[Praxis] is an out-and-out feminist hard-hitter, addressed to, and about, women, and we can see that it tries to say: "Learn to be honest, independent, charitable; men or women, we are all in a bad way." But as generally in feminist propaganda, the message at times gets so clogged by overstatement, self-pity, and bias that personal reactions (irritation, in my case, but approval would be just as distracting) get in the way of direct imaginative response. Polemic spells death to the novel, and neither of these two is quite free of a moral mission that can tiresomely separate out, like a streak of oil in water.

[Praxis Duveen] has a bad, bad time; so monstrously and confusedly bad as fortunately does not happen to most of us, though Praxis seems intended to represent the female condition—all her women friends go through the same inexorable mincing-machine. The monstrousness...