SOURCE: “The Witches of Updike,” in New Republic, June 20, 1988, pp. 39–41.

In the following review, Gilman provides a negative evaluation of S.

John Updike's fiction has always suffered under the whips and scorns of outraged feminists. They charge him with an inability to portray, or even to imagine, women in other than clichéd, male-oriented ways, however high-flown their expression. He doesn't like women, they say, and is incapable of “getting inside” a female mind. I think the accusation is pretty much on the mark and from my file pluck a couple of many possible pieces of evidence. From a story called “The Lifeguard”: “Women are an alien race of pagans set down among us. Every seduction is a conversion.” From the novel A Month of Sundays: “Babies and guilt, women are made for lugging.”

Updike has said that he wrote his new novel in part as a refutation...