ch. 1. Women: living stories, telling lives -- ch. 2. Politics, literary form, and a feminist poetics of the novel -- ch. 3. The subversive "I": female experience, female voice -- ch. 4. Growing up female: Lives of girls and women and The bluest eye -- ch. 5. Beyond teleology: Violet clay and The stone angel -- ch. 6. Fragmentation, complexity, and wholeness: The waterfall and The golden notebook -- ch. 7. Women's stories, women's lives: the novel, the reader, and cultural change.