ABSTRACT
The question of women’s relationship to politics has been discussed by political theorists most substantially in terms of contract theory with its attendant analysis of the domestic. The integration of women into political history through examination of political theory has been fruitful, but its success is qualified by restriction of the terrain of argument to the narrow canon of political theory. This chapter argues that we need to ask slightly different questions. What evidence is likely to reveal women’s relationship to politics in seventeenth-century England? What methods are helpful in interpreting this evidence?
