ABSTRACT
Woman as angel, woman as demon, selfless, selfish, sexual, frigid, young virgin, old maid; dichotomies abound in images of women. She is a fragmented creature, at one extreme or another, missing the complexity that normally gives shape to human existence. Virginia Woolf s statement which opens this chapter suggests a source of those dichotomies; woman has been seen almost exclusively in light of men and their needs. She takes her blunt coloring-black or white-from her ability and willingness to meet those needs. As a person in her own right, with integrity and will, she is little known. She has been the subject of literature written by men; only relatively recently has woman had a substantial literature of her own.
