A unique study of how novels by Lawrence, Forster and George Eliot can be read as rewritings of Sophocles's Antigone : each is presented as a socially and sexually involving argument between two sisters. The author provides an interconnected case-study where each text works on the hidden meanings of the other. Female sexuality, expressed through the language of duality (vulnerability, frustration, submission and destructivity, consummation and rebirth), becomes an ideal vehicle for crossing the barriers between sexes and between societies, as between the texts themselves.

Masako Hirai is Professor in the English Department at Kobe University in Nishinomiya, Japan.