Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes

At home and in the public sphere, at work and even - in some notable cases - at war: from the 16th through to the 18th centuries, the presence and actions of women from the top of the social hierarchy to the bottom were continually discussed by those who observed and often feared them. The third volume in this series draws a richly detailed picture of women in early modern Europe, a world that seems in odd ways a walled garden of words and images, meant to circumscribe an expansive and even stronger "weaker sex". Considering women in the context of work, marriage, and family, the authors describe a complex society in which the conduct of peasant and princess alike was expected to conform to rules largely established by masculine authority. We see the very different ways in which the highborn and the humble operated within these constraints: the poor or middle-class woman going to work in domestic service or the trades to shore up her dowry and so her chances of marriage; the aristocrat parlaying her position into marriage, and often into political influence as well. In the realm of appearance and sexuality, we see women obedient to norms and fashions but still attentive to their own desires. In the education of women, progress was uneven, pushed forward by religious reformation and economic need, but held back by the belief that only men should have full command over the empire of reason. At the heart of this volume is "woman" as she appears in a wealth of representations, from simple woodcuts and popular literature to master paintings; and as the focal point of debate - sometimes funny, sometimes acrimonious - conducted in every field: letters, arts, philosophy, the sciences, and medicine. Against oppressive experience, confining law, and repetitious claims about female "nature", women took initiative by quiet manoeuvres and outright dissidence. In conformity and resistance, in image and reality, women from the 16th to the 18th centuries emerge from these pages in remarkable diversity.