Stuart women's diaries and occasional emoirs

Sources that offer a direct record of women's everyday experience for the Stuart period are neither abundant nor easy to find. ¹ To be sure, there is plenty of contemporary material about women. Sermons and conduct books, plays and pamphlets all claimed to delineate women's true nature and prescribe their ideal role. But, although these works tell us a good deal about contemporary attitudes towards the female sex, they rarely address themselves to women's own sensibilities or the minutiae of their daily lives. In order to learn about women from the female point of view, we must turn to the diaries and occasional memoirs that were written by women themselves.