SOURCE: “Flaubert's Parrot,” in New Republic, Vol. 210, No. 19, May 9, 1994, pp. 39–41.

In the following mixed review, Donoghue considers Gray's examination of misogyny in Rage and Fire.

Louise Colet is mainly known as Flaubert's lover—“his one great love,” according to Francine du Plessix Gray [in Rage and Fire]—and the recipient of his most remarkable love letters. Otherwise she is a footnote in French literary history. Gray does not make large claims for her as a poet, but she plans to turn her into a personage. She hopes to do this by presenting her as a feminist and a victim “whose memory has been erased by the caprices of men.” Another emblem there. Two earlier attempts to rescue Colet from general indifference have had some success in colleges and universities, Joseph Jackson's Louise Colet et ses amis littéraires (1937) and Micheline Bood and Serge Grand's L'Indomptable Louise Colet (1986). Gray...