As the year has its seasons, marked by alternations of active growth and recuperation for new development, so likewise has history. If the Middle Ages were a time of comparative dearth as viewed in the light of the modern era, certainly there was ample vitality hidden in the quiet forms and the mechanical fixity of the period. The season of vernal glory for England, which opened with the reign of Henry VIII. and found its climax in that of Elizabeth, was glorious because the beauty and brilliancy which characterized it were due to the splendid utilities which were passed on to it from the Middle Ages. Art, literature, and the pleasant pastimes of leisure--the affluence of prosperity--are the efflorescence of a people's history, though the absence of these graces and privileges of life may not mean a dearth in any profound sense, for it may be that their absence but indicates a lack of favoring conditions for the root stock to put forth foliage and flower. The simple form of social life which obtained during the Middle Ages, as contrasted with the brilliancy of intellect and the breadth of view of the modern era, does not denote any important difference in the character of the great mass of the English people, any more than it can be said of the fallow land not under cultivation that it has less productivity than the fields which by the waving grain give evidence of their fertile worth.
The easy acceptance in modern times of the benefits of inventions which greatly broaden the scope of living and add immeasurably to its comfort shows how readily people adjust themselves to advances in the conditions of life. So that which we look upon as an era was not so considered by the people who witnessed the stimulus which we regard as the beginning of all modern intellectual and social life. For this reason, we need not expect to discover in the women of the early modern period any radical difference from their sisters of preceding generations; but we shall find that, with the change of environment and the coming of a better state of life in general, womankind was gradually and insensibly affected in ways of permanent improvement. The opening up of new avenues of human interest and the enlargement of old ones increased the sphere of woman's life and influence; yet had it not been for the status she had achieved already, she would no more have entered prominently into the blessings and privileges of the new era than did the women of Greece generally benefit by the Golden Age of Pericles.