In this book, Sharon L. Jansen explores a recurring theme in writing by women: the dream of finding or creating a private and secluded retreat from the world of men. These imagined women's worlds' may be very small, a single room even, or may be more ambitious, such as the dream of an entire country created for and inhabited exclusively by women. This insightful and accessible book places six centuries of texts in conversation with one another, pairing them in ways that explore the status of women, the desire for education, the perils of marriage, and the demands of motherhood. Here, the all-female space emerges as representative of both women's resistance to men and their complex relationship to choice.