Instructing Women                                 2 3

reading list, Vives's book may still be characterized as a relatively
modest proposal. Although he dismisses the conventional wisdom
regarding female education, Vives nonetheless suggests that girls
must be "well bridled and kept under" and that women, unruly by
nature, must somehow be held in check.

Another early work in Plimpton's collection, the English transla¬
tion of Pierre de la Primaudaye's The French Academic (1614-), artic¬
ulates what were probably more typical attitudes toward women in
early modern Europe. Dedicated to "the most Christian King Hen-
rie the third," it was ostensibly written for the edification of the
male aristocracy. Despite this intended audience, the book takes its
place here among female conduct books because Primaudaye,
implicitly endorsing the notion that a husband is his wife's best
teacher, includes rules for female behavior as well as instruction in
government affairs and natural philosophy. According to Pri¬
maudaye, a wife's first duty is to be subject to her husband; indeed,
he adds, "it is an honour to a woman to obey her husband." While
he occasionally sounds less sanctimonious, frankly acknowledging
the existence of "cholericke" or otherwise flawed husbands, he
calmly sets forth a model of wifehood that is breath-taking in its
expectations. A wife "must not disclose her husband's imperfection
to any body" and must do all she can to publicize her husband's
good character. "She must not love to gad abroade or to be scene"
and must be silent, modest in her attire, and chaste. Lest wives get
discouraged, he notes that "men are inferior to women in perfec¬
tion of love" and cites in support of this claim examples from the
classics:

Women of Lacedaemonia when their husbands were condemned to
die for conspiring against their country, came one evening clothed in
blacke to the prison, under colour to take their finall farewell of
them; and changing their apparell, they covered their husbands with
their veiles, who went out and left their wives in their place ... which
were beheaded.