Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition

Essays on women's political writings from Christine de Pizan to Mary Wollstonecraft, 1500–1800.

Hilda L. Smith (Edited by)

9780521585095, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 March 1998

408 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 3.2 cm, 0.785 kg

"...this volume is essential reading for those who want to come to terms with the ways in which gender factors into the politics or early modern England." Canadian Journal of Political Science

This collection of essays includes studies of women's political writings from Christine de Pizan to Mary Wollstonecraft and explores in depth the political ideas of the writers in their historical and intellectual context. The volume illuminates the limitations placed on women's political writings and their broader political role by the social and scholarly institutions of early modern Europe. In so doing, the authors probe legal and political restraints, distinct national and state organisation, and assumptions concerning women's proper intellectual interests. In this endeavour, the volume explores questions and subjects traditionally ignored by historians of political thought and little considered even by current feminist theorists, groups who give slight attention to women's political ideas or place women's writings within the social and intellectual structures from which they emerged and which they helped to shape.

Introduction: Women, intellect and politics: their intersection in early modern Britain Hilda L. Smith
Part I. Women's Political Writings, 1400–1690: 1. Christine de Pizan and the origins of peace theory Berenice A. Carroll
2. Political thought/political action: Margaret Cavendish's Hobbesian dilemma Anna Battingelli
3. Women's political voice in England: 1640–1740 Lois G. Schwoerer
4. Contextualising Aphra Behn: plays, politics and party, 1679–89 Melinda Zook
Part II. Women's Political and Philosophical Writings, 1690–1800: 5. Astell, Masham and Locke: religion and politics Patricia Springborg
6. The politics of sense and sensibility: Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay Graham on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France Wendy Gunther Canada
7. Emilie du Châtelet: genius and intellectual authority Judith Zinsser
Part III. The Intellectual Context and Economic Setting for Early Modern Women: 8. Contract and coercion: power and gender in Leviathan Jane S. Jacquette
9. The significant sounds of silence: the absence of women from the political thought of Sir Robert Filmer and John Locke (or 'Why can't a woman be more like a man') Gordon Schochet
10. Catharine Macaulay: patriot historian J. G. A. Pocock
11. Investment, votes and 'bribes': women as shareholders in the chartered national companies Susan Staves
Part IV. Legal and Political Prescriptions for Early Modern Women: 12. The politics of identity and monarchic government: the debate over female exclusion Sarah Hanley
13. The Holy Roman Empire: women and politics beyond liberalism, individual rights and revolutionary theory Merry Wiesner-Hanks
14. Women as sextons and electors: King's Bench and precedents for women's citizenship Hilda L. Smith
15. 'To be some body': married women and 'the hardships of the English laws' Barbara A. Todd
Conclusion: women's writing, women's standing: theory and politics in the early modern period Carole Pateman.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]