The Male Malady: Fictions of Impotence in the French Romantic Novel
The Male Malady: Fictions of Impotence in the French Romantic Novel
Excerpt
If we are to believe the popular press and popular culture, the women's movement is over: women have won their struggle for equal rights and men have changed for the better. Nevertheless, as Susan Faludi's Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women argues, recent studies on violence against women, wage differentials, men and women's share of the housework, women's education, and the feminization of poverty show that women are far from enjoying full political, social, economic, or legal equality.
Susan Jeffords argues that this growing myth of a "reformed and performative masculinity" in contemporary American culture represents a disturbing and insidious backlash against the limited gains in equality that women have made.