Let’s return to the four parts of the most important question. What does it mean to know? What is true love? What is virtue? What is a woman? Other authors addressed these questions without upending, or even challenging, the patriarchal system. There is something about the way that these questions entered the world after 1665 that gave us the world that we have today, where women such as myself have a large degree of autonomy, active inner lives and a constant sense of agency.
