Should women concern themselves with reading other than the Bible? Should women attempt to write at all? Did these activities violate the hierarchy of the universe and men's and women's places in it? Colonial American women relied on the same male authorities and traditions as did colonial men. As a result, they encountered special difficulties validating themselves in writing.In Authority and Female Authorship in Colonial America, William Scheick explores logonomic conflict in the works of north-eastern colonial women, whose writings often register anxiety not typical of their male contemporaries. Their works provide especially noteworthy instances of bifurcations emanating from American colonial women's conflicted confiscation of male authority. Scheick reveals subtle authorial uneasiness and subtextual tensions caused by the attempt to draw legitimacy from male authorities and traditions.