Carol Gilligan

Feminist’s Novel Bends Experience to Fit Theory

by Adelle Waldman
Jan. 15th, 2008, 5:04 pm
Tags:
Carol Gilligan, author of <i>In a Different Voice&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;The Birth of Pleasure</i>, was Harvard University’s first professor of gender studies.
Getty Images
Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice and The Birth of Pleasure, was Harvard University’s first professor of gender studies.

KYRA
By Carol Gilligan
Random House, 241 pages, $25

Carol Gilligan is one of the most influential feminist social theorists of her time. She’s also one of the least rigorous. Now she’s written a novel. It makes perfect sense: Why bother with real people whose experience may not conform to your theories when you can just make up characters who fit precisely? (Well, perhaps because it doesn’t make for good art—but that’s a secondary concern to someone who feels she’s unearthed the essential truth of the human condition and is on a mission to disseminate it.)  read more »