Filling the Love Vessel: Women and Religion in Philip Roth's Uncollected Short Fiction

Since many of the men in Philip Roth's fiction perceive women as embodying a devout Judaism that excludes them, they equate their inability to achieve some level of hetero-sexual romantic fulfillment with a failed connection to their religious and cultural heritage. Throughout his short stories, which Roth used as a testing ground for his larger works, the conflation of lover and mother, both of whom uphold and represent Judaism, suggests that men have feminized their faith, and, in doing so, they often transfer their anger from one to the other.