The rise of feminism over the last 15 years has been accompanied by a proliferation of feminist novels—frankly didactic Bildungsromans whose subject is the education of a heroine, and of the reader, too, into the painful realities of woman's place. Some of these novels are complex and inventive…. Others are as pat as pamphlets. All, however, share a moral urgency, a zest for the role of tutor, that seem more characteristic of the 19th century than our own….

Fifteen years is a long time, though—long enough, you'd think, for everyone not enrolled in a Total Woman seminar to have gotten the message. As I cracked open Marge Piercy's fat new novel ["Braided Lives"], which is about growing up female in the 50's, I must say I wondered if she could possibly have anything to say that has not already been said—and said and said—before. Does...