WERE THERE any women in 17th century England?" asks a man as he disappears into his men's club. With this anecdote, Antonia Fraser explains the purpose of her latest book. In The Weaker Vessel, Fraser uses diaries, letters and popular ballads to recreate the condition of women in British society from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to that of Queen Anne.

The title, an ironic reference to a phrase in the King James Bible, is based on remarks made by St. Paul; he advised wives to subjugate themselves to their husbands and for husbands to protect "the weaker vessel." In this case and many others, Fraser indicates how the established church reinforced the image of women as morally and physically inferior. For example, women's prayers often included "Grandmother Eve," from whom all women were said to have inherited the original sin. Yet much of Fraser's book reveals how the 17th century was a time of change, even for women in the most static of institutions.

Fraser scrupulously includes a chronology of important events to help those readers unfamiliar with that period in British history. But even for those without any history background, each chapter provides enough information to stand on its own for the average reader.

She outlines the importance of women in the Quaker movement by focusing on the amazing exploits of a few pioneers. Elizabeth Hooton traveled from England to preach in Cambridge, Mass., where the "college boys...mocked and pelted her." She was placed in a dungeon and left without food for two days before being sentenced to whippings through three towns and expulsion from the colony. Mary Fisher and Elizabeth Williams were to face the same hostility in Cambridge. When asked by the mayor for their husbands' names, the Quakers replied that "they had no husband but Jesus Christ." The mayor promptly "denounced them as whores and ordered them to be whipped by the constable until the blood ran down their bodies."

The basic problems of Fisher and Williams were shared by all women at that time. All women were to obey either a husband or a father. Marriage was based on "money, connections and birth," with heiresses and wealthy widows considered the most valuable prizes. Arranged marriages prevailed over choices based on live. In addition to these matrimonial limitations, the Lawes Resolutions spelled out the legal framework for marriage: a husband's property was his own but a wife's was her husband's. A woman lost her dower if she committed adultery, but men retained their jointures (settlements on the marriage) if they did the same.

Although Fraser's analysis of the illiterate classes is hampered by the scarcity of evidence, she extrapolates that poorer women married later and generally had more freedom of choice. But there are few means of proving these generalizations, as tempting as it may be to believe them.

EASIER TO substantiate are the expectations and duties of wives. Several guides were written for wives advising them to be modest and industrious. Above all, procreation was a prime function of marriage. Most married women were in "virtually perpetual pregnancy," because effective contraception had not yet been adopted. In childbirth, women faced tremendous constraints that did indeed make them a weaker vessel. A high infant mortality rate resulted from the lack of disinfectant, the limited use of forceps and mishandling by midwives. The midwives lacked medical knowledge because they were not taught Latin, and only a few English-language medical textbooks existed. Many women died in childbirth, and those who survived faced the death of at least one third of their offspring.

Fraser emphasizes with this and other examples that education was a significant influence on women's conditions. After the reign of Elizabeth and the collapse of the convent schools during the Reformation, women's education suffered serious reversals. Basua Makin, a female educator, wrote in 1673 that women ought to be taught Greek and Latin to make them "less idle" and better able to "understand Christ." But for all her progressive reform, she did not advocate a classical education for the majority of women.

The writings of the period show that a classical education was considered improper for women for the same reason that a liberal education is often called impractical today. The skills of embroidering, beading, dancing and singing were prized in a gentlewoman; reading Greek and Latin was not. As the century wore on, the former qualities became more important to society women like Mrs. Pepys, wife of the English diarist Samuel Pepys. In the words of a contemporary, Lady Chudleigh, women were educated "as if for nothing else designed/But made like puppets, to divert mankind."

But not every woman spent her time emboidering, especially during the turbulence of the Civil Wars. A certain Lady Bankes successfully defended Corfe Castle against a 500-man assault. Many women went to war with their husbands or disguised themselves as men. They were immortalized in ballads like "The Famous Woman Drummer." Suddenly, women began to show "courage above t heir sex."

Just as war tends to liberate women from traditional roles, women become politicized during revolutions. Women fought for radical social equality in the Diggers' and Leveller movements. From woodcuts of the period, Fraser points out that women were shown in the crowd at the execution of Charles I "anticipating the tricoteuses of the French Revolution by 150 years."

Women who sought a livelihood could be shopkeepers, petticoat authors, peddlers or midwives. Perhaps the career with the greatest risk and the greatest social mobility was that of a courtesan. Fraser's wit any style are at their best in this passage:

In the late seventeenth century what is sometimes described (on no particular evidence) as the oldest profession was not necessarily the most disagreeable one for a woman to adopt--provided she was able to adopt it at an economically high level. The King--Charles II followed by his brother James II, equally lecherous but more neurotic about it--constituted the apex of the social pyramid; it was a pyramid--which any audacious pretty woman might aspire to scale if she caught the monarch's eye.

Fraser goes on to recount anecdotes from the lives of famous misses or mistresses, like Catherine Sedley, who as James II's mistress had a "long nose" and was "too thin" but had "wit."

Female actresses had been allowed onstage by royal warrant since 1660. Fraser estimates that while one quarter were professionals, most women used the stage to display their wares and attract protectors. Elizabeth Barry, considered the leading actress of the Restoration, was involved with the Earl of Rochester and bore him a child in poverty.

FRASER'S ENGAGING style succeeds where a conventional historian's might be tedious. She is a troubadour who effortlessly recounts a story she has exhaustively researched, and documented. The Weaker Vessel is a welcome addition to the slowly growing field of women's studies. It is also a warning that, as in the England of Elizabeth I, "it is easy to suppose in a time of freedom that the darker days of repression can never come again." This statement is made parenthetically, but it stands as the central motif of the book. As in 17th-century England, there are more women than men among the poor in America today. Women may have come a long way, but the legacy of the weaker vessel lives on.