Women In 17th Century France

This book aims to trace the life of the seventeenth-century Frenchwoman from cradle to the grave through mainly contemporary primary sources which include just about everything from collections of laws to traveller''s tales. Rather than reworking and refuting the twentieth-century experts in the field, the author works directly through from birth and childhood through matrimony, women at work, and in political life, manners and religion to conclusive death.