In the past, students of Renaissance women's education extolled the unprecedented intellectual liberty and equality available to these women, but recently scholars have presented a different view of Renaissance education and opportunity for women. Joan Gibson argues that despite more widespread education for privileged classes of women, Renaissance educational reforms also increased restrictions on women. Humanist education in the Renaissance was based on the classical division of the liberal arts into seven categories, including the three language arts: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. Although medieval monastic education, also based on the classical division, had stressed grammar and languages in preparation for a life devoted to meditation on religious literature, humanist education revived the classical emphasis on rhetoric—the art of persuasive and declamatory speech—in the context of training for public service in legal and political debate. All students began with elementary study of grammar and progressed to stylistics and literary criticism. But rhetorical training, which was increasingly undertaken only at the university level, could lead in different directions—to study of composition and oral expression or to study of persuasion, in conjunction with a dialectic concerned with broad principles of logic and argumentation. Male students routinely learned material through rhetorical, argumentative role-playing, and although many Renaissance authors expressed horror at their aggressive wrangling, such combativeness was thought still less appropriate for women, who were not supposed to need such preparation for public life.

Thus, humanist education for women encompassed literary grammatical studies in both classical and vernacular languages, while dialectic and rhetoric, the disciplines required for philosophy, politics, and the professions, were prohibited to women. Even princesses lacked instruction in political philosophy or the exercise of such public virtues as philanthropy. The prevailing attitude was that girls needed only a generalist education conducted in a family setting and directed toward private enjoyment and the eventual teaching of very young children. Unlike either dialectic or rhetoric, grammar training cast students in the role of an audience, striving to understand authors and teachers. Women were to form an audience, not seek one; for them, instruction in speaking was confined to books of courtesy.

The coupling of expanded linguistic and literary education for women with the lack of available social roles for educated women led to uneasy resolutions: exceptionally learned women were labelled as preternatural or essentially masculine, or were praised as virtuous only if they were too modest to make their accomplishments public. Some Italian humanist women gave fashionable oratorical performances, but these were ceremonial in nature rather than designed to influence public affairs. Renaissance women educated along humanist lines did not tend to write works of philosophy; instead they became most notable for literary achievements, particularly translations, poetry, and tales in the vernacular or correspondence and orations in Latin.