In this seventeenth century, as in the one before, parents were continually compelling their children and especially their daughters to enter upon a religious career, and many of them were forced to this course in spite of their protestations. Cantu tells of the case of Archangela Tarabotti, who was compelled to enter the convent of Saint Anne at Venice, though all her interests and all her ways were worldly in the extreme. To the convent she went, however, at the age of thirteen, because she was proving a difficult child to control, and there she was left to grind her teeth in impotent rage. In common with many other young girls of her time, she had never been taught to read or write, as the benefit of such accomplishments was not appreciated in any general way--at least so far as women were concerned; but, once within the convent walls, from sheer ennui, Archangela began to study most assiduously, and finally published a number of books which present an interesting description and criticism of existing manners and customs in so far as they had to do with women and their attitude toward conventual institutions. Having entered upon this life under protest, her first books were written in a wild, passionate style, and it was her purpose to make public the violence of which she had been a victim, and to prove, by copious references to authorities both sacred and profane, that women should be allowed entire liberty in their choice of a career. Incidentally, she cursed most thoroughly the fathers who compelled their daughters to take the veil in spite of their expressed unwillingness. Perhaps the most important of these protests, which was given an Elzevir edition in 1654, was entitled _Innocence Deceived, or The Tyranny of Parents_. This special edition was dedicated to God, and bore the epigraph: "Compulsory devotion is not agreeable to God!" Another of these books was entitled _The Hell of Convent Life_, and these titles are certainly enough to show that she set about her task of religious--or, rather, social--reform with a most fervid, though somewhat bitter, zeal. Naturally, these open criticisms caused a great scandal in ecclesiastical circles, and many vigorous attempts were made to reconcile the recalcitrant nun and induce her to modify her views. Finally, moved by the pious exhortations of the patriarch, Federigo Cornaro, she became somewhat resigned to her fate. Then it was said of her that "she abandoned the pomp of fine garments, which had possessed so great a charm for her," and the records show that the last years of her life were spent in an endeavor to atone for the extravagances of her youthful conduct. A number of devout books were produced by her during this time, and among them the following curious titles may be noticed: _The Paved Road to Heaven_ and _The Purgatory of Unhappily Married Women_.