Journal article
2005

On the Woman Question in Machiavelli

Michelle T. Clarke

Review of Politics 67, no. 2 (2005): 229–255.

Against the familiar charge of misogyny, notes that Machiavelli’s major works feature dozens of politically effective and sometimes admirable women, such as Caterina Sforza. To understand them, it reconstructs Machiavelli’s concept of animo, the natural spiritedness that becomes virtù when disciplined by a city’s institutions. Because women stand outside those institutions, they show what political outsiders do with unbridled animo, for better or worse, and Machiavelli’s treatment of them denaturalizes gender norms, so that his works can be read as feminist texts even though he was no feminist.

  • Machiavelli
  • Gender
  • Women
  • Spiritedness (animo)
  • Political outsiders
  • Caterina Sforza

How to cite

Clarke, Michelle T. “On the Woman Question in Machiavelli.” Review of Politics 67, no. 2 (2005): 229–255. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034670500033507.

@article{clarke2005woman,
  author    = {Clarke, Michelle T.},
  title     = {{On the Woman Question in Machiavelli}},
  year      = {2005},
  journal   = {Review of Politics},
  volume    = {67},
  number    = {2},
  pages     = {229--255},
  doi       = {10.1017/S0034670500033507},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034670500033507}
}