Sexual love in the fiction of Joyce Carol Oates -- Erica Jong: flying or grounded? -- Lois Gould: the musical chairs of power -- Gail Godwin: order and accommodation -- Joan Didion: the hurting woman -- Winging upward: Black women: Sarah E. Wright, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker -- Piecemeal liberation: Marge Piercy, Sara Davidson, Marilyn French, Grace Paley.