Chapter 25 - Roth and Women

Summary

While much of Roth’s work centers on male protagonists and their fraught masculine identities, his works also include an array of intriguing, if supporting, female characters. From Brenda Patimkin in Goodbye , Columbus to Lucy Nelson of When She Was Good (Roth’s only female lead) to Drenka Balich in Sabbath’s Theater to Faunia Farley in The Human Stain, the women in Roth’s fiction offer necessary depth and dimension to his narratives. Still, due to Roth’s admittedly central focus on the exploits of his masculine characters, his work has often been deemed sexist or misogynistic. This chapter will contend with such accusations, providing an overview of those criticisms, acknowledging places in his fiction where female characters are either thinly developed or stereotypical, as well as those places where his female characters belie the aforementioned accusations.