In this post Hannah Jeans introduces her new book—Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England—which is published in the Society’s ‘New Historical Perspectives’ series with University of London Press.
Hannah’s book explores traditional views of reading in the seventeenth century and challenges the enduring binaries of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ literature or ‘active’ and ‘passive’ reading. In their place, Hannah views the activity from the multiple perspectives of seventeenth-century women readers.
Through an investigation of women readers’ personal engagement with literature, the book extends our understanding of women’s reading habits and the place of reading in the development of self-identities.
Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England is the 22nd title in the Society’s New Historical Perspectives series for early career historians. Hannah’s book, and other titles in the series are published free, Open Access, and in paperback print.
There was a great deal of concern in the early modern period about what and how people were reading. Particularly for early modern women, there was a fear that a ‘bad book’ could influence their character and behaviour, tempting them away from properly feminine roles. ‘Good books’, on the other hand, could shore up the gender order, creating and reaffirming ideal feminine piety in their readers.
The early modern reader therefore had to be cautious in their choice of reading material. The centrality of a book’s content was made clear in Jacques du Bosc’s The Excellent Woman, a French conduct book from the mid-seventeenth century that was translated into English and became very popular. In the preface to the book, having extolled the benefits and virtues of reading, du Bosc offers a note of caution:
since all Books are not excellent, and there are many which truly deserve to be brought to no light but by the fire; the printing of which should rather have been hindred than the reading them: It must be acknowledged that there is no less difficulty in choosing good Books to employ us when we are alone, than to choose good Wits for our entertainment in company.
So that if any find they must not rely upon themselves in this matter for the making of a good choice, they ought at least to follow the counsel of the most knowing and most vertuous, for fear that in reading they may happen to infect the Mind or debauch the Conscience.
The wrong choice of book could have physical and metaphysical effects, ‘infecting’ and ‘debauching’ the reader. Therefore, conduct book writers such as du Bosc (perhaps seeing themselves as the ‘most knowing and most vertuous’), gave plenty of advice about which books one ought to choose in order to be a good woman – prescriptions that largely relied on a binary between ‘good’ devotional works and ‘bad’ frivolous reading.
The connection in the early modern cultural imagination between gendered behaviour, identity, and reading rested on this idea of good and bad reading material. Due to this link, that was set up in conduct literature and other cultural conversations, reading was a loaded activity, becoming a demonstration of adherence (or lack thereof) to gender norms.
However, the question remains of how women themselves reacted to these prescriptions. That is what my new book, Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England, explores. I am looking at the ways that women represented their reading in order to engage in a process of self-fashioning. This could be in conversation with gender norms, particularly when they read romances or religious texts, or it could be used to negotiate their social position, status, or intellectualism.
My book uses a combination of women’s letters and diaries, their signatures or marginal annotations on books, and their creation of reading notes—whether in the form of commonplace books or miscellanies—to consider how women represented their reading choices, and the ways in which this contributed to a sense of their identities.
Reading was frequently used as a useful signifier to emphasise certain aspects of a woman’s character.
Some of the women are only identifiable in the historical record by a name written on the flyleaf of a book. Others left much more comprehensive evidence of their reading habits and what they thought of their books.
Brought together they tell us a lot about how women used their reading. Elizabeth Delaval, for example, quite clearly drew on gender norms when discussing their reading habits, as she set up a contrast between her youthful and ‘unprofitable’ romance reading and her later, reformed and pious preference for religious texts. Through this change in her reading habits, Deleval was able to become a good woman, mirroring the gendered ideal of femininity.
Mary Astell, in contrast, used reading to demonstrate her intellectualism and to claim a place in philosophical and scientific circles, or to show their political understanding, as in the case of Anne Pole’s newsletters. Reading was frequently used as a useful signifier to emphasise certain aspects of a woman’s character.
Johannes Vermeer, ‘Woman Reading a Letter’ (c.1663), On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest) Rijksmuseum, public domain, https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/200108372
Engaging with a wide range of reading experiences has allowed me to challenge some of the ways in which we have framed early modern reading habits.
This use of reading also provides an effective challenge to the active/passive binary that has so often been used to talk about early modern reading habits. Reading that does not have a clearly tangible effect, or that does not involve a scholarly or intellectual approach, has often been considered ‘passive’ or even frivolous.
However, if that reading is used as a way of constructing and understanding a sense of self or a public-facing character, it can hardly be called passive. Engaging with a wide range of reading experiences has allowed me to challenge some of the ways in which we have framed early modern reading habits.
My book also displays the huge range of material that literate women read in the seventeenth century.
Contrary to the image given in early modern conduct literature and often assumed by later scholars, women were not limited to reading religious and household literature. Instead, they consumed texts about philosophy, mathematics, physics, medicine, politics and the news, both national and international.
By moving beyond exceptional women readers, and taking a longer view across the whole of the seventeenth century, I am able to create a fuller picture of women’s reading habits, thinking about what they were reading, how they were reading, and how those texts were used in their own identity creation and representation.
About the author
Hannah Jeans is a lecturer in early modern British history at the University of York, where she also completed her PhD. She has held fellowships at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and Durham University Libraries.
Hannah’s work focuses on women’s reading habits, print and manuscript culture, and ideas about gender identity.
She is currently working on a project on women reading the news in the early modern period, focusing on the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in Britain, using reading habits as a way to think about women’s political participation.
About the ‘New Historical Perspectives’ book series from the Royal Historical Society
New Historical Perspectives (NHP) is the Society’s book series for early career scholars (within ten years of their doctorate), commissioned and edited by the Royal Historical Society, in association with University of London Press and the Institute of Historical Research.
The series publishes monographs and edited collections by early career historians on all chronologies and histories, worldwide. Contracted authors receive mentoring and an author workshop to develop their manuscript before its final submission.
All titles in the series are published in paperback print and open access (as pdf downloads and Manifold reading editions) with all costs covered by the Royal Historical Society and partners. Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England is the 22nd volume published in the series (April 2025). For more on current and forthcoming titles on the series, please see here.
HEADER IMAGE: Gerard Dou, ‘Old Woman reading a Lectionary : the so-called portrait of Rembrandt’s mother, Neeltgen Willemsdr van Zuijdtbroeck’ (c.1631-32), detail, A.H. Hoekwater Bequest, The Hague, Rijksmuseum, public domain, https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/20027805
