Ruling Women, Volume 1

The book explores the debate surrounding women's governance in seventeenth-century France, highlighting the tension between patriarchal discourse and emerging arguments for gynæcocracy. Conroy analyzes various political, feminist, and dramatic texts to reveal how traditional views of male authority clash with virtue ethics that support female leadership. The first volume of this two-part study delves into the exclusion of women from political power and the evolving discourses that advocate for their role in rulership, appealing to scholars of women's history, feminism, and literature.