Heroines, Harpies, and Housewives

Heroines, Harpies, and Housewives has been awarded Co-Honorable Mention for the 2021 Book Award by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender (SSEMWG). The awards committee stated that the book “offers a convincing counter analysis to scholarship emphasizing the display of patriarchy in Dutch art produced in the seventeenth century. The book employs the female archetypes of heroines, harpies, and housewives to emphasize the overlapping discourses that privileged women’s place and society and revealed anxieties about women’s influence. Through exploration of images and texts, this study highlights the unique combination of factors that allowed women in the Netherlands to achieve and perpetuate greater social and cultural independence.” “a timely study that reflects revived scholarly interest in female patrons, artists, and the economic and social contributions of women in the seventeenth-century Netherlands [...]. Peacock reveals that combative women became celebrated agents of female legacy by challenging female archetypes. Her research persuasively elides this sentiment with the reception of female intellectuals and painters, as well as the literary and lived experiences of a wide range of powerful women in the Dutch Republic. Each chapter of this book can be read individually, but all three work well collectively.” Laura E. Thiel-Convery, Toronto. In: HNA Reviews, August 2021.