Clément finds the experience of the opera house almost too powerful. Here she examines texts with an awareness not "dimmed by beauty and the sublime," an exercise that has a cumulative effect. She highlights the social framework of plots otherwise exalted by music: in La Bohème, a bitter tale of freezing poverty; in Tosca, a heroine who acts against a police state; in The Magic Flute, a battle of the sexes told by the winning side (i.e., male). But La Fanciulla del West, with a victorious central character, has never been as popular: "Opera lovers do not like this antiheroine. She is made for tomorrow."

By the lengthy final chapter, on the Ring cycle, the author has relaxed her argument. She casts an eye on both male and female, on the themes of love, incest, and the triumph of human over god. Her ecstatic response to the cycle's music--not to mention the gender-indiscriminate "undoing"--lays her conflict with opera to rest. She is, as she says elsewhere, "silenced by emotion."

Clément's writing, in Betsy Wing's deft translation, is amusing and unacademic. Her readings entertain without always persuading--or even involving--the reader. In that way, the book evokes Wayne Koestenbaum's The Queen's Throat, another case of a sensibility run rampant. Like that book, The Undoing of Women can inspire fruitful thoughts despite its own perverseness. --David Olivenbaum

The two voices of the book work in tandem, fleshing out ideas and blending together into a melody of experience. The result is a dialogue that delves into the mysteries of belief -- the relationship between faith and sexuality, the body and the senses -- which, Clément and Kristeva argue, women feel with special intensity.

Although their discourse is not necessarily about theology, the authors consider the role of women and femininity in the religions of the world, from Christianity and Judaism to Confucianism and African animism. They are the first to admit that what they have undertaken is "as impossible to accomplish as it is fascinating." Nevertheless, their wide-ranging and exhilarating dialogue succeeds in raising questions that are perhaps more important to ask than to answer.