The late Georgian/Victorian Era was certainly a time of profound creative female agency. Mary Shelley published Frankenstein about a decade before in 1818, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's career was beginning a few years after that. The Bronte Sisters were coming of age at the same time as Goodridge painted this piece, and a notable list of women writers would soon follow, not the least of which were Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen.

Sexual agency was, of course, not a given for women at the time, which is what makes this nude portrait so subversive. Today it's not out of place by any means, precisely because we accept that women have an equal claim to bodily autonomy (most of us anyway). In the 1820s it was a far different thing. Women were generally expected to be little more than subversive wards to their fathers or husbands and any empowerment had to be conferred within the bounds of that social compact. In some cases, it would have been very dangerous for a woman to paint anything close to nudity, given the religious sensibilities of the time.