Yeah, it's something I often remark on in my historical fiction reviews - that authors, in a mistaken desire to have main characters with whom their readers will 'identify' - make the women too liberated and the men less misogynistic. That being said, I hate reading books where the characters are completely unsympathetic. The way to go is to have your protagonist be slightly marginal for the times: Jewish, or illegitimate or something similar, so that he or she has more freedom to behave in an unconventional way.