General editor's preface -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on contributors -- i Feminist scholarship and the social construction of woman /Gayle Greene and Coppelia Kahn -- 2 Varieties of feminist criticism /Sydney Janet Kaplan -- 3 The politics of language: beyond the gender principle? /Nelly Furman -- 4 Inscribing femininity: French theories of the feminine /Ann Rosalind Jones -- 5 Mind mother: psychoanalysis and feminism /Judith Kegan Gardiner -- 6 Pandora's box: subjectivity, class and sexuality in socialist feminist criticism /Cora Kaplan -- 7 What has never been: an overview of lesbian feminist criticism /Bonnie Zimmerman -- 8 Black women writers: taking a critical perspective /Susan Willis -- 9 Notorious signs, feminist criticism and literary tradition /Adrienne Munich -- Index.