ABSTRACT
Elizabeth Fallaize was known for promoting women's writing explicitly in her publications and her teaching. Sometimes such books and courses on women's writing get accused of ghettoizing women - as if producing these had not been a very necessary strategy in the face of centuries of struggle to get women's voices heard, and a strategy that has not yet had its day. Pierre Lenoir represents himself as a gallant, but he despises women; he begins his story with an uncomplimentary reference to the lady. She is named 'dame' in the text but he calls her 'cette femme', focusing deliberately on biology before social status. The weakness of men leaves us with no phallus erected in Renée Vivien's stories; where there is divinity, it is usually in the shape of a goddess. Vivien notoriously died of starvation amongst other forms of self-abuse, and this biographical factoid is often brought up by those writing on her work.
