PARTISAN REVIEW
503
the clothes of a Jane Austen heroine and the emotions which go with
them. Maureen is no less obsolete than Kate.
r
t would be easy and glib for a reviewer to see this as "the dilem–
ma of modern woman" and thus put all Lessing's disturbing observa–
tions about contemporary society at arm's length. "Woman's novel," like
" Black novel," is simply one more way of saying, "That doesn't apply to
me."
And certainly many reviewers (even those who raved about this
book) put the limiting adjective "woman's" around it and tried to slink
away. But, of course, Lessing is smarter than they are. She is no more
talking
only
about women than Ralph Ellison is talking only about
blacks in
The In visible Man.
Lessing knows that in women, the condi–
tions of alienation, waste of resources, discontinuity between emotions and
"reality," are simply more visible and painful. But the problems them–
selves are those of all of us. Overpopulation and starvation, the obsoles–
cence of the family and the resurgence of authoritarianism are not
"women's problems" - comfortable though it may be to see them that
way.
The feminist publishing boom has provided its own built-in eva–
sions. That freak show of women over there, that fad, that gaggle of
geese - is not simply fifty-three percent of humanity and not simply
a passing fancy. When having and raising babies is no longer honorific
and necessary, then both sexes have to change. A book that considers
such changes is not "women's fiction" but people's fiction. Kate Brown
is not Everywoman ; she is everyone.
Erica Jong
PRIVATE AND PUBLIC
POE POE POE POE POE POE POE. By Daniel Hoffman. Doubleday and
Co. $7.95.
SWINBURNE: AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM. By Jerome J. McGann.
The University of Chicgo Press. $12.00.
KEATS AND HIS POETRY: A STUDY IN DEVELOPMENT. By Morris
Dickstein. The University of Chicago Press. $9.50.
IMAGINATION AND POWER: A STUDY OF POETRY ON PUBLIC
THEMES. By Thomas R. Edwards. Oxford University Press. $6.00.
Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe,
Daniel Hoffman's brilliant
and illuminating study, exasperates almost beyond the limits of endur–
ance. Even the most sympathetic reader will wince at the coy informality,
