LHMP #360 Howard 1999 Afterword: Producing New Knowledge

The summary discusses the importance of studying women in the Early Modern period not simply as individuals (possibly unusual ones), but in the context specifically of female networks and alliances. Men are assumed to participate in structures; too often women are viewed as isolated individuals, or else as existing only in relation to men. Individual women might have agency in negotiating their own position within society, but only in groups did women have any hope of making changes to society. Alliances between women have impact when they view women as a group as within their scope of concern, whether that concern is education, rights of property and inheritance, or challenging misogyny.