Women Intellectuals At The End of The 17th Century
One of the first records of a woman writing in English is Julian of Norwich, who wrote her A Book of Showings around the year 1400. Three hundred years later, only a handful of female authors had joined her. When Judith Drake and the other intellectuals of her circle began writing, they were still an incredible minority and subject to much nay saying. In England, the Restoration period just after the English Civil War brought a time of political, scientific, and literary innovation. The civil war had brought about, among other things, the loosening of laws regarding the censorship of printed books. A few women took this opportunity to publish, many pointing out another area of society that needed attention during this time of re-thinking: gender relationships. Because of their efforts as well as the rise in female literacy, the literary world entered into the debate about women.
Read more about this topic: Judith Drake
Famous quotes containing the words women, the and/or century:
“[They] exchanged the quick, brilliant smile of women who dislike each other on sight.”
—Marshall Pugh (b. 1925)
“We are, to put it mildly, in a mess, and there is a strong chance that we shall have exterminated ourselves by the end of the century. Our only consolation will have to be that, as a species, we have had an exciting term of office.”
—Desmond Morris (b. 1928)
“The innocence of those who grind the faces of the poor, but refrain from pinching the bottoms of their neighbour’s wives! The innocence of Ford, the innocence of Rockefeller! The nineteenth century was the Age of Innocence—that sort of innocence. With the result that we’re now almost ready to say that a man is seldom more innocently employed than when making love.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)