Winters is a freelance writer and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In this essay, she considers Dos Passos's depiction of women in his novel.

At first glance, it might seem that Dos Passos's depiction of women is sexist or negative—after all, most of the women in U.S.A. are superficial examples of various stereotypes of women: the devoted secretary, the coarse but successful showbusiness woman, the jealous wife, the career girl, the dedicated social worker, as well as countless one-night-stands, prostitutes, and simple girls who think a man will marry them if they get pregnant but are proved wrong. Most of the main female characters become pregnant one or more times and, when they don't have a miscarriage, opt for abortion; in fact, sexual liaisons, inevitably followed by pregnancy, occur frequently throughout the trilogy. At times, this pattern is varied when...