The Worth of Women

Moderata Fonte was praised during her lifetime as a “young maiden, and honored citizen of this city (Venice), being very knowledgeable, especially in Poetry.” Moderate Fonte is the pen name chosen by the sixteenth-century Venetian writer Modesta Pozzo. She had written a number of sonnets, short plays, and an epic poem before writing a treatise on the superiority of women. The Worth of Women was written in the latter years of Fonte’s life and was published posthumously in 1600. The Worth of Women belongs to the genre that became popular in sixteenth-century Europe which argues that women are equal or superior to men, which was contrary to popular opinion in this period of time.
Much of what is known about Moderata Fonte’s life and works comes from the biography Vita (Life), written by her uncle and one-time guardian, Niccolo Doglioni. The biography was published in preface to Fonte’s The Worth of Women in 1600 and gives a vivid description of Fonte’s life.
Fonte was born in Venice in 1555 into the citizen’s class which occupied the middle class of Venetian society, between the nobles and the lower class. In Vita, Doglioni considered the aspect of class in Venetian identity is important to understand Fonte’s life because of its determination of the social attitudes, behavior, and lifestyle of its members. Before she was a year old, both of Fonte’s parents died of the plague and she was sent to live with her maternal grandmother, Cecelia di Mazzi, and her second husband, Prosperi Saraceni. Until the age of nine, she received elementary education at the convent of Santa Marta and then returned to her grandmother’s home. On her return, she benefited from the books and learnings of Saraceni, who willingly shared his knowledge with the girl and she became more interested in literature. In her early twenties Cecelia and Prosperi’s daughter, Saracena Saraceni, married Niccolo Doglioni. Doglioni invited Fonte to live with him and his wife and he assumed the