Reformation upheavals intensified the perception that women’s nature required subjugation.

Evidence

Although the Renaissance Platonic lover had embodied her with true beauty and the good, and the Virgin Mary had been worshipped as mother of the Savior, women were also seen as closer to nature than men, subordinate in the social hierarchy to the men of their class, and imbued with a far greater sexual passion. The upheavals of the Reformation and the witch trials of the sixteenth century heightened these perceptions. Like wild chaotic nature, women needed to be subdued and kept in their place. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 558

Categorization

• XREF: Core ecofeminist pairing of unruly woman and unruly nature; connects to Complaints About Immodesty moral-panic thread. — connects to: Protestant leaders grounded women’s subordination in the order of nature itself — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 597

Broader Connections

• Protestant leaders grounded women’s subordination in the order of nature itself #expands (0.92) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 597