Though European scholars before the early modern era had written about the nature of women (notably Christine de Pizan, Bocaccio, and Chaucer in the fourteenth century), the controversy (often called the querelle des femmes or "debate about women") heated up in England in the late sixteenth century, partly as a result of the religious debates of the era (the Reformation) about human nature in general.

Many of the debaters grounded their arguments in a their particular readings of the first two creation stories of the book of Genesis, especially the Eden narrative (the story of Adam and Eve). You may want to read the biblical accounts in Genesis 1 (the first creation story) and Genesis 2-3 (the second) before continuing. To see the translation most popular among Protestants in England at this time, go to The Bible in English and search Genesis in the Geneva Bible. Follow the links until you have the table of contents of Genesis. After you select a chapter, you will be able to read the biblical material plus the marginal notes provided by the arch-Protestant editors; just click on any of the note icons to see what was in the margin by that verse.. You can also choose to have those notes visible within the biblical text by choosing Text at the top of the page.

Many translations of an early sixteenth-century treatise on women, De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus (On the nobility and preeminence of women, 1529), by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, circulated in England throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Agrippa's defense of women's goodness influenced many later polemicists.

One of the first women to enter the debate in print called herself Jane Anger, probably a pseudonym. Her book, Jane Anger, her Protection for Women To defend them against the Scandalous Reports of a Late Surfeiting Lover . . . (1589) was written in response to an anti-woman pamphlet now lost, probably the 1588 Boke his Surfeit in Love.

Aemilia Lanyer took up the cause of women in her book Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum ("Hail God King of the Jews," 1611), a retelling of the Passion (the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus) Though the book is not written in the polemical or debate mode, it defends women's goodness throughout. Particularly notable in its proto-feminism is "Eues Apology" [a defence of Eve] and Lanyer's prefatory poem "To the Vertuous Reader".

Probably the most well-known of the querelle polemicists was Joseph Swetnam, whose pamphlet, The Arraignment of Lewd, idle, froward, and unconstant women or the vanity of them . . . (1615), was reprinted in 1615, 1619, 1628, 1634, 1645, 1690, and several times in the eighteenth century. Swetnam's pamphlet sparked a number of replies, none of which enjoyed the popularity of Swetnam's Arraignment. Scholars have recently discovered Swetnam's copy of one of his responder's pamphlets, Rachel Speght's A Mouzell for Melastomus. He has written lewd comments in the margins, attacking the writer's virtue rather than her argument.

Many of of Swetnam's rebutters took pseudonyms. One, Esther Sowernam, both played on Swetnam's name (Sweet-nam vs. Sour-nam) and recalled the biblical story of Queen Esther's confounding of her husband's second-in-command, Haman, in her pamphlet entitled Esther hath hanged Haman; or, An Answer to a lewd Pamphlet . . . .

Another of Swetnam's responders took the name Constantia Munda ("pure or elegant constancy") in her pamphlet The Worming of a mad Dog . . . . Her work shows familiarity with legal terminology and theory, and she plays on Swetnam's pretense of an "arraignment."