[Carolyn Heilbrun] is no different from any number of women who became feminists by joining private feelings to a set of political and philosophical principles that have been extant and evolving for—well, let us take Mary Wollstonecraft as a starting point—nearly two centuries. [The] unsettling practice of draping an oft-stated notion or simple observation in the garments of radical originality pervades ["Reinventing Womanhood"].

Mrs. Heilbrun … believes that few women imagine themselves powerful or independent; those who do (succeeding thereby in male-dominated professions) sacrifice their female identity…. [Mrs. Heilbrun writes: "Women must learn to appropriate for their own use the examples of human autonomy and self-fulfillment displayed to us by the male world."] This is close to what she called the androgynous ideal in her last book, "Toward a Recognition of Androgyny." There, she used literature to illustrate her point; here she travels "a winding path between...