ABSTRACT
The reader is provided with a number of stimuli for the visual imagination. To speak of metaphor as a species of imagery is to claim that it is primarily concerned with the evocation of mental pictures. Of course, defenders of the term sometimes use it in an expanded sense whereby it is no longer confined to the visual. Books are readable; by passing the eye over their print we receive messages, ideally truths. They have covers, and are kept closed when not in use. Theories of metaphor which speak of special metaphorical meanings, according to Davidson, mistake their goal. It is striking how regularly when a woman's face or person is in question, it is her sexual guilt or innocence that is to be read from it. The general tendency is for women to be seen as the books or papers which are to be read by men - having been written or printed upon by other men.
