French's announced intention was to go on to new themes after the success of The Women's Room. Although the focus of the present work is different, the parallels in story structure with French's first novel are noteworthy.

In both novels a first-person narrator first marries and has children with a man slated for upper-middle-class professional success. When the marriages become intolerable, the women receive no social support for their decision to divorce, since on the surface their husbands gave them "everything a woman could want." Both Mira and Anastasia then discover their own professional interests. During this stage each woman also becomes involved with a younger, less rigidly macho man. For each woman these relationships are more satisfying than their previous marriages. But these liaisons also ultimately break up, because the siren-song of masculine privilege is too strong for even "sensitive" men to resist.

Her Mother's...