ABSTRACT
In the Dutch Republic, female youths could turn to advice literature for help. These conduct books focused on young women’s behaviour towards the other sex. A close reading of two widely distributed works reveals continuity: both Jacob Cats in the seventeenth century and Adriaan Loosjes in the eighteenth try to instil a specific habitus in the reader rather than instruct her on what (not) to do. Yet the analysis also highlights change. Cats admonishes attractive but vulnerable female readers to exercise restraint in their dealings with men, while the Enlightenment philosophe Loosjes instead emphasizes young women’s freedom, urging his readers to live up to an ideal notion of femininity. Not the guidelines themselves, but the authors’ perceptions of the young woman changed.
