Wiesner, Women & Gender In Early Modern Europe

Abstract

Merry Wiesner's Women and Gender in Early Modem Europe is a well-written college-level textbook that presents an introduction to research on women in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. In her introduction she explains that until recently, women's historical research focused on two major issues-how women contributed to accepted developments in history (the search for "women worthies") and the effect of these developments on women. More recently, additional questions have centered on women's biological experiences and on private or domestic matters.