themyskira:Women of the Italian Renaissance | MARGHERITA DI DOMENICO BANDINI (ca. 1360-1
themyskira: Women of the Italian Renaissance | MARGHERITA DI DOMENICO BANDINI (ca. 1360-1423) Margherita di Domenico Bandini was sixteen when she married the forty-one year old Francesco Datini. She was a daughter of an elite but dispossessed Florentine family, living in exile since her father’s political execution when she was only three; he was a self-made man who had amassed a fortune trading in armour, salt, wine and cloth in the then-papal city of Avignon. We know a good deal about Margherita and her marriage, owing to the hundreds of letters sent between her and her husband, 425 of which have been preserved. Francesco, you see, was kind of a micromanager; he spent a lot of time away from home, and though he often visited on Sundays, he still expected detailed reports from Margherita and would often send her long, nagging sets of instructions. But Margherita could give as good as she got, and she wasn’t afraid of arguing back. On one occasion, when Francesco compared her housekeeping unfavourably with that of a friend’s wife, she shot back, “he keeps his wife as a woman, and not as an innkeeper’s wife! For it is fifteen blessed years since I first came here, and always I have lived as in an inn!“ Margherita may have accepted that she lived in a world of men in which women held an inferior place, but she certainly didn’t have to like it, and she’d say so: "As to your staying away, you can do as you please, being our master, which is a fine office, but should be used with discretion. I am fully disposed to live together, as God wills … and I am in the right, and you will not change it by shouting!” The relationship was often strained — Margherita could be ill-tempered and impatient, Francesco nitpicking, irascible and unfaithful. The middle-aged Francesco was eager to father a legitimate heir and Margherita, to her frustration, was unable to give him one (she suffered debilitating monthly pains and it’s likely she had endometriosis, which affects fertility). Ultimately she would end up taking in and raising one of Francesco’s bastard children — he had at least three, one before his marriage and two after. In one letter, she addresses Francesco’s infidelities directly: "I believe no word you write. On every other matter I would take my oath that you would never tell a lie; but as to your keeping a w……, as to this, I would vow that you never spoke the truth.“ Francesco, trying to placate her, replied, “Never have you been so joyful … as you will be on my return,” adding in a conciliatory manner, “It has pleased God to soften my heart about many things which used to grieve you — and you were right, and I never said you were not.“ Margherita shot back, “As to your making peace with me, I am glad: for I was never at war with you. I know not what gift you will bring me; that I cannot understand, but when I get it I will thank you. You are not in the habit of bringing me too many gifts when you come home.” Yet their letters show affection and mutual respect as well. Margherita was a capable woman and Francesco trusted her to aid him in his business activities. She started out sewing helmets (for which she took a wage, and firmly insisted on keeping the money herself rather than giving it into Francesco’s care) and eventually took on broader responsibilities in overseeing clerks, entertaining visitors, arranging wet-nurses for Francesco’s business associates and organising the collection of outstanding debts. She generally dictated her messages to a scribe and prided herself on her ability to mentally compose letters, for which received praise from relatives and family friends. Indeed, she reacted quite indignantly when Francesco teasingly suggested that one of her letters was too well-composed for her to have done it on her own. In the mid-1390s she began to work on her reading and writing, attaining full literacy by her mid-30s. Margherita didn’t change the world, nor did she particularly buck the status quo. But for all the disappointments life threw at her, she refused to be ground down or cowed into submission. In her own small ways, she strove to hold onto her self-respect and autonomy, and to prove herself capable both in matters of business and intellect. -- source link