ABOUT THIS BOOK

Examining the legal lives of early modern women through Milton’s literary works

In his History of Britain, John Milton writes, “Laws are Masculin Births . . . nothing [is] more awry from the Law of God and Nature, then that a Woman should give Laws to Men.” In this interdisciplinary study, Lynne Greenberg explores the normative and nonnormative legal lives of early modern women as depicted in Milton’s works—unmarried and married women, mothers, heiresses, widows, and queens—providing cogent overviews of the laws of multiple jurisdictions to offer critical context for each case study. Greenberg explores a wide range of legal-juridical materials and previously unexplored archival and private family documents. As she demonstrates, while Milton’s narratives are at times enmeshed in existing jural paradigms, they also offer resistant responses to marital, custodial, property, inheritance, and criminal laws and even imagine alternative jural paradigms for women. Through Masculine Births: Milton, Women and the Law, Greenberg deftly reveals that Milton both reproduces seventeenth-century legal constructs and gives birth to laws that move us toward greater equality for women.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

LYNNE GREENBERG is a professor of English at Hunter College, CUNY. She is the editor of Legal Treatises in The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works and Printed Writings series and Fairy Poems in the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets series, as well as the author of The Body Broken: A Memoir.

REVIEWS

“We have long known that Milton situates women at the heart of his works. To this, Greenberg makes the arresting and compelling claim that when he thinks about or represents women, Milton does so with an awareness of their specifically legal standing. Masculine Births is a fine work of scholarship with top-notch research that stands to advance the field and fill an important gap.” —Alison Chapman, University of Alabama at Birmingham

“Masculine Births is a breath of fresh air. By examining Milton’s works in the light of seventeenth-century English law, Greenberg offers new insights not only into Milton’s fictional women but also into the historical women he interacted with. Always vigilant and never merely wishful, Greenberg demonstrates that Milton’s liberationist project extends to women, even if he did not always want it to.” —John Leonard, Western University

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Chapter 1. Maidens
Chapter 2. Wives
Chapter 3. Mothers
Chapter 4. Heiresses
Chapter 5. Widows
Chapter 6. Queens
Coda
Acknowledgments
Notes
Manuscript Sources and Abbreviations
Bibliography