SOURCE: A review of The Newly Born Woman, in Poetics Today, Vol. 9, No. 3, 1988, pp. 670-71.

In the positive review below, the critic discusses the central themes of The Newly Born Woman.

[The Newly Born Woman] represents the new French feminist theoretical movement today. Its authors explore through readings of historical, literary and psychoanalytic accounts, what is hidden and repressed in culture, veiled structures of language and society that have determined the woman's place in society and culture. In part one of the book, "The Guilty One," Clement provides an analysis of "images of women," especially images of the sorceress and the hysteric, as exemplary female figures. In part two, "Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays," Cixous elaborates the imaginings of liberations as well as theories of the phallocratic, patriarchal hierarchization that has led to the need for liberation. In part three, "Exchange," the authors collaborate in...