Review by Choice Review
This study reads fiction by Doris Lessing, Angela Carter, and Gayl Jones in light of contemporary gender theory. Robinson argues that feminist theory must dismantle the essentialist notion of Woman that has emerged from the texts of Western humanism, while articulating ways in which women authors create new, historically contingent identities. In order to theorize how women become subjects in contemporary culture, it is necessary to hold in tensive suspension both "Woman" and "women," the general and the specific, and to engage simultaneously in a negative critique of master narratives that define women monovocally and in affirmative politics that insist on female-constructed polyvocal self-definitions. Robinson follows this method as she demonstrates in her readings of contemporary fiction how women negotiate the cultural texts that seek to define them and how they position themselves in the discourses in ways that allow resistance and transgression of control. The book includes extensive notes and bibliography.-B. Braendlin, Florida State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
