Virginity

Virginity was considered important for women to be able to marry or have socially acceptable lives during the early modern period. Much was made, for instance, of the fact that England was ruled at the time by a “virgin queen” (though scholars have debated whether or not Elizabeth I actually took lovers in private, she still ruled alone and publicly purported to be a virgin, which contributed to her self-constructed image as a woman ruling in her own name). Many of Shakespeare’s plays also contain some reference to the importance of virginity, whether it is in the serious condemnation of women who have had extramarital sex, jokes about loose women or cuckoldry, or even entire plots driven by this idea.

The loss of virginity is framed in the early modern era as just that: a loss. It is often imagined as a personal parallel to...