Book Review

Abstract

The role of literature in perpetuating and breaking out of gender stereotypes has long occupied the various strands of feminist literary criticism. Some have viewed fiction as a mixture of reproductive and liberatory tendencies when it comes to sexism. I examine this and other issues from the vantage point of Johan Lyall Aitken's Masques of Morality. I place the text in the context of newer research on the “ethic of care,” noting Aitken's contributions to understanding the social dimensions and limitations of this ethic for women's moral development. Next, I examine the issue of femininity in literature and the portraits of femininity contained in Aitken's book. I follow this with an exploration of how Aitken contributes to feminist literary methodologies. I then consider questions of the “politics of fiction”: the ideological nature of literature, its relation to lived experience and the emancipatory potential of literature. I conclude with some observations on literature and cultural politics.