Women of Fortune charts the story of the social mobility of two provincial gentry families, the Bennets and the Morewoods, who made their fortunes in London during the seventeenth century. Levy Peck shows how economic and social change had implications for gender relations among the gentry and what the rise of the gentry looks like when we place women at the center of the story. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the two families who are the focus of Levy Peck’s study and explain how the family fortune was generated—through the mercery and grocery trades, moneylending, property holding, international commerce, and investment.
Levy Peck expends seventy-five pages before discussing the female members of the family, but they are worth the wait. Her protagonists are a group of fascinating women who seem to leap from the pages of a novel or streaming miniseries. After inheriting the family wealth, these women actively began...