It was in reading the feminist canon that I was first lured away from the unabashed pursuit of fiction. And Marilyn French was a presiding deity. must have been 19 when I first read The Women's Room. It was an old Abacus edition with an afterword by Susan Faludi. I could see the patches of over-earnestness, the way characters represented issues, the way characters mouthed particular viewpoints. Still it excited me and satisfied me the same way The Female Eunuch and The Second Sex did.There were the resonances of shared experience which held some gravitas. When I read The Bleeding Heart later I agreed wholeheartedly that liberals feared the embracing of power.
But what I remember is The Women's Room's vein of quiet, bitter comedy.
But what I remember is The Women's Room's vein of quiet, bitter comedy.
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Women's Room does have that slight heavy handed and earnest quality of a lot of American fiction doesn't it? Still, I read all of M. French :-)
Anu said...
May 8, 2009 at 7:19 AM
Me too. Even Summer with George, a title that always makes me giggle
The Chasing Iamb said...
May 10, 2009 at 8:13 PM