SOURCE: Introduction to The Prude: A Novel by a Young Lady, by Ma A., and A Patch-Work Screen for Ladies, by Jane Barker, Garland Publishing, 1973, p. 143.

In the excerpt below, Grieder praises A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies for the historical importance of its authentic descriptions of ordinary life; its atypical heroine, Galesia; and its modernistic conclusion, which leaves some narrative conflicts unresolved.

… [A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies] hangs together by that most fragile of threads, a central narrator who discusses her observations and recounts her own and others' adventures. The numerous poetic epistles, though composed by Galesia and appropriate where inserted, do little to unify the narrative. And since, as Galesia herself confesses, her own existence has been either solitary or confined to extremely modest social circles, her anecdotes have little drama and almost never a climax. The book tails away, in fact, into a conversation...