THE SPECTACLE presented in the woman's novel,
in that fictional act that I call [auto]biography, is not
that "transcendental representation" of the "actual
features" of the woman's life or consciousness, in which the "finite,
individual self is transmuted into an infinite, aesthetic self." ¹ The
woman's novel, her [auto]biography, does not posit a mirror-imaging
of the world through the "passive instrument" of the "symbolic hero"
(or heroine). ² Neither is the woman's novel a romanticizing device
for her readers, or for the writer herself. The writer is not assumed
to be a mirror image for her audience and her novel is not held up as
a mirror of their lives. Reading a woman's novel is not so philosophi-
cally narcissistic an enterprise. Rather, we glimpse a being not unlike
ourselves; a being who is in a basic way like us. In this being's move-
ment, her making of something, we are taken by what we see and give
ourselves up to further observation of the being whose similarity to
us has forcefully "caught our eye"; our eye is caught by her vigorous
immersion in her task, the action of her text.

Thus it is the product of the writer's work, her presentation of it,
that concerns us. Her work is given to our view, and if the text con-
tains and makes visible the signal or gesture we recognize, the writ-
er's intentions no longer pertain as a matter of the first order. The
book is in our hands; the initial gesture is fixed in our gaze. The
novel's beauty or usefulness is, indeed, in the beholder's eyes, yours
and mine. Our response becomes the measure of such a novel. We do
not look into a mirror. We see with our own eyes not a universal,
idealistic, or infinite self; rather, we see an object of another woman's