Accounting for early modern women in the arts : reconsidering women’s agency, networks, and relationships

While the terms ‘agency’, ‘collectivity’, and ‘social networks’ may seem anachronistic for the study of early modern women, these concepts were very much alive in that era and essential to women’s self-actualization. Using social network theory, feminist calls for intervention into his-tory, and conceptions of feminist collectivity (as derived from the 1970s Woman’s Building), we examine two examples of women’s involvement in professional arts. While some women succeeded by circumventing gendered institutions impeding their agency, others participated in family endeavors that depended on their acting as agents negotiating various networks. These diverse stories provide alternatives to the ‘master narratives’ according to which early modern women either conformed to or rebelled against the supposedly universal mandate to stay home, obey husbands, and rear children.

ISBN:9789048550937

Publication year:2021