[In the following review, the critic praises French's central argument in Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals but notes that the book is “overlong” and presents “a great deal of repetition.”]

In her bold, imaginative attempt to change the way we view our culture, the author of The Women's Room synthesizes an enormous amount of material from such diverse fields as anthropology, history, sociology, linguistics and science [in Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals]. The philosophical basis of all contemporary societies, French argues, is a patriarchal world view whose highest value is power: the domination of nature, which includes the subjection of women, nonwhites and the poorer classes as “inferior”; the belief in a permanent, unchanging, perfect order that somehow transcends the physical world. These values, she maintains, create the loneliness, alienation and anxiety characteristic of modern life and will almost inevitably lead to world destruction.

In her search for an alternative morality. French goes back to the far reaches of history. The first human societies, she contends, were matri-focal communities centered around the mother-child unit; they prized sharing, nurturing and survival rather than competition and killing. It was only as human beings began to alter their environment with tools, agriculture and hunting, to feel separate from and superior to nature, that the worship of control characteristic of patriarchal society made its appearance. Women, inextricably linked with nature through childbearing, became the focus of male fear and suspicion and were banished from communal and political life. French examines the consequences of this public-male/private-female split throughout history, concluding that “women have been imprisoned in the core, men on the fringe; and the two areas have been renamed.” In order to create a more humane, livable world, she states, we must assert the worth of long despised “feminine” values and replace the idea of power with that of pleasure—not self-indulgence, but belief in the value of happiness for all.

French's argument is provocative and generally convincing, but there are flaws in her presentation. The book is overlong; there is more exemplification than is necessary, and a great deal of repetition. French occasionally manipulates her material: she quotes other people's analyses of historical events as though they were facts; and several footnotes reveal that material documenting the terrible state of modern society is based on studies done more than a decade ago of conditions that have since improved.

These faults mar Beyond Power but don't negate its essential worth. French's clarion call to find an alternative morality or suffer the consequences of patriarchal thinking is impassioned and compelling. And readers emerge with a new understanding of the dangerous values that underlie modern society.