Essays in Defence of the Female Sex

This book offers a very welcome overview and analysis of women's prose writing about the woman question in the seventeenth century from Hannah Woolley to 'Eugenia' . It presents a dense synthesis of the theoretical issues involved in what the critical tradition has called English proto-feminism. The first section of the book consists in a very useful historical background study of the condition of women in the seventeenth century, and of the education of gentlewomen in the period. It is followed by a section that offers a series of short essays about the major texts dealing with the woman question in the second half of the seventeenth century, written by such avant-garde authors as Hannah Woolley, Bathsua Makin, Judith Drake, Mary Astell, and finally the mysterious 'Eugenia'. Finally, the last section presents an anthology of significant extracts from the major texts written by these authors. This book offers an unique overview of the founding texts of the English feminist tradition. As such, it should be read by all readers who are interested in finding out more about early women's writing and their ideas about women and their specific condition.

Though Genesis says that God made male and female equally "in his own image," it has taken most men and, more surprisingly, most women millennia to recognize their equal dignity. In Essays in Defense of the Female Sex, Manuela D'Amore and Michèle Lardy explore the varied ways in which some remarkable Englishwomen came to this consciousness during the latter part of the seventeenth century. Commencing with illuminating essays on the power of custom, education, and authority to shape women's destinies for good and ill, the authors then turn editors and, appropriately, let these women of the past speak for themselves: Hannay Woolley, Bathsua Makin, Mary Astell, Judith Drake, Eugenia, and Lady Mary Chudleigh are generously excerpted, making Essays in Defense of the Female Sex equally valuable as a critical and textual source.