A Loom of One’s Own

Abstract While women in the seventeenth century had perhaps more freedom to educate themselves than they did during most of the Middle Ages, they were still very much limited in their lives and careers, that is, they could live at home or in a convent, serving a husband or God. This chapter looks at how three women philosophers of that period attempted to subvert their domestic destiny either by rejecting the role they were expected to fulfill and working on philosophy, or by trying to enrich their domestic lives by drawing connections between the work done to sustain life and philosophy, either at home or in a convent. Beginning with Lucrezia Marinella’s Exhortations, this chapter shows how she attempted to revalue domestic work, by making it an appealing proposition for women for whom intellectual pursuits were not an option. It then shows how Margaret Cavendish worked out ways in which domesticity not only supported philosophy but could also be read as a form of scientific pursuit. Then, the chapter turns to Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, who used the convent where she lived as a base for writing and disseminating feminist critiques of Aristotle.