wayfarers in wonderland 549
such fears were reinforced by being incorporated in an elaborate code
of honor that turned on a number of sexual issues as well. a young woman
who indulged her youthful passions and engaged in premarital sex not
only lost her honor but also undermined the honor of her whole family.
fathers and brothers were especially concerned to protect their family
honor and thus watched closely the young women of the family, attempt-
ing to marry them as soon as possible to avoid potential family dishonor.
sexual honor also had a direct role to play in one of the crucial problems
for upper-class families and, in fact, families across the board in Venice:
the dowry. dowries were required to marry daughters at virtually all social
levels.12 and if there were doubts about the virginity of a daughter, higher
dowries were often required to overcome such concerns. More immedi-
ately, however, for upper-class families, given the sexual imperative to
marry daughters quickly after puberty, dowries had to be raised and paid
out with relative alacrity. This problem was compounded by the rapid rise
in the cost of dowries across the 15th century and into the 16th as Vene-
tian society became more and more aristocratic. a large dowry raised on
short order for a daughter of marriageable age became a “public” marker
of superior status and honor and being able to pay the price to marry
into another high status family was crucial in this context. This may have
also enhanced the need to marry daughters young, for their youth, prob-
able virginity, and attractiveness may have helped attract the attention of
notable families willing to accept less in the form of a dowry. certainly an
older, less attractive daughter of more easily questioned virginity required
more in terms of her dowry, her family status, or both to marry well.
one option regularly taken in the face of dowry pressures to preserve
family honor was to marry daughters to christ. even entering a convent
to become a nun and a bride of christ required a dowry, but usually these
were less costly, and often they could be paid more easily over time. This
meant in turn that while some young women entered convents with a
strong vocation, a sizable group did not, and it appears that in Venice at
12 stanley chojnacki has produced a number of significant essays on Venetian dowries
and their implications for marriage and gender; for his perhaps most important, see his
Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore,
2000). for a discussion of the Venetian marriage market from a literary perspective, see
Virginia cox, “The single self: feminist Thought and he Marriage Market in early Modern
Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995), 513–81; see also daniela hacke, Women, Sex and
Marriage in Early Modern Venice (aldershot, 2004). for a suggestive overview, see also
lombardi, Matrimoni; and from a legal perspective, see Thomas Kuehn, Law, Family, and
Women: Towards a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (chicago, 1991).