This book attempts to examine a recurrent motif in allegory, the female form as an expression of desiderata and virtues. I hope, in spite of omissions, ignorance, unwarranted personal likes and dislikes, to throw some light on the plural significations of women's bodies and their volatile connections with changing conceptions of female nature. Justice is not spoken of as a women, nor does she speak as a woman in medieval moralities or appear in the semblance of one above City Hall in New York or the Old Bailey in London because women were thought to be just, any more than they were considered capable of dispensing justice.