Mme de Maintenon’s small notebooks hold a place of prominence within historiography. In this contribution we investigate these notebooks with a view both to their materiality and functionality. The books testify to the emphasis on writing that was central in Paul de Godet des Marais’ spiritual direction of Mme de Maintenon. Specifically, the notebooks resulted from her copying down her director’s letters. The notebooks, which evoke this little known relationship between the bishop of Chartres and the king’s last wife, are here situated within the context of the spiritual direction of female Christian souls, which was a means of gaining access to the intimate realm of experience and moulding the individual into conformity with the orthodox space of the Church and its masculine voice of authority.