SOURCE: "The Sexual Swamp: Female Erotics and the Masculine Art," in The Southern Review, Louisiana State University, Vol. 28, No. 2, April, 1992, pp. 333-52.

In this excerpt, McMahon addresses the issue of the aesthetic differences between men and women. Glück's work, the critic finds, often depicts female sexuality and artistic expression to be at cross-purposes; erotic love has a lack of structure that is the opposite of artistic form. For this reason, the critic concludes, Glück seems to feel that "to be an artist… means to adopt the masculine imposition of boundary."

For some time now feminist and Marxist and psychoanalytic critics have been exploring the language of patriarchy, trying to unearth a female aesthetic from phallogocentric digs. The lexicon is often funny ("phallocrat" is one of my favorites; another is "phallogocentric," Jacques Derrida's neologism linking phallus, logos, and center, all three of which deconstruction attempts to undo...