'The Maid's Lawful Liberty: Service, the Household, and 'Mother B' in Isabella Whitney's A Sweet Nosegay'

The article situates Isabella Whitney's 'A Modest Meane for Maids' and the larger volume of poems it which it appears (Whitney's A Sweet Nosegay) n the context of cultural attitudes toward women in service in early modern London. While the nefarious figure of Mother B (for Bawd) pervades discourses surrounding women in service, Whitney's poetry works to redeem the reputation of female servants, protesting their victimisation and establishing a unique authorial voice of the middle class woman at a very early moment in English literary history.