Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman

'Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman' chronicles the ways women have been presented in conduct manuals from the earliest days of print to the present, focusing primarily on Britain with some attention to American editions within the last century. The book traces the longest-running war in history--the battle over how women should behave.

'Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman' analyzes the development and presentation of the female ideal, arguing that this myth has persisted despite centuries of social change and gender politics. The book provides a history of a concept, of imagination, wishful thinking and a woman that in all likelihood never existed.

While diaries and social histories relate what women actually did in their daily lives, conduct books are aspirational. They delineate the desired ideal and how it might be achieved. Feminist scholars argue that gender is a construct, a concept manufactured to control actions and mete out power. Advice literature presents a fantasy of "woman" that both reflects and distorts reality, illustrating the fears and hopes of their creators. It is that history, the history of a phantom, that 'Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman' tells.

The longest-running war is the battle over how women should behave. "Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman" examines six centuries of advice literature, analyzing the print origins of gendered expectations that continue to inform our thinking about women's roles and abilities. Close readings of numerous conduct manuals from Britain and America, written by men and women, explain and contextualize the legacy of sexism as represented in prescriptive writing for women from 1372 to the present.

This book presents a unique trans-historical approach, arguing that conduct manuals were influenced by their predecessors and in turn shaped their descendants. While existing period-specific studies of conduct manuals consider advice literature within the society that wrote and read them, this book provides the only analysis of both the volumes themselves and the larger debates taking place within their pages across the centuries. Building on critical conversations about literature's efforts to define and construct gender roles, this book examines conduct manuals' contributions to the female ideal prevalent when they were published, as well as the persistence or alteration of that ideal in subsequent eras.

Combining textual literary analysis with a social history sensibility while remaining accessible to expert and novice, this book will help readers understand the on-going debate about the often-contradictory guidelines for female behavior.

"Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman" examines six centuries of conduct manuals and other instructive writing, analyzing the history of gendered expectations that have been debated in print from the fourteenth century and continue to influence our present thinking about women's roles and abilities.