The female hero in English Renaissance tragedy2002

"This book focuses on female tragic heroes in English Renaissance drama from c.1610-c.1645, characters who differ from previous tragic heroines because they were not passive victims but active agents. Their sudden appearance can be linked to a specific historical moment and to highly contested debates within early modern England, including changing ideas about the relationship between bodies and souls, men's and women's bodies, marriage and mothering, and law and religion. Though the vast majority of these characters are not what we would now call heroines but were closer to villainesses, the staging of a constant stream of bad or fallible women did not in fact work to reinforce misogyny, but to prise it open, revealing the grounds on which it was constructed. Consequently these plays did not merely reflected their culture but changed it."--BOOK JACKET.