “humanity and integrity” is upon “the spirits [animi] of men” than “a ferocious and violent act” would be (III.20.1).

39. Machiavelli, , Discourses, I.53.1 and I.54.1Google Scholar; Florentine Histories, III.15 and III.17Google Scholar. See also Machiavelli's, claim in Discourses III.36.2Google Scholar that an army's virtù arises from a judicious combination of “fury and order” (furore e ordine) where fury is the “natural” component and order the “accidental” one.

40. Machiavelli, , Discourses, I.2.3.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., III.6.1 –2.

42. Ibid., III.6.2 and III.6.8.

43. Ibid., III.6.12.

44. Ibid., III.6.14.

45. Ibid., III.6.6.

46. Ibid., III.6.9.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid., III.6.10.

49. Sforza's, Caterina example illustrates the lessons of both Discourses, III.6.14,Google Scholar and Machiavelli's, discussion of “In What Mode Faith Should Be Kept by Princes” in the Prince, 18.68–70:Google Scholar “[O]ne sees by experience in our times that the princes who have done great things are those who have taken little account of faith and have known how to get around men's brains with their astuteness; and in the end they have overcome those who have founded themselves on loyalty” (69).

50. Machiavelli, , Florentine Histories, I.38.Google Scholar

51. Ibid.

52. Mansfield, , “Machiavelli's Political Science,” p. 304.Google Scholar

53. Machiavelli, , Florentine Histories, I.39.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., I.3.

55. Machiavelli, , Prince, 19.80–81.Google Scholar

56. Machiavelli, , Florentine Histories, I.8.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., VI.7.

58. Ibid., VI.7.

59. Ibid., VIII.34.

60. The multiple points of intersection among social status, moral expectation, and political efficacy emerge as Machiavelli tells and retells the story of Caterina Sforza's escape. In the Prince, Machiavelli attributes her survival to her possession of a fortress, concluding without further explanation that fortresses are detrimental to popular liberty (20.87). In the Discourses and Florentine Histories, however, he makes clear that structural advantages always require spiritedness to yield their benefits by highlighting Caterina Sforza's need to actually retake her fortress. Indeed, an integral part of her success, in these accounts, is her irreverence toward traditional moral parameters for the sake of political success. In the Discourses and Histories, Machiavelli underscores this aspect of her strategy by employing religious imagery for the sake of highlighting Caterina's willingness to act impiously. In the Discourses, for example, he describes Count Girolamo as “their lord” and Caterina Sforza as the “Madonna” only to contrast this suggestion of immaculate conception and divine motherhood with a selfish act of betrayal and a vulgar show of genitalia (III.6.18). In the Histories, quoted in part above, Machiavelli reiterates his belief in the incompatibility of political autonomy and moral rectitude by telling us that the conspirators murdered in the name of ”‘Church and Liberty’” while clearly illustrating that they ultimately failed to win the latter by maintaining a commitment to the former. Caterina, however, knows better. Whereas the conspirators reveal their adherence to Christian belief by “begg[ing]” (from pregare, also meaning to pray) for her assistance, Sforza, Caterina pledges her “faith” with every intention of reneging on it (VIII.34).Google Scholar Thus, Caterina wins the struggle for liberty. For Machiavelli's, views on faith, see Prince, 18. 68–71,Google Scholar and Discourses, III.40;Google Scholar promise-keeping, see Discourses, III.42;Google Scholar on cruelty versus piety, see Prince, 17. 65–68.Google Scholar

61. While many commentators agree that Sforza's exploits are a clear example of virtù, Julia Hairston does not. By presuming Machiavelli would be bound to conventional sources of legitimacy, she uses alternative accounts of Sforza's infamous skirt –raising to argue that Machiavelli “takes a perspicacious political move on Sforza's part and turns it into an empty, histrionic gesture…that intrinsically does not function politically” (“Skirting the Issue,” p. 709).Google Scholar According to Hairston, Machiavelli renders Sforza's defiance absurd by having her say “she had with her the mode of producing more” children rather than confessing that she might already be pregnant with a legitimate heir. To my eyes, however, Machiavelli's revision of the tale does nothing to detract from her claim to legitimate rule since Machiavelli's own views on legitimacy go far beyond inheritance and fully complement Sforza's rise to power (Prince, 6–9).Google Scholar

62. Machiavelli, , Discourses I.1.4–5;Google ScholarPrince, 6.21–25.Google Scholar

63. “Lesser virtue is habituated according to the modes and orders of the virtue that is not the product of habit” (Mansfield, , Machiavelli's Virtue, p. 42).Google Scholar The Florentine Histories, by contrast, presents a city that is bursting with spiritedness but lacking in both good orders and prudent founders.

64. For Machiavelli's, characterization of the founders, see the Prince, 6.23.Google Scholar I owe the latter five names to Mansfield's, HarveyMachiavelli's Virtue, p. 40.Google Scholar

65. Machiavelli, , Discourse, I.45.2. Cf.Google ScholarPrince, 6.24–25.Google Scholar

66. Machiavelli, , Prince, 6.23.Google Scholar

67. Juggling appearances is critical to introducing new modes and orders, perhaps even more decisive than arms. Although Machiavelli appears to conclude in chapter 6 that only “armed prophets” have the ability to introduce new modes and orders successfully, one should note that his explanation of the failure of unarmed prophets like Savonarola is twofold: “the multitude began not to believe in [his new orders], and he had no mode for holding firm those who had believed nor for making unbelievers believe” (Prince, 6.24).Google Scholar Prophets who rely on their arms share Savonarola's first failure, an inability to maintain sincere belief. Blaming the “variable” nature of peoples and warning that “it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to keep them in that –persuasion,” Machiavelli concludes that “things must be ordered in such a mode that when they no longer believe, one can make them believe by force.” But, presumably prophets with an extraordinary talent for persuasion (maybe Machiavelli himself?) would not need to fall back upon arms to maintain their security. Thus, I find the enterprising character of women's activity to bear an affinity with founding that cannot be dismissed simply on the grounds that they did not bear arms.

68. Machiavelli, , Prince, 8.35, emphasis added.Google Scholar

69. Machiavelli, , Discourses, I.Preface.1;Google ScholarPrince, 16.63–65.Google Scholar

70. Mansfield, , Machiavelli's Virtue, pp. 40–41.Google Scholar

71. Here I follow Saxonhouse, who points out that Machiavelli does not use even the example of Caterina Sforza to illustrate “the ‘unnatural’ female” and, furthermore, interprets Machiavelli's treatment of Epicharus as showing that “[t]here are no longer divisions between male and female” in his work (Women in Political Thought, pp. 164–65).Google Scholar She later concludes, as I do, that “Machiavelli leaves the status of women uncertain because all is uncertain, subject to manipulation” and especially those “hierarchical relationships” which had previously limited the roles of women (p. 173).

72. Famously, Machiavelli writes that “it is not necessary for a prince to have all the above-mentioned qualities [mercy, faith, humanity, honesty, and piety] in fact, but it is indeed necessary to appear to have them” and a prudent prince ought to “remain with a spirit [animo] built so that, if you need not to be those things, you are able and know how to change to the contrary.” Such a person, according to Machiavelli, , is “a great pretender and dissembler” (Prince, 18.70).Google Scholar For more on how gender distinctions dissolve under the weight of prudence, see Arlene Saxonhouse's argument that the fickleness of fortune requires being capable of assuming either gender as the situation demands (Women in Political Thought, pp. 155–58).Google Scholar Cf. Prince, 18.70 and 25.99–101.Google Scholar

73. Presumably women could unite with other women, but in that case they would not be “the people” so much as a faction. For an example of this phenomenon, see the case of the poisoning wives (Discourses, III.49.1). For an interesting reading of this case consider Saxonhouse's, Women in Political Thought, pp. 165–66.Google Scholar Here, she argues that Machiavelli actually identifies himself with the women as a fellow prisoner of enforced idleness who secretly plots against his captors.

74. Machiavelli, , Prince, 9.39.Google Scholar

75. Ibid., 17.67 and 19.72.

76. Note that Eudoxia seeks refuge in a powerful leader as the people tend to do (Prince, 9.39).Google Scholar Both she and Rosamund offer their kingdoms to others and do not seek anything for themselves beyond their inherited title.

77. The violence with which these women retaliate against their abusers is not uncommon vis-à-vis the people. Compare their ferocity, for example, with the ferocity of people in the case of Messer Guglielmo. Before recounting the gruesome details of his death and the death of his innocent son, Machiavelli coolly notes that “Without doubt, indignation appears greater and wounds graver when liberty is being recovered than when it is being defended” (Florentine Histories, II.37).Google Scholar

78. Machiavelli, , Prince, Dedicatory Letter.Google Scholar

79. Machiavelli, , Discourses, Dedicatory Letter.Google Scholar

80. Machiavelli, , Florentine Histories, V.1Google Scholar.