In a recent essay on women writers and the early-modern British political tradition, Hilda Smith identifies the ‘perpetual state of schizophrenia’ that arises from working at the intersection of women's intellectual history and British political thought in the early-modern era. There is little agreement between these fields of inquiry on approaches, significant texts or accepted interpretations. Emblematic of this scholarly schizophrenia is the literature surrounding the dichotomy of public and private and its proper use and interpretation. If we are to achieve some synthesis of this disparate literature toward a more nuanced understanding of public and private, we need to generate further conversation among feminist political theorists, historians of political thought and gender historians.

The meanings of public and private – including their gendered character – are contested in at least three scholarly conversations about early-modern Britain. First, beginning in the 1970s, feminist political theorists drew attention to the gendered power relations inscribed on the traditional division between the two spheres. Second, historians of social and political thought have examined male early-modern theorists and their ideas of the private in context and primarily in connection to politics, religion and economic relations. And third, early-modern gender historians have enhanced and refined our perspectives on the fluidity of public and private life for women and men in this period. Within these three literatures, there has not been, however, sustained investigation of how the private might look different, and be experienced differently, from the perspective of women thinkers.