ABSTRACT
Early modern English mothers exerted extraordinary effort to instruct their children in spiritual matters, 2 including spiritual reading. This we know in part because of ample testimony in life writing 3 by and about these mothers. In addition to the entire genre of the mother’s legacy, in which women advised their children from the rhetorical—and sometimes literal—platform of the deathbed, 4 letters, diaries, and autobiographies indicate that mothers actively modeled spiritual reading for their children and that these children in turn learned to be devoted readers of the Scripture and other spiritual texts in part because of these lessons. And yet, thanks to this same body of autobiographical material, we also know that many women read romance, 5 a much more controversial type of reading material. Given this seemingly contradictory reality in which women read romance and—as mothers—performed an influential pedagogical role in their households, it makes sense to examine women’s life writing more closely for insights into mothers’ guidance on the supposedly immoral romance genre. What we find—and in many cases what we don’t find—suggests a critical shift in an early modern woman’s relationship with romance when she transitioned from maidenhood to motherhood.
