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The Mental World of Stuart Women
Three Studies
In this path-breaking study, Sara Heller Mendelson explores the mental and cultural universe that defined women's social role in seventeenth-century England by examining the lives and writings of three Stuart women: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, and Aphra Behn. All three are noteworthy for the quantity and variety of their writings, which show women's distinctive view of the world and how it differed from that of their male contemporaries. Mendelson discusses such themes as female life stages, patriarchalism in theory and in practice, control of female sexuality, and limitations inherent in women's conventional role and reactions provoked by those who challenged it.
Cavendish wrote on many subjects, and her writings offer a vivid view of Stuart female mentalité. Behn's Restoration dramas are of particular interest because they defied the traditional feminine ideals of modesty, dependence, and chaste married love. Rich's voluminous diary is a fascinating personal account of a widespread female type, the "ordinary" woman who adopted a life of piety.
"An extraordinary book . . . While each of the three studies provided here is a fascinating piece, the greatest strength of the book lies in its 'play' between the three lives. For in contrasting the romantically scientific Margaret Cavendish, the hyper-pious March Rich, and the active and successful professional writer Aphra Behn, one sees not only the wide differences between individual women's lives in this period but also the threads (social constraints, including inhibiting ideas about 'proper feminine behavior,' and the kind of education typically afforded young women, for example) that hold them together. The point is that all three participated in their culture even while all three were, in their own ways, remarkable people within it."—Elizabeth H. Hageman, University of New Hamsphire
"The ideal Stuart woman was modest, chaste, obedient--and silent. Now, in a triptych of remarkably detailed social and personal portraits of three especially remarkable woman . . . Mendelson not only discloses their public space and posture but reveals with startling precision their innerspace as well. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary documents and archival materials, she places the feminine mentalité in a social context that is not only a revealing statement of three women's lives but also penetrating and challenging perspective on the age and cultural that so directed and shaped them."—Arthur F. Kinney, founding editor, English Literacy Renaissance
"The ideal Stuart woman was modest, chaste, obedient--and silent. Now, in a triptych of remarkably detailed social and personal portraits of three especially remarkable woman . . . Mendelson not only discloses their public space and posture but reveals with startling precision their innerspace as well. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary documents and archival materials, she places the feminine mentalité in a social context that is not only a revealing statement of three women's lives but also penetrating and challenging perspective on the age and cultural that so directed and shaped them."—Arthur F. Kinney, founding editor, English Literacy Renaissance