NCHC Portz Scholars Presentation: “Creating Mother: Mothers' Legacies in the Context of the Conduct Literature of Seventeenth-Century England”

This thesis, focusing on seventeenth‐century English writers, examines the genre of Mothers' Legacies in relation to the conduct literature being written around the same time. It discusses the manner in which the women writers of Mothers' Legacies both confirm and deny the ideal form of womanhood laid out by conduct writers. By writing from the place of the mother, these women are fulfilling a socially prescribed role, but by publishing for a wide audience, they are stepping out of their traditional domestic domain. The end result of this thesis is the delineation and explanation for the gap between what seventeenth‐century women are told to do and what they actually do.