Dear Marion:

Thank you for your letter. The 15 1/2 hour trip to Nantucket and back
was strenuous but uneventful. I left Belmont at 6 a.m., arrived at
the house on Nantucket at noon, took the 5:30 p.m. boat back to the
mainland, and arrived home again at 9:30 p.m. I spent most of the time
in the house putting things in order and vacuum cleaning. There were
no problems, except that on the return trip the ship's lounge was
uncomfortably cold.

When I described die Andere, Dorothea, as a militant feminist, I was,
so far as I can tell, not motivated by personal concerns, conscious,
subconscious or unconscious. Any misgivings I might have had about
feminist issues were resolved for me conclusively more than fifty
years ago. The feminist questions raised in the novel have two roots,
the first being that Dorothea was so much younger than Doehring,
who attempted to rationalize undeniably erotic impulses as being
directed toward a woman he wished to consider his daughter. This
self-delusion raised spiritual if not legal issues of incest, such
as were an intense focus of concern for feminism in its most
belligerent form.  The immediate impetus to my writing about
feminimsm was a patient, a seductive young woman with psychosomatic
symptoms who was preoccupied with a personal vendetta against
her step-father, who she claimed had "abused" her, a charge
which to his embarrassment, her lawyer was unable to corroborate.
As is my custom, I did not ask for details. To convince me of the
validity of her complaint, she gave me a feminist tract, a paperbound
book, which had refreshed her memory, or which had suggested to her
the wrongs she claimed to have suffered.  Sceptic that I happen to be,
I thought I recognized in the propaganda by which she had been
reminded or persuaded, a theme of considerable literary value.
a dispassionate account of which might be of interest to potential
readers.

In a broader perspective, feminism appears as one form of political
action. Political action in turn must be understood as an interpretation
of history, as an expression of individual behavior, but also as an
expression of the behavior of the group, a manifestation of the
"herd instinct", a formula that should be acceptable to you as a
zoologist.

Jochen