SOURCE: Fuchs, Esther. “The Beast Within: Women in Amos Oz's Early Fiction.” Modern Judaism 4, no. 3 (October 1984): 311-21.

In the following essay, Fuchs provides a “gender-conscious” analysis of Oz's representations of women, concluding that Oz's female characters are stereotypes and are defined only in terms of their relationships to men.

Although, as the title indicates, this study focuses on Amos Oz's first collection of short stories, Where the Jackals Howl (Artsot hatan [Artzot ha’ tan], 1965), it points up characteristics that underlie Amos Oz's later work as well. These characteristics revolve around Oz's fictional presentation of women, as opposed to his literary treatment of men. A gender-conscious analysis of Amos Oz's technique of characterization will not only illuminate a much neglected aspect in the work of one of Israel's leading contemporary authors, but will also highlight the way in which Israeli literature, and literature in general for that matter, is...