ABSTRACT
This collection o f essays is concerned with the way in which modern women and children have been historically con structed. As a collection, it examines both speaking and silence, what could be spoken, where and when; and how words, language and texts were formative in producing takenfor-granted conceptions o f childhood, femininity and motherhood. In seeking to understand these formations, it looks particularly at people interacting with written language, as one way o f exploring the complex relations between social regulation, the circumscription o f action, and subjective ex perience in both past and present.
