SOURCE: "The Not-so-Failed Feminism of Jean Auel," in Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 28, No. 3, Winter, 1994, pp. 63-70.

In the following essay, Wilcox argues that Auel's works can be considered feminist.

The Clan of the Cave Bear and the three other novels in Jean Auel's Earth's Children series are surprising bestsellers. They blend carefully researched and detailed accounts of the making of flint tools, the construction of lodges from mammoth bones, and the flora and fauna of Europe during the last Ice Age with an almost soap-opera account of the life of a blond, blue-eyed woman named Ayla. Orphaned by an earthquake at an early age, Ayla was raised by a clan of Neanderthals, who teach her to be a healer. When Ayla continues to violate clan taboos, she is exiled, where she meets another Cro-Magnon man and begins a long journey to what is now Eastern Europe to...