Women in European Culture and Society Gender, Skill and Identity from 1700 [Paperback]

A new and major contribution to the field, Women in European Culture and Societyis a transnational history of women in Europe from the beginning of the eighteenth century that pushes womens history beyond national studies to create an integrated view of three hundred years of women in Europe. Using a longue dur?e, the book disentangles the accounts of industrialisation and bourgeois femininity which tend to dominate womens studies, and questions the dominant narratives of history.

Drawing on womens own writing and cultural production, it presents women as agents of change as well as exploring cultural perceptions of women and the ways in which women have been represented by these discourses. It explicitly engages with how women contributed as practitioners to shaping the culture and society of western Europe.

The geographical range and generational breadth of this study provides a cohesive vision of womens lives up to the present day. Women in European Culture and Societyis an invaluable and essential guide to the conditions, circumstances and understandings of how women lived throughout Europe.

Overture  Part 1: Rights of Man and Duties of Woman.  Prelude: Women's Identity in Eighteenth-century Culture.  Timeline.  1. Intimate Lives: Self, Sex and Family  2. Community Spaces  3. Wider Worlds: Gendering the Enlightenment  Intermezzo: The Revolutionary Era.  Timeline.  Part 2: Domesticity and Industrialism  Prelude: The Legacy of the Enlightenment.  Timeline.  4. Intimate Worlds: Our Mothers' Daughters  5. Community Spaces: Labour, Leisure and Consumption  6. Shaping wider worlds  Intermezzo: La Belle ?poque or Fin de Si?cle?  Timeline.  Part 3: Modern Times  Prelude: Carrying Lindas Stones.  Timeline. &nblc;