Caruso (The Behrend College, Pennsylvania State U.) and contributors locate O'Connor within feminist criticism, despite the author's claims that her writing was primarily spiritual and never consciously feminist. Essays include O'Connor's reactions to traditional womanhood, especially to the Southern Belle she could not be; her reactions to patriarchal culture, in which her female background characters exist only to define the male; her exploration of women's violent fantasies and the violence perpetuated on them; and her concept of the corporeal, as she found it in her own female form and disability. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)