ABSTRACT
An individual writer's awareness of his or her text as print commodity is expressed through metaphors of labor that were in close proximity to the writer in question - domestic labor, scholarly labor, or blacksmithing. Isabella Whitney's relationship to her literary labor suggests that a notion of professional authorship could also be formulated by deploying cultural discourses – not only those concerning print, but discourses of marriage and domesticity - and locating oneself in the spaces in between. With respect to the work of the woman writer, historians of women's work have shown that early modern women had few opportunities to fashion a stable, independent occupational identity outside of marriage. The letter counters the ideology of the household as enclosed space, like the bodies of the women who inhabit it, by suggesting that both the household and its women are deeply embedded in public life.
