For years, Lady Chastity Neville has stood in the shadows of her dour older sister. But while bluestocking Prudence might be content to wile away her hours alone with a book, Chastity secretly yearns to shed her wallflower ways. When she finds an old letter indicating her mother may have had a scandalous past, Chastity is drawn to the mystery of the woman she never knew. This Christmastide, she’s determined to uncover the truth—and start a scandal of her own. Bastian Stanhope, the Earl of Mansfield, has lived his life in accordance to the wishes of others. Caring for his ailing mother is his main responsibility. But when he meets Lady Chastity, he’s drawn to her compassion and adventurous spirit. For the first time, he’s thinking of his own future. ‘Tis the season for merry mischief, so to win Chastity’s heart, he’ll have to be a little bit wicked. With kisses underneath the mistletoe, Chastity’s scandalous quest might just turn into the love of a lifetime...

According to the author, the subordination of Chinese women continued under different models of sex equality in China in twentieth century. In Reconceiving Women's Equality in China Lijun Yuan discusses and assesses four models of womenOs equality: first, the traditional Confucian view of women which advocates that womenOs role is to follow and support men; second, the liberal feminist idea of formal equality for women introduced into China at the beginning of the twentieth century, which is anti-Confucian and advocates womenOs equal rights in education, law, and employment; third, MaoOs view of womenOs equality in production, calling for substantive equality between men and women; finally, the idea of equal opportunity in the economic transformation in the post-Mao period, the revival of Confucianism in this period and its convergence with the declining status of women. According to Yuan, each of these models has a variety of problems in dealing with womenOs equality. However, she sees one common thread running through all of them, namely, lack of emphasis on empowering women to develop their own visions of equality. Ideologies imposed from the top-down have rationalized the continuing subordination and exploitation of women, either blatantly (Confucianism) or more subtly (Maoism). After exposing the common feature in their failure to reach the social ideal of womenOs equality, the author proposes a more democratic conception of womenOs equality that will allow ideals to continue changing as material circumstances change in different stages of social development. This book is a seminal work of research on the status of women in China during and after Mao's cultural revolution. It is essential to studies of Chinese society, politics, and religion, as well as to women's studies and philosophy.

In this book, Bonnie Lander Johnson explores early modern ideas of chastity, demonstrating how crucial early Stuart thinking on chastity was to political, medical, theological and moral debates, and that it was also a virtue that governed the construction of different literary genres. Drawing on a range of materials, from prose to theatre, theological controversy to legal trials, and court ceremonies - including royal birthing rituals - Lander Johnson unearths previously unrecognised opinions about chastity. She reveals that early Stuart theatrical and court ceremonies were part of the same political debate as prose pamphlets and religious sermons. The volume also offers new readings of Milton's Comus, Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Henrietta Maria's queenship and John Ford's plays. It will appeal to scholars of early modern literature, theatre, political, medical and cultural history, and gender studies.