DAUGHTER OF DISCONTENT

by Hila Colman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 8, 1971

After ruminating inanely for fully three quarters of the book about life, love, and the pursuit of her identity as a woman, Katherine Mitchell -- seventeen and bred in a matriarchal New Hampshire menage -- finally realizes that ""Generalities and rhetoric could be the worst trap of all."" Her parents are divorced and her mother is a bitter feminist, at once undercharacterized and overcaricatured; her father, a prominent N.Y. judge running for Congress, is a stranger to her throughout most of the summer's visit. ""The things that made him interesting and attractive were: charm, strength, authority, decisiveness, a male assurance, and a certain remoteness. The things that angered her were: charm, strength, authority, decisiveness, a male assurance, and a certain remoteness."" Only his indictment for accepting a bribe while on the bench (yes, he's guilty: the will to power) breaks down the barriers born of Katherine's objectifying and puts their relationship in a personal perspective. A daughter's being needed by a father is different from a woman's self-abnegating catering to a man; and a man's behavior isn't necessarily just a function of his inflated maleness -- as per Malcolm, Judge Mitchell's sexy young campaign aide, whose seesawing attention to Katherine is a symptom of his own problems. He throws up morning and night and sees a shrink regularly -- even masculine Malcolm is insecure: wonder of wonders, people are individuals; Katherine takes off her blinders with relief and stops reacting to sex labels. There's something insulting, besides the obvious banality, about a story with a superstructure like this one: its whole purpose is to demolish the false dichotomies it first erects and that amounts to liberating a straw woman.

Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971

Categories: FICTION