Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition

This collection of essays studies political writings by women from 1400 to 1800, and moves beyond the much more common discussion of women's literary works, political roles, or the operation of gender in politics generally. The book has a novel, dual purpose: to focus on women's political writings during a period when women were discouraged from expressing political thoughts, and to analyze how the intellectual and social institutions of the age directed both women's political (or nonpolitical) existence and their ability to express, and to have heard by others, their political opinions. Contents......Page 8 Contributors......Page 10 Preface......Page 14 Introduction Women, intellect, and politics: their intersection in seventeenth-century England......Page 16 Part I Women's political writings, 1400-1690......Page 30 Introduction to Part I......Page 32 1 Christine de Pizan and the origins of peace theory......Page 37 2 Political thought/political action: Margaret Cavendish's Hobbesian dilemma......Page 55 3 Women's public political voice in England:......Page 71 4 Contextualizing Aphra Behn: plays, politics, and party, 1679-1689......Page 90 Part II Women's political and philosophical writings, 1690-1800......Page 110 5 Astell, Masham, and Locke: religion and politics......Page 120 6 The politics of sense and sensibility: Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay Graham on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France......Page 141 7 Mary Wollstonecraft on sensibility, women's rights, and patriarchal power......Page 163 8 Emilie du Chatelet: genius, gender, and intellectual authority......Page 183 Part III The intellectual context and economic setting for early modern women......Page 206 Introduction to Part III......Page 208 9 Contract and coercion: power and gender in......Page 215 10 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?")......Page 235 11 Catharine Macaulay: patriot historian......Page 258 12 Investments, votes, and "bribes": women as shareholders in the chartered national companies......Page 274 Part IV Early modern legal and political prescriptions for women......Page 294 Introduction to Part IV......Page 296 13 The politics of identity and monarchic governance in France: the debate over female exclusion......Page 304 14 The Holy Roman Empire: women and politics beyond liberalism, individual rights, and revolutionary theory......Page 320 15 Women as sextons and electors: King's Bench and precedents for women's citizenship......Page 339 16 "To be some body": married women and The Hardships of the English Laws......Page 358 Conclusion: women's writing, women's standing: theory and politics in the early modern period......Page 378 Index......Page 398