Women's Lives: The View from the Threshold

This book represents Heilbrun's effort to show how the feminism begun in the sixties and developed throughout her life has affected the literature she read and taught. She decided to arrive at this through a study of the biographies of four women, taken from before and after feminism, but while the study yielded obvious differences, there was nothing astonishing or unexpected. So, she took another look. Utilizing the concept of "liminality," a condition in which one is neither here nor there, but trapped in a societal "betwixt and between," and what life in such a conditiion can and cannot be. She discussed the "beauty imperative." The absolute need for women to have or effect a physical beauty has always had a strong relationship to the quality of women's lives. She discussed the differences between male and female sexual pleasure, noting how the pattern of male pleasure had become the rhythm of the narrative. She referred to another article on the subject: "Women, Men, Narrative, and the Principles of Pleasure" by Susan Winnett. She then wrote the remainder of the book in the circuitous pattern of female pleasure. The book discussed the liminality of Joan of Arc and other famous women. It touched upon the concept of "Queen bees," those women of power who got there by becoming one of the boys and did, and would do, nothing to help other gifted women to stand by their sides. They were as derisive about women as their male counterparts. Largely, though, the book is a collection of short recollections and stories regarding the liminal lives of women poised on the threshold, ready to begin to start.