Afterword

Abstract

The Afterword looks briefly at travel narratives from England and the Low Countries. Such narratives provide evidence of interest in domesticity and the extent to which women in other countries were allowed to move freely outside the household. This study has been concerned with tracing the effect of the long-term developments that include the emergence of the public sphere and new conceptions of public and private on individual women writers in each country. These readings help us arrive at an assessment of the cultural climates in which women writers worked and published. Many of their concerns are shared across borders, but a comparative analysis also reveals subtle cultural differences in the types of female publicity it is possible to imagine. By exploring the complex similarities and differences between these two bodies of work, this study aims to encourage further comparative and transnational study of early modern women writers.