Correspondence

To the Editor:

I wish to thank Professor Thompson for her complimentary comments on my prose style in Merlin's Daughters, which she recently reviewed (MFS 33 [1987]: 768-770). However, because MFS readers also want to know what a book is about, I wish to inform them of the major points I make in the book, which she fails to mention at all. In my theoretical opening chapter I cite three significant subversive themes with which women fantasy writers have been concerned. These issues are 1) the renunciation of the power principle in politics, 2) the depolarization of values, and 3) the vindication of mortality. Interested readers may want to see how I develop these ideas as manifested in my selected group of authors.

A Response:

Professor Spivack's concern about the content of her book is fully justified. And while she does indeed cite three "subversive motifs" in "fantasy fiction by women writers" in her introductory chapter, I cannot agree that serious readers are likely to accept the detailed plot summaries that dominate the book as development of these "ideas."