The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England (105 page)

Margaret Duchess of Newcastle, from the frontispiece to her book,
The Worlds Olio
(1655).

Mary Countess of Warwick.

Lettice Viscountess Falkland (who was esteemed for not making a second marriage after her husband’s death, unlike many of her contemporaries) depicted in her widow’s weeds.

Ann Lady Fanshawe.

Mrs Margaret Godolphin, John Evelyn’s adored friend, who died young as a result of childbirth.

A milkmaid: one of the better-paid jobs for women, which also led to some kind of independence.

Susanna Perwick, who died unmarried in 1661 at the age of twenty-four, from the frontispiece to her biography by John Batchiler,
The Virgin’s Pattern
(1661).

A countrywoman, showing the kind of agricultural implements that women regularly used.

The housewife and the hunter, from the
Roxburghe Ballads.

The title page of
The Needles Excellency
by John Taylor (1634).

A scold’s bridle.

The title page of
Ar’t asleepe Husband? A Boulster Lecture
by Richard Brathwaite (1640). The talkativeness of women was axiomatic at this time.

A witch and her imps, from a drawing of 1621.