Pure Resistance by Theodora A. Jankowski

Theodora A. Jankowski traces Christian ideas of virginity from antiquity through the Renaissance, contrasting Catholic tradition, which valued vowed virginity, with English Protestant doctrine, which made marriage the ideal and rigidified the categories of male and female, married and virgin. She reads female virgins in English plays from 1590 to about 1670, from collaborators with patriarchy to women who reject marriage and live outside the heterosexual paradigm altogether, such as Isabella in Measure for Measure and Moll Cutpurse in The Roaring Girl, whom she calls 'queer virgins.