Virtuous Necessity

Conduct Literature and the Making of the Virtuous Woman in Early Modern England

Subjects: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Gender Studies, Women's Studies
Hardcover : 9780472119578, 192 pages, 6 illustrations, 6 x 9, August 2015
Ebook : 9780472121090, 192 pages, 6 illustrations, August 2015
Audiobook : 9780472003778, 192 pages, 6 x 9, September 2021
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A new way of looking at behavioral expectations for women in early modern England

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Description

While many scholars find the early modern triad of virtues for women—silence, chastity, and obedience—to be straightforward and nonnegotiable, Jessica C. Murphy demonstrates that these virtues were by no means as direct and inflexible as they might seem. Drawing on the literature of the period—from the plays of Shakespeare to a conduct manual written for a princess to letters from a wife to her husband—as well as contemporary gender theory and philosophy, she uncovers the multiple meanings of behavioral expectations for sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women. Through her renegotiation of cultural ideals as presented in both literary and nonliterary texts of early modern England, Murphy presents models for “acceptable” women’s conduct that lie outside of the rigid prescriptions of the time.

Virtuous Necessity will appeal to readers interested in early modern English literature, including canonical authors such as Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, as well as their female contemporaries such as Amelia Lanyer and Elizabeth Cary. It will also appeal to scholars of conduct literature; of early modern drama, popular literature, poetry, and prose; of women’s history; and of gender theory.

Jessica C. Murphy is Associate Professor of Literary Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas and UT Dallas Project Manager for the English Broadside Ballad Archive.