This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Books about women and children are not valued in the same way as a book about war. And why is that? I don't know.
I can't imagine writing a book without some strong female characters, unless that was a demand of the setting.
'Undertones of War' by Edmund Blunden seems to get less attention than the memoirs of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, but it is a great book.
What these books have conclusively proven is that the diffence between men and women is exactly 38 pages.
Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men's stories about wars, business, power.
The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer.
It's a woman's book but I think the men will read it too.
If you've written a powerful book about a woman and your publisher then puts a 'feminine' image on the cover, it 'types' the book.
But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.
'Little Women' has interesting gender connotations. There are generations of women who love the book. But there are a lot of men who think it's sentimental, gooey stuff.