SOURCE: “This Narrow Language,” in Grace Paley: Illuminating the Dark Lives, University of Texas Press: Austin, 1990, pp. 11-19.

In the following essay, Taylor examines Paley's shrewd critique of male-dominated language which demeans and dismisses women. Taylor draws attention to deliberately awkward and ironic exchanges between male and female characters in Paley's fiction that illustrate the different uses and meanings of such language.

Don’t you wish you could rise powerfully above your time and name? I’m sure we all try, but here we are, always slipping and falling down into them, speaking their narrow language.

—“The Story Hearer,” Later the Same Day, 140

With the publication of Paley’s first collection of short stories, a boldly original voice emerged, telling stories about women unlike any we had heard before. But even though her early work challenges dominant meanings and offers woman-centered definitions, it does not provide the sort...