Women of note in the early modern era

The early modern era experienced the Renaissance and Reformation, French and American revolutions and the start of the modern feminist movement.

Queen Elizabeth I took the thrown in 1558, ushering in a time of stability and artistic excellence for England. Under her rule, English drama flourished, privateers such as William Drake succeeded at sea and the Spanish Armada was defeated at battle.

Elizabeth never married for many reasons: to avoid political instability or a coup, to avoid loss of power or general dislike of courtship brought on by childhood abuse.

During the end of her reign, Elizabeth lost most of her original counsel and began making bad economic decisions, leading to a severe depression and death in 1603. She is still remembered today as the Virgin Queen and muse for many artists, playwrights and patrons.

During the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, English settlers were travelling to the American colonies, searching for religious freedom.

Anne Hutchinson lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a strict Puritan colony that didn’t allow any other religious liberty. Hutchinson began holding religious meeting in her home that preached outside the doctrine assigned by the Church of Boston.

She was brought to trial in the first major case in America to discuss religious liberty and was ultimately exiled from the colony on the basis of heresy.

Following the French Revolution and American Colonization, there was a rise in professional women authors, and while most still focused on domesticity, many began expounded the need for equal rights.

In “Some Reflections on Marriage,” Mary Astell argues God created men and women as equally intelligent beings, and Olympe de Gouges states women deserve the same citizenship as men in the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen.”

Mary Wollstonecraft published “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” in 1792, which argued women were entitled to education. She is often credited with writing the first text of the modern feminist movement.