CHAPTER 3: The Pattern of Perfect Womanhood.

This essay concentrates on early modern images of the cloth working woman, with particular reference to books of needlepoint and lace-making designs, and to the image of Penelope, the weaving woman par excellence, as she appears in Robert Greene's Penelopes Web of 1587. The images of women working at looms or bent over a needlework frame were didactic images, employed to illustrate an ideal of womanhood. Clothworking provided a sort of litmus test of femininity and virtue: a weaving woman was seen as domestic, silent, submissive and chaste--and hence feminine. Pattern books sought not only to educate women in a domestic craft, but also to craft them into the cultural image of the ideal woman. The strong but subtle influence of society in acculturating women is highlighted in the author's analysis of early modern pattern books of needlepoint and lace making. The author argues that the pattern books had a dual purpose. These books, while ostensibly providing needlework patterns, also contained an underlying lesson; they taught women how to behave. Through the pattern books, society's expectations of proper behavior for women were inculcated in the needleworker. More than merely teaching needlework patterns, the author contends, the books socialized women.