Roberts's heroines typically struggle with definitions of womanhood imposed on them by a dominant patriarchy. Roberts uses the concept of the androgynous mind as an alternative to the gender divisions prevalent in society. Without an integration of the male and female within each individual, her work suggests, relations between men and women remain incomplete and flawed. Another major influence on Roberts's writing is the Catholic Church. In her 1983 essay "The Woman Who Wanted to Be a Hero," Roberts describes Catholicism as "language itself"; throughout her childhood, she prayed to her "constant companion" God, whom she perceived as an androgynous being. As an adult, Roberts distanced herself from religious institutions to explore spirituality as a personal experience. She uses her writing in part as a means to criticize the treatment of women in Judeo-Christian society. She is particularly interested in abolishing the Madonna/ whore dichotomy, which she finds is still powerful in society. Roberts also points to a third influence on her art: the idea of loss in general and in particular the loss of her French-Catholic mother's undivided attention and love. Her fiction and poetry revisit this theme from several angles and suggest that for Roberts the mother-daughter bond is the most complex and engaging of all human relationships.
