ABSTRACT
Scaliger's prized deaths of " impure women" suggest the seriousness of Renaissance attitudes toward femininity. Conventionalized in Courtly Love literature and under scrutiny in Puritan sermons and the popular press, femininity was considered especially in terms of modes of appearance, whether physical or theatrical. As Tuke explained in his A Treatise Against Painting, "It is not enough to be good, but she that is good, must seem good: she that is chast, must seem chast. " 1 This distinction between feminine being and seeming pervaded dominant Renaissance ideologies concerning and defining the wickedness of women. Implicit in the Courtly Love and edenic ideologies, for in stance, is the assumption that women may be what they are, but that their gender does not allow them to seem so. Such logic allowed for a woman who failed to seem pure to be thought impure.
