The novelist and essayist Elizabeth Hardwick is one of contemporary America's mo
st brilliant writers, and "Seduction and Betrayal," in which she considers the c
areers of women writers as well as the larger question of the presence of women
in literature, is her most passionate and concentrated work of criticism. A gall
ery of unforgettable portraits--of Virginia Woolf and Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy
Wordsworth and Jane Carlyle--as well as a provocative reading of such works as "
Wuthering Heights, Hedda Gabler," and the poems of Sylvia Plath, "Seduction and
Betrayal" is a virtuoso performance, a major writer's reckoning with the relatio
ns between men and women, women and writing, writing and life.
