the literary forms that Spainish colonial culture had introduced necessitated a certain amount of familiarity with rules of writing as these had been laid down in Spain and Europe,and the severely limited education made available to women did not give them access to such knowledge. Nonetheless,writing by women, though this did not see print, was going on. Urbana at Feliza, in which two sister exchange letters on sundry topics that included the requisites of public office and proper decorum at the dinner table,suggests that the personal letter was widely cultivated as a form of expression by women. As researchers in women writing go deeper into the literary past, we ought to be getting fine samples of the letter as a genre specially developed by women.