Women in European Culture and Society

This volume provides readers with an overview of women's role and place in Western Europe from the beginning of the eighteenth century, with essays covering the key themes in women's history.

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

Drawing on women’s 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 women’s lives up to the present day. Women in European Culture and Society is an invaluable and essential guide to the conditions, circumstances and understandings of how women lived throughout Europe.