List of Figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Concepts of Womanhood in Early Modern England; 1 Emerging New Attitudes towards Women in Early Jacobean England; 2 Female Selfhood and Ideologies of Marriage in Early Jacobean Drama: The Duchess of Malfi and The Tragedy of Mariam; 3 Lady Mary Wroth and Ideologies of Marriage in Late Jacobean England; 4 Representing Elizabeth I in Jacobean England; 5 Women and Publishing Their Works in the Late Jacobean Years; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Summary
"This book examines the engagement of Jacobean culture with the possibilities of female desire for self-actualization and self-expression. The tension arising from the disparity between the social norms of womanhood and what women actually thought about themselves was especially intense in early seventeenth-century England, particularly during the reign of King James I. The book examines the interactions between social assumptions about womanhood and women's actual voices represented in plays and writings by authors of both genders in Jacobean England, placing the special emphasis on Lady Mary Wroth. This change in Jacobean culture in relation to women is highly important in the light of the long-term history of changes in women's sense of selfhood in the following years. The book also makes cross-cultural comparisons between representations of women in Jacobean works and those in Japanese classical writings and Kabuki plays"-- Provided by publisher
