She was like a pilot light that burned continuously, comfortingly.' The son of Portuguese immigrants, Corey landed at Princeton while Greer is marooned at the fictional Ryland College, where, as she dryly notes, her dorm room walls 'were the disturbing color of hearing aids.'Ī place like Ryland wouldn't have snagged a celebrity like Faith Frank in her prime, but as our omniscient narrator tells us, Faith is now 'seen as someone from the past. Greer is smart but unfocused: Her hippy-dippy parents haven't given her any direction and her most significant relationship is with her high school boyfriend, Corey. The Female Persuasion opens in 2006, when a first-year college student named Greer Kadetsky goes to hear Faith Frank speak on campus. As Wolitzer dramatizes, life isn't that straightforward and art shouldn't be either. The Female Persuasion is about a lot of things: the arc of the feminist movement, female mentorship and the inevitable moment when a younger generation comes to judge its elders as lacking.Īuthor Interviews Meg Wolitzer's 'Female Persuasion' Honors The Women Who Helped Her On Her Wayīut The Female Persuasion also makes a strong case for critic Lionel Trilling's theory that the novel of ideas is a critical tool against overconfidence -particularly the blithe overconfidence of smart people (radical, liberal or conservative) who think they've arrived at readily satisfying solutions to political and personal questions. When Faith Frank defends her working-within-the-system brand of feminist politics in this novel, you can also hear Wolitzer defending her own traditional turf as a novelist. Her novels aren't experimental, nor are they particularly diverse, though she makes an effort to be inclusive. Wolitzer is one of those rare writers who creates droll and entertaining novels of ideas. In the age of identity politics and intersectionality, however, Faith is often slammed for being too mainstream the magazine she helped found, called Bloomer, is mocked by one of its upstart competitors, a radical blog called Fem Fatale, for providing nothing more than 'pep talk to straight white middle-class women.'Īs a novelist, Wolitzer herself shares many of her Steinem-like character's strengths and perceived weaknesses. She could sift and distill ideas and present them in a way that made other people want to hear them.' We're told that Faith is not 'a firebrand or a visionary her talent was different. Faith, who's in her 60s when the story begins, seems to be modeled on Gloria Steinem: She's charismatic, sexy and witty. One of the two women at the center of Meg Wolitzer's absorbing new novel, The Female Persuasion, is a legendary feminist named Faith Frank. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

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