The Tongue Snatchers

Women, in Herrmann's dark vision, are trapped in male-created categories of thought and feeling. Society's prevalent ``virile system,'' as decoded by this French novelist-teacher, is hierarchical, misogynistic, preoccupied with control. Woman has been reduced to a mute mirror, an actress reciting lines invented by men. To create an authentic self, to dream her own future, a woman must steal back language from the female-hating culture that has co-opted it. Originally published in France in 1976, this feminist essay is by turns lyrical, wry, angry, recondite, impassioned. Herrmann's referents include Proust, Montaigne, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Lady Murasaki, Claude Levi-Strauss and Zelda Fitzgerald. A lawyer by training, Hermann views ancient Roman law and legend as symptomatic of Rome's quest to annihilate feminine power, an attitude which laid the bedrock for contemporary women's self-entrapment. (Feb.)