SOURCE: "The Thorn Birds: Fiction, Fantasy, Femininity," in Formations of Fantasy, edited by Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan, Methuen, 1986, pp. 142-66.

In the following excerpt, Kaplan identifies elements of fantasy and female sexuality in romance literature through analysis of The Thorn Birds. Kaplan draws attention to the novel's incest motif, portrayal of seduction, and treatment of sexual identity in light of Freudian psychoanalysis and feminist theory.

The Thorn Birds confirms not a conventional femininity but women's contradictory and ambiguous place within sexual difference. Feminist cultural criticism has initiated a very interesting debate about the meaning of reading, and watching, romance. What follows is a contribution to that discussion which tries to see how, in historical, political and psychoanalytic terms, texts like Gone with the Wind and The Thorn Birds come to have such a broad appeal for women, centering the female reader in a particular way...