The author questions the assumption that the triumph of feminism has resulted in a true challenge to old symbolic patterns of femininity. She takes a look at a group of feminist thinkers central to the "second wave" of feminism, who were all party to seducing the entire Western world with their visions and licensing in the 20th century a powerful new agenda. Far from representing anything new, she argues, the writers in question put forward some surprisingly stereotyped generalizations and images of woman.