Using the phrase 'feminine writing' in the title of a paper would seem to take it for granted that there is indeed such a thin~ that women do write -or at least can write- in a specifically feminine way which it is possible to identify, describe and comment upon. The idea remains hotly debated even though many critics, not all of them radical feminists, have asserted that indeed this is so, and have proceeded to point out what they regarded as the characteristic features- with regard to content and/or style - of this type of writing. The exercise has not always turned out to be very liberating for women writers, who were sometimes consigned to the rendering of a certain type of experience which, in the eyes of men, simply went to show that women were hysterical creatures who could only on rare occasions rise above the emotional quagmire to which their sex con· signed them.