The main aim of "Her Idoll Selfe"? Shaping Identity in Early Modern Women- Self-Writings is to offer fresh readings of as yet little-read early modern women- texts. I look at a variety of texts that are either explicitly concerned with the constitution of the writer- self, such as the autobiographies by Lady Grace Mildmay and Martha Moulsworth, or in which the preoccupation with the self is of a more indirect nature, as in the mothers" advice books by Elizabeth Grymeston, Dorothy Leigh, Elizabeth Richardson or the anonymous M. R., or even in women- poetry, drama and religious verse. I situate the texts in the context of early modern discourses of femininity and subjectivity to pursue the question in how far it was possible for early modern women to achieve a sense of agency in spite of their culturally marginal position. In that, my readings aim to contribute to the ongoing critical process of decentring the early modern period. At the same time, I draw on contemporary theory as a methodological tool that can open up further dimensions of the texts, especially in places where the texts provide clues and parallels that lend themselves to a theoretical approach. Conversely, the texts themselves shed interesting light on feminist and poststructuralist theory and can serve as testing grounds for the current critical fascination with fragmentation and hybridity. Having outlined the theoretical and methodological framework of my study, I then analyse the women- writings with reference to a matrix of paradigmatic dimensions that encompass their most prominently recurring themes: the notion of writing the self, relationships between self and other, demarcations of private and public, the women- notorious preoccupation with self-loss and death, as well as the recurrent theme of the "golden meane". I suggest that this motif can provide the vital cue to early modern women- constitution of self. The idea of a precarious "golden meane" links in with to parallel discourses of moderation and balance at the time, but reinterprets them in a manner that can present a workable and innovative paradigm of subjectivity. Instead of subscribing to a model of decentred selfhood, early modern women- presentations of self suggest that a concluding but contested compromise is a workable strategy to achieve a form of selfhood that can responsibly be lived with.