Except sometimes her characters don’t speak. They think instead what they’d like to say to the cool, slimy face of patriarchy. (In After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie Julia thinks, “Because he has money he’s a kind of god. Because I have none I’m a kind of woman.”) Julia who has been “smashed up” by her lover leaving her, who worries over becoming “shabby” and growing old. The rage and violence and vulnerability in these forgotten women. That scene where Julia’s staring at a Modigliani reproduction (the slanted honey-toned nude): “I felt as if the woman in the picture were laughing at me and saying:
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