Working Women of Early Modern Venice. By Monica Chojnacka. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Pp. xxii, 188. $32.50.

Extract

In this carefully researched book, Monica Chojnacka stresses the independence of working women in early modern Venice. Accepting the premise that, in general, the wives, sisters, and daughters of the nobility led highly restricted lives throughout this period, she argues that both economic forces and the formation of new charitable institutions benefited popolane (non-elite women) by providing them with forms of sociability, community, and agency that were denied their social superiors.