JansenÕs book is 232 pages long, with footnotes, bibliography and index accounting for almost 38% of the book; actual narrative occupying only 62% (146 pages) of the total space. The book was written primarily with an academic audience in mind and the author has researched thoroughly; tracing information through a variety of primary source documents. The structure is simple and straightforward, with a brief introduction, followed by eight chapters dealing with case studies on four women (two chapters each), and a short conclusion. The style hovers somewhere between a novel and a documentary and remains a relatively easy read. As to purpose, Jansen herself comments:

As I began to collect these stories, I realized that I approached the task with a number of assumptions about what I would find. As my investigations slowly progressed, I found that every one of my assumptions was challenged by what I discovered.

The whole book emerges as a personal quest to restore women from the footnotes back into the main narrative of history and the resultant realization of her false personal assumptions being overturned. The title of the book gave pledge for the promise of exciting insights to come, but despite the overwhelming presentation of literary evidence, it amounted to very little by way of historical reflection and proved a deeply unsatisfying book that served only to highlight the problem of crossing over the disciplines and assuming that her own assumptions are representative of those in the discipline being entered. Jansen gives the impression that this book is an historical supplement to the wealth of current Tudor history works, but it adds very little to our understanding of women in Tudor times. HarrisÕs essay on the political influence of early Tudor women reveals JansenÕs work to be somewhat underinformed and disingenuous, despite her assiduity.