For those who think fiction is not the place to sermonize, Rubyfruit Jungle is often too blatantly preachy. Molly, the main character, has been a radical lesbian from birth, refusing all the conventional limitations of being a girl. In play she says, "I got to be the doctor because I'm the smart one and being a girl don't matter." Faced with the requirement to please others, she counters with, "I care if I like me, that's what I really care about." These assertions are the sort also to be found in the new, right-minded literature for children being published by feminist presses. There is nothing wrong with them. Nor is there anything wrong with Molly's sermonizing to a friend who feels limited by her background in what she can do with her life…. But the earnestness would weigh heavily if the book were not lifted by arrogant humor, never-mind-the-consequences fury, and transcending tenderness…. The film Molly makes of her adopted mother as a thesis for her degree is the device by which Molly transcends the bitterness she might otherwise have fixed on, for the film is the real portrait of a woman who did what she could in a narrow, prejudice-ridden world from which she had no way of escape. At the same time, it underlines the remarkable gifts of defiance and intelligence which have marked Molly for freedom. Rubyfruit Jungle is a far shout from the maimed religious and psychological apology of The Well of Loneliness and, as propaganda, healthier, for protest is a more accurate weapon against bigotry than special pleading. Rita Mae Brown is ready to play without a handicap. (pp. 194-95)
Jane Rule, "Four Decades of Fiction," in her Lesbian Images (copyright © 1975 by Jane Rule; reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc.), Doubleday, 1975, pp. 183-96.∗
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