cover image Women Writing about Men

Women Writing about Men

Jane Miller. Pantheon Books, $8.95 (311pp) ISBN 978-0-394-74425-4

Noting that most feminist discussion of women's novels has concentrated on the female characters in them, British academic Miller presents a carefully organized reading of the husbands, fathers, brothers and sons presented in the works of some important women novelists from the early 19th century to the present. The author maintains that the portrayal of men in the works of writers from Charlotte Bronte to Alice Walker presents an outsider's view of society so discrete thatMiller claimswomen writers make use of a cultural bilingualism in creating their novels. Readers sympathetic to this thesis will enjoy the telling quotations and feminist insights even though following the sometimes heavy-handed critiques of a woman writing about women writing about men can be a labored task. (August)