[T]his book is primarily concerned with the
mind/spirit/body pollution inflicted through patriarchal
myth and language at all levels.

-- Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

As a feminist philosopher, theologian, and political activist,
Mary Daly is deeply concerned with Bathsheba's dilemma;
however, she defines it in slightly different terms than
does Woolf. Daly argues that the patriarchal categories constructed
through language result in "a kind of gang rape" of a woman's
mind and body ( Beyond 152). In spite of (or perhaps because of)
this jarring image, Daly also argues that a woman need not be
doomed nor determined within these categories but may, instead,
turn language back on itself and construct new categories while
embarking on the journey of radical feminism. Such a journey--
from twice-born Athena to thrice-born Athena, ¹ from Righteous
Truth to Sinister Wisdom, from Dutiful Daughter to Revolting
Hag, from Spooking to Sparking to Spinning--has as its goal
"the discovery and creation of a world other than patriarchy"
( Gyn/Ecology 1). Daly invokes this multidimensional journeying of
radical feminism for herSfelf and Others in her texts. But Daly's
texts do more than just record three decades of an evolving radical
feminist consciousness. Her critiques of myth, language, and ide-
ology may also be read from the site of rhetoric and composi-
tion studies to extrapolate an Anglo-American feminist theory of
rhetoric.

Since Daly first began writing in the 1960's, her mythic and
linguistic critiques of patriarchy have gotten progressively more
radical. ² The Church and the Second Sex argues for equality of the

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