SOURCE: "Characters and Strategies in Audrey Thomas's Feminist Fiction," in Essays on Canadian Writing, No. 47, Fall, 1992, pp. 43-50.

Quigley is an editor for the journal Essays on Canadian Writing and ECW Press, where she works on the Canadian Writers and Their Works series. In the following essay, she studies The Wild Blue Yonder as feminist fiction.

Probably more than one reviewer has commented that he is tired of all the negative male characters that populate Audrey Thomas's work, but, if the reader can get past them, there are also a lot of interesting female characters and strategies in her fiction. And, if patriarchy was not institutionalized in our private and public lives, there would be no reason for feminist struggles, which are numerous, so a feminist critique of men should not be dismissed lightly.

Most of the men in Audrey Thomas's collection The Wild Blue Yonder seem misplaced...