[4] The primary audience for Haywood's journal was women – the newly affluent middle classes, and the upper strata with leisure time and money.

To do this it employs four characters: the eponymous "Female Spectator," who shares the benefits of her lifetime experience, and her three assistants, each of whom represents an idealized woman at a different stage of life: Euphrosine, the beautiful unmarried daughter of a wealthy merchant; the happily married and sophisticated Mira; and a "Widow of Quality.

"[3] Each issue of the journal was originally published in book format and usually covers a single topic or narrative in the form of essays or stories[1] which frequently revolve around "love and marriage",[5] with an emphasis on moral attitudes.

[3] The explicit moral instruction is bolstered with exemplary or cautionary anecdotes[1] that demonstrate an "appropriate" point of view of different situations and warn of the consequences of risky behaviours.

[3] She devoted one series of issues, for example, to the study of Baconian empiricism and the natural world[5] and by so doing is said to have fostered women's interest in the microscope.