Madsen Hardy has a doctorate in English literature and is a freelance writer and editor. In the following essay, she explores Berriault's representations of superstition in her story.

So she was . . . Dr. Curie ... discoverer of so much that was undetectable and that might not even exist.

Angela Anson, the sensitive young protagonist of Gina Berriault's "Women in Their Beds," doesn't like going to work. In fact, she is not sure that she will last at her job as a hospital social worker for more than a few days. And it's not just because the job assigning patients on the women's ward to their next "beds" at various public institutions is depressing, or because she is afraid that it will be discovered that she lacks the credentials for the job, though these things are also true. Angela suffers from a feeling of dread that is both more personal...