Re-vision-the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical-is for us more than a chapter in cultural history : it is an act of survival. Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for woman, is more than a search for identity; it is part of her refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society. A radical critigue of literature, feminist in its impulse, would take the work first of all as a clue to how we live , how we have been living, how we have been led to imagine ourselves, how our language has trapped as well as liberated us; and how we can begin to see-and therefore live-afresh.