Also potentially connected is the fact that Medieval women had more access to education than post-Renaissance women. Medieval noblewomen in particular were quite often the literate parties in a marriage in charge of households, accounts, correspondence and so on, but the influence of religious communities in providing education to non-elite women was also extremely important.

In later Protestant societies education of women was left up to the good offices of the male head of the family, and was extremely hit and miss, with a gradual shift that culminated with Rousseau and his influential and explicit recommendation of withholding all liberal education from female children. For a striking example compare the erudition of e.g. Elizabeth I to the semi-literate ignorance of Queen Anne some 100 years later.

So on top of losing control of their lives & bodies, women also lost control of their stories, as education and access to the literary world of Renaissance Europe were denied them.