In Marge Piercy's work, the repair of the world involves an affirmation of a healing and nurturing principle, sometimes depicted as matriarchal, but generally not gender-bound. In this book, the first comprehensive, critical survey of all of Piercy's fiction to date (including her newest novel, The Longings of Women), the author places Piercy in American literary history and in American neofeminist thought. She also highlights Piercy's analysis of power patterns in intimate relationships and in society, and constructions of sexuality and gender as they relate to issues of class and...

While there is a predominant celebration of mobility and instability metaphors in contemporary feminist discourse, concepts of home, rest or dwelling are frequently left unproblematized and perceived as simple, static and lacking in development potential. This study finds that despite the countless geographic and ideological overlappings in feminist thought, two basic positions may be discerned. There is a fashionable celebration of what the author calls a resisting or bracing space, a site of resistance of constant travel where all comforts of home, unity and dwelling are programmatically...