Privacy, domesticity, and women in early modern England

The ten essays in this collection explore the discrete yet overlapping female spaces of privacy and domesticity in early modern England.

While other literary critics have focused their studies of female privacy on widows, witches, female recusants and criminals, the contributors to this collection propose that the early modern subculture of femaleness is more expansive and formative than is typically understood.

They maintain that the subculture includes segregated, sometimes secluded, domestic places for primarily female activities like nursing, sewing, cooking, and caring for children and the sick.

It also includes hidden psychological realms of privacy, organized by women's personal habits, around intimate friendships or kinship, and behind institutional powerlessness.