The Cultural Identity of Seventeenth-Century Woman

This anthology brings together extracts from a wide variety of seventeenth-century sources to illustrate the ways in which the cultural notion of `women' was then constructed. historical circumstances of women's lives in the seventeenth century and the cultural notions of `woman' which prevailed then.What did women and men think women should be?Over 200 extracts from books, pamphlets, diaries and letters are arranged under three main headings: female nature, character and behaviour; female roles