"I am ripe for man": Gendered Time in Thomas Heywood's An Emblematicall Dialogue (1637).

In Thomas Heywood's Emblematicall Dialogue (1637), "Two modest Virgins, of unequall time" discuss love and marriage, focusing on the crucial moment when the maid makes her transition from maid to wife. As the meaning of each naked emblem and of the dialogue form as a whole is revealed through the passing moments of the argument so is the meaning of this moment in time which the maid faces. Cultural and biological imperatives construct time for the maid and become the ground of the debate and of her choices at this pivotal moment which will determine her success or failure as a woman in seventeenth-century England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]