Art of Staying Neutral: The Netherlands in the First World War, 1914-1918 Book

In this book Margaret King examines the lives of upper class and occasionally the lives of artisan/middling women also. She largely omits an account of lower class women from her work but this is intentional and admitted from the start. King builds an account by identifying the main social roles that were available to women during the period from the late fourteenth century to the seventeenth century and then devotes chapters to these categories. King summaries the driving question within her work as 'Did women have a renaissance also?", and the following chapters through examining the written accounts of women and also men writing on women serve to get to grips with this question.

For King the roles of women during this period can largely be divided into those of wife, mother, and nun. Women during this period she explains were almost entirely defined in relation to sexuality within a Christian framework. Either as mothers to produce children and continue family lines, or as nuns embracing virginity in the convent. The emphasis on 'virginity' prior to marriage and in lieu of it is of exceptional importance for a woman's social position during these times. Women were also the vessels of property and familial power through marriage and subsequent dowries but only ever indirectly for the benefit of the natal family or that of the husband's and never for her own sake; although this too can be seen in relation to her sexuality.

King examines what women could and could not do during these centuries, whilst also keeping a view open to the possibility of exceptions or evidence of contradicting accounts. In particular she examines the extent to which a woman could be educated, and what this education would consist of. Additionally the possibly of lifestyles that did not include being a mother.

The general account that King communicates is that women were by and large restricted to the domestic sphere of being wife and mother, with the possibility of gaining a limited Humanist education and reprieve from motherhood through the life of a nun with very little alternative but for a few exceptional figures. King however emphasises the fact that these life choices were mostly not in the hands of women and were usually chosen for them by male authority figures for their own ends. Present throughout her investigation of women's social roles is the attitudes of men towards women communicated through church and literature. These attitudes form the social climate within which women's perceived value was measured and explains the choices that were made available to them.

King examines the position of widows and rare female monarchs, as well as the few pro-women writings in favour of measures of equality or emancipation from the control of men. However by the end of the book, in answering her question formally, King concludes that socially women did not have a renaissance such as was experienced by their male relatives, however a shift in women's consciousness did occur potentially paving the way for post-enlightenment women's rights. However prior to the Enlightenment, a case for a movement towards women's rights and emancipation cannot be substantially made.