[In Ravages, we] are supposed to be seeing a young woman who demands absolute union and being unable to find it, desires absolute solitude. What the reader sees, however, is a young woman incapable of love, a completely selfish woman who rejects love when it is offered and then tries to force herself upon [others] when they have either been hurt too much by her or have livings to earn…. Certainly Mlle Leduc has a poetic way, with some passages, and because of this some people consider her the female Jean Genet. But unlike Genet she has no sense of the ridiculous and missing this gift of grace one laughs at the poor woman and not with her. (p. 736)

Stanley Reynolds, "Artful Dodger," in New Statesman (© 1968 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), Vol. 75, No. 1942, May 31, 1968, pp. 735-36.∗