As rubric then, representation deals with the relationship between women's writing and women's place in society. Any discussion of representation contains its opposite-the misrepresentations to which women have been subjected and in which they have participated. Accordingly, we examine here the means by which representations of women also inevitably misrepresent that which they portray. All representations function within certain socially defined limits, and acts of misrepresentation are an inherent part of any given representational system because systems are always partial and always subject to interpretation. Notions of representation and misrepresentation might productively be thought to coexist on a kind of continuum. We are thus not seeking to discover the truth about women, but rather to examine the ways in which women have written about-and read about-themselves and their experiences.