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One wishes that people would bother to read Plath and not the legend. If you read the poetry then it becomes apparent that she is much more playful with and less oppressed by ideas of what constitute male and female roles than Hughes is. It is interesting in this respect to compare some of Plath's poems with Hughes's 'answers' to them in Birthday Letters. Re Rich's comment about women coming to literature and finding it dominated by men: after 40 years of feminist writing and feminist scholarship one wonders if this can possibly be true in any real sense. But of course we go on describing gender/gendered positions/constructions because to stop doing so would imply that there might be a place beyond gender and that's just too scary for everyone, isn't it? cheers David %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%