EBOOK Conspiracy and Virtue:Women, Writing, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century England

What was the relationship between woman and politics in seventeenth-century        England? Responding to this question, Conspiracy and Virtue argues that theoretical        exclusion of women from the political sphere shaped their relation to it. Rather        than producing silence, this exclusion generated rich, complex, and oblique        political involvements which this study traces through the writings of both men and        women. Pursuing this argument Conspiracy and Virtue engages the mainwritings on        women's relationship to the political sphere including debates on the public sphere        and on contract theory. Writers and figures discussed include Elizabeth Avery, Aphra        Behn, Anne Bradstreet, Maragret Cavendish, Queen Christina of Sweden, Anne Halkett,        Brilliana Harley, Lucy Hutchinson, John Milton,Elizabeth Poole, Sara Wight, and        Henry Jessey.