Women Telling Tales: In the past decade social and cultural historians of all stripes have been working to unearth the beginnings of informal political activity by seeking the roots of the public sphere. Following in the footsteps of its chief theoretician, Juergen Habermas, they have looked at a range of associational life. From the salons of Paris and the coffeehouses of London to the religious discussion groups and free-time clubs of the 17th-century Dutch Republic to the reshaping of family life in communities across Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries they have sought to discover when and how the public came to have influence within European society. Women's historians too have joined in this endeavor, often concluding that women were largely excluded from many aspects of the public sphere.
The purpose of this project is to look at one of the precursors of the Habermas's 18th-century public sphere, the informal public sphere that was thriving in 17th-century Europe. I am most interested in understanding how and to what extent women could participate in this informal public sphere and what influence they had in their communities as a result of that participation. As women were most prominent in Europe's maritime communities, I have chosen to focus my attention on North Sea ports and the public position of women in them.
I am presently engaged in exploring the life of Franchyna Woedwaerdt, a woman who ran a printing shop in Rotterdam in the mid-17th century. Ultimately it is my intention to explore the biographies and social networks of women in several other major ports to create the basis for a comparative study of women's presence in the informal public sphere of the North Sea zone. The aim here is to push beyond the drawing rooms of Europe's salons and counting houses and shopcounters of the middling sort to reach into the lives of the working poor as well.