Reading this novel is like playing three-dimensional chess or putting together a mosaic. Each piece that is revealed has some relationship to the others but the reader does not understand it until all the pieces are out of the box. Russ uses the parallel-universe structure and the different female narrators/characters to graphically reveal the complexity of human personality.

The reader is forced to take all the separate tiles with their different textures and colors, examine them, look for a pattern and then put them together to create a single mosaic.

1. This has been called a "feminist novel. Do you feel that this is true?

What evidence can you give to support your belief?

2. What specific societal norms does Russ examine in The Female Man?

3. Do you like Russ's techniques of using a woman's journal to reveal the plot? What other techniques might she have employed...