ABSTRACT
This essay considers the cases of two so-called 'women of quality' resident at the Restoration Court of Charles II of England during the latter half of the seventeenth century: one a duchess by heredity, the other by royal appointment. The author explores how these women and their 'private quarters' — as both the subjects and instigators of extensive written commentary and visual iconographies — were configured as the literal and rhetorical sites of political action and social and cultural creation.
