Women & History: Voices of Early Modern England (Illuminated Texts) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889105006 ISBN 13: 9780889105003

Publisher: Coach House Pr, 1995

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From Publishers Weekly:

In this book, the first in a projected series, Frith has assembled an unusual selection of writings about and by women of the 17th and 18th centuries. Its 11 entries confront the ambiguity of women in history: what little was written is generally by male authors, and the tiny portion actually written by women usually projects the expected conventions of the era. Even court transcripts were written by male clerks (whose records reflected their own perceptions of women); and what the clerks recorded, Frith posits, was "the face these women were presenting... the face they thought would be acceptable in an all-male forum." The book's second half, "The Real and the Ideal," focuses on several women of the era (Marie Cavendish, Georgiana Spencer and others), yet Women & History's first section is why this book is a must-read and an outstanding addition to women's studies and scholarship. These entries demonstrate the very real and severe limitations imposed by gender, and two chapters, "Infanticide Trials at the Old Bailey" and "Wife-Beating in the Eighteenth Century," are shocking records of women's subjugation, as compelling as they are horrific. Unlike Pride and Prejudice or Vanity Fair, this volume depicts the seamy, harrowing side of life suffered by the majority of women, not the folly and foibles of the privileged few.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review:

Spanning two of the most momentous centuries in English history, Women & History: Voices Of Early Modern England offers readers a rare opportunity to become acquainted with some remarkable women of the past. Women & History present the actual choices of 17th and 18th century women from many walks of life through a fascinating variety of personal narratives from the period, selected by a distinguished group of women's historians whose lively essays enable us to fully appreciate the nuances of each text. Women & History illuminates a world that was both like our own and very different from it. Trial transcripts and court depositions allow us to enter a rich and complex female culture, to glimpse the lives of ordinary women who have left us no other record of their morality, identity and self-worth. Some were exceptional women: a gambling duchess; a philosopher duchess; a pioneering botanist; a pious young widow struggling to save her family estate; women debaters; and Mal Cutpurse, a queen of the London underworld and a cross-dresser. Their letters, journals and memoirs provide remarkable insight into the minds of women whose problems are familiar, but whose means of understanding the issues and crises of their lives are those of another age. -- Midwest Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Coach House Pr
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0889105006
• ISBN 13: 9780889105003
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 262
• Editor: Frith Valerie