Sand takes the timeless theme of a younger woman in love with an older man to create a romance with a feminist twist. Her vivacious heroine is both the author's ideal of female emancipation and a subtle attack on the other Marianne, the French Republic's convention-bound Muse.

The Masculine Mystique, the second volume of Marilyn French's monumental, readable, and unprecedented history of women, analyzes and evaluates the lives of women in societies around the world between feudal times and the French Revolution.

Drawing upon fifteen years of collaboration with a team of researchers and prominent historians, the volume opens with fascinating chapters comparing medieval Europe and Japan, disparate cultures which nevertheless shared traditions of male dominated aggression and competitiveness. French then shows how, in Europe, this tradition led to...