556 guido ruggiero
in bed are most telling: “angela: ‘do you want to kiss me some more? are
you tired?’/ Giulio: ‘you don’t have to ask me for what is yours, your lady-
ship. you’ll never find me tired when it comes to giving you pleasure.’/
angela: ‘Sleep, close your eyes, because i want to do it my way.’/ Giulio: ‘as
long as i live, i’m here for you.’/ angela: ‘Put your arms like this.’/ Giulio:
‘your ladyship will be uncomfortable.’/ angela: ‘Be quiet and sleep. I want
to do it my way.’ ”26
“i want to do it my way” sums up nicely angela’s command of the sit-
uation, and her command to Giulio to sleep as she makes love to him
confirms who the passive partner is in their relationship. angela is the
adult and Giulio is still the beardless and passive youth, attractive to her
because she can command the situation. encountered often in renais-
sance literature, such attraction may also be tied to an androgynous ideal
of beauty often seen in art as well, but it also seems to play on a finer
more mannered vision of love and sex that found what were perhaps the
more aggressive and violent norms of sexual relations with older males
less attractive, especially for those who aspired to a more refined and
mannerly life. still, Giulio’s feminine days would soon pass, and in his
late teens as he developed a beard and a more muscular body associated
with the more aggressive social and sexual behavior of adult males, it was
assumed that he would become more active and aggressive.
as far as sex was concerned, that meant that when youths began to
take an active role in sex, they would no longer be falling asleep and let-
ting women like angela take the lead in sex (at least in theory). at this
later stage in their late teens, although they were still seen as giovani,
they were supposed to begin to seek out more aggressively as the object
of their desires either women or younger youths who were perceived as
they had once been, feminine and passive. for young men of the lower
classes, marriage normally followed fairly quickly, contingent upon being
able to support a wife and a family. for upper-class males, as noted earlier,
a longer wait was in order. in their late twenties or early thirties, with
marriage, the ideal criteria for full adulthood were met and theoretically
a male settled down to married life with his sexuality purely active while
that of his much younger wife remained purely passive. in this way sexual
intercourse assumed its correct and social placement, restricted and dis-
ciplined under the yoke of marriage. yet such a marriage between a male
of about 30 with considerable pre-marital sexual experience and a young
26 ibid., p. 307, italics mine; for this scene of lovemaking, pp. 303–307.