This work considers the situation of all kinds of women, in all aspects of their lives, across the whole of Western Europe over three centuries. Chapters cover female rites of passage - girlhood and work, marriage, married life and work, parenthood and widowhood. It looks in detail at those women who deviated from the norm in some way - the sexually deveiant or unlucky, prostitutes, witches or saints, Protestant and Catholic enthusiasts, women writers, women rioters. This first volume ends in 1800 with the French Revolution.