it is almost always a formal kind of request that the men go ahead and do what they already intended to do. When the games are beginning, however, the duchess interrupts Constanza Fregoso who is about to take her turn, and says that all the women should "enjoy the same privilege" as Emilia and be "exempt" from playing (46). Then Emilia, after "imposing silence on madame Constanza," turns to another man (46). It is unrealistic to be angry or annoyed, several centuries later, that people behaved as they did. But this is the one point in the whole book where the reader, having been drawn in to Castiglione's fiction, and expecting this kind of traditional attitude to women, nonetheless feels a slight spurt of anger and disappointment.
Silencing the women is, it seems, at least an important enough act that Castiglione felt it was necessary to invent these silly reasons for their absence from the conversations. But the real annoyance is that the one active part the duchess plays is to silence the women. Thus the women sitting in the room have effect
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