ABSTRACT

Early modern theorists believed that women’s proper sphere was the family where they could fulfil their roles as dutiful daughters, wives and widows. The advice in conduct books and the educational theories about women were largely based on the assumption that they would marry and raise a family of their own. These beliefs were reinforced by medical thinking about the biological nature of women, who were thought to be at risk of severe physical and mental illness if they did not engage in regular sexual relations (Eccles 1982). This dovetailed with the popular belief that women were sexually voracious, which surfaced in ribald ballads and the more misogynistic literature of the day. Moralists and medical writers argued that women’s sexuality should be satisfied within the bounds of marriage and in The woman’s doctor (1652) Nicholas Fontanus argued that ‘wives are more healthful than widows or virgins, because they are refreshed with the man’s seed and ejaculate their own, which being excluded, the cause of the evil is taken away’.