Might gender be considered as a paratext? Or might paratext be gendered? These questions require a consideration of the construction and functions of gender in relation to the material and spatial elements of text. These elements are often considered to be extraneous to the formation of gender, perhaps because of their physical objectivity within a paradigm of modernity that privileges the written, the graphic, as signifying presence. Where texts are explicitly read and received through the framework of gender – where, for example, gender is thematised in the shape of a female speaker – it seems legitimate to ask how the reader finds and identifies these clues (or cues), and in what circumstances he/she is able to resist or ignore them. If paratext is indeed ‘a zone not only of transition but also of transaction’, might this zone not play a crucial role in inaugurating the play of gender within a given text or genre? How does a reader identify gender textually? Is gender integral to a text, or does the reader ascribe gender to given aspects of that text? If the former, by what kinds of textual or paratextual signs can this be identified? If the latter, what elements of the text signal to the reader that this is the code by which it might generate certain kinds of meaning? This essay will argue that a series of broadly paratextual elements play a crucial role in facilitating the reader’s identification of and response to female speech, that these are variable across genre and time, and that they tell us much about how the relationship between gender and print was understood.