Dr Wendy Perkins BA, PhD

• BA in French Language and Literature
• PhD in French Literature

During my full-time career, I taught both language and literature across a wide range of centuries and topics. My main publication was Midwifery and Medicine in Early Modern France. Louise Bourgeois, which was short-listed for the Longman History Prize. Since retiring, I have continued to research, and I have given a number of papers, on the role of friendship in women’s lives in the seventeenth century, on certain aspects of their religious lives, and on their sexual relationships.

At present, I am completing a book entitled The Lives of Women in Seventeenth-Century France, which centres on the primary relationships of women in that period. Once this is finished, I shall move on to a monograph about the political lives of French women in that century, with particular reference to women’s activity in the Frondes. I have also started some work on the occurrence of mental instability within French families of the seventeenth century, looking especially at Richelieu, his sister and their descendants, both female and male.