Women, Writing, History : 1640-1740

The years 1640-1740 were a time of rapid social and political change in England--a period that witnessed the emergence of the country's first professional women writers. Bringing together ten essays by feminist critics and scholars in both North America and the United Kingdom, Women, Writing, History offers fresh perspectives on the effects of such changes on literary genres, politics, and the perception of the "place" of women in society. As the essays demonstrate, women writers of the era often alternated between rethinking "womanhood" and conforming to the existing social order. At the same time, they remained dependent on men for financial and moral support in the potentially scandalous activity of writing. The issues raised by a literature produced under such conditions are explored under the three areas defined by the book's title. The essayists use the most recent developments in feminist and literary theory to assess the writers' complex reactions to the political, religious, and economic upheavals of the period. In so doing, they offer provocative responses both to the exclusion of women by the male-oriented "humanist" tradition and to certain strands of feminist criticism that either treat women's writing as a special case or deal with it through comparison with established "greats." Drawing on a wide range of genres--autobiography, biography, history, fiction, drama, poetry, prophecy, private letters--they engage with a significant body of writing that is only now emerging from obscurity.