Virtue of Necessity: English Women's Writing, 1649-88

In this fascinating survey of women's writing between 1649-88, Elaine Hobby draws on the extraordinary range of genres in which women expressed themselves: petitions, prophecies and religious writings, autobiography and biography, fiction, plays, poetry, and books on housewifery, medicine, midwifery, and education. Living under the "necessity" of their subjection, their writings show us how these women were able to make virtue of this - to turn constraints into permissions, into little pockets of liberty or autonomy, thus constantly defining and redefining existing concepts of femininity