ABSTRACT
The author raises questions about literate subjects and audiences in the early modern period, assuming, for most of the time, some inevitable and inevitably sympathetic relationship between the two. In the early modern period, as women writers themselves began to attempt to control a written vernacular, they often took issue with their male readers' readings. Shakespeare's Malvolio suffers exactly because he puts himself at the center of women's work, for instance. In place of the relationship between student and teacher, or mistress and scribe, women's literacy in such texts draws upon the twinned image of mother and child. Most stories of mothers and babies involve less startling plots and images, although many maternity stories in the early modern period actively and surprisingly separate mother from child. Like Olivia, Anne Peace is a battleground for the early modern culture wars Margaret W. Ferguson describes, debates concerning what it could mean to read and write properly.
