Gender and Destiny

This penetrating study explores some of the critical approaches common to works written by women about an extreme situation--the Holocaust--affecting both sexes. The two novels and four fictionalized memoirs on which Heinemann's analysis is based describe experiences unique to women in the Holocaust. Among Heinemann's chief areas of focus are themes, modes of characterization, peer relations, and authenticating strategies and how they differ significantly from the ways that men have shaped their prose versions of the Holocaust. This first critical treatment of Holocaust literature from a feminist perspective effectively challenges the widespread assumption that the literature of the Holocaust reflects identical experiences for both men and women.