Introduction
As in Desmond Morris's The Naked Ape, the protagonist of this novel has the surface veneer of herself scratched, and finds that anthropological reality lurks very close to the polish and mores acquired through societal guidance and taboos.
A woman who has been patterned in false swirlings and rigid convolutions imposed upon her true self, by pressures not of her own making, has long been trapped, as have been so many quietly unhappy and silently frustrated individuals, in the modern press of obligation and conformation.
When she is forced by circumstances to flee familiar surroundings, she finds herself in a situation totally new, one where force and dominance is the new law. Degraded and overwhelmed by brute strength, semi-paralyzed by fear and the unknown forces beginning to unleash themselves within her newly awakened body, she is at last forced to draw strength and substance from within herself, where all true power lies.
At first buffeted from all sides by a seemingly irresistible and implacably cruel fate, she is in danger of being de-individualized, of losing her former identity, however unhappy, to the horrors of the imprisoning situation in which she finds herself. She has fled from one form of social retribution only to plunge into a morass of moral quicksand from which she cannot extricate herself.
Too, she is carrying an added burden besides that of her own guilt-the responsibility for another, younger life. Struggling to maintain a grip on sanity, she must also be responsible for the safety and well-being of another girl.
Forced to accept the sensual realities of herself, she begins to understand her own body, her own mind. Through a form of shock treatment, she feels a new concept of herself growing stronger by the hour. She learns to look deeply, to feel deeply, and realizes that the primary guilt has been society's, not her own, except in the sense that she has allowed herself to be manipulated and controlled by other people.
Gathering courage through insight, and via the introduction of yet another ingredient in the form of a real and Randian-selfish man, she slowly but positively becomes whole. A brighter life is in the offing for her, and because she has learned through experience, she will be ready to take this life in both hands, to live and enjoy it to the fullest.
This novel appears as a study in both personal relationships and the dimly understood workings of the human ego, symbolizing the villain forces of society in the person of a savagely dominant antagonist. It also shows how an individual can and may resist the shapings forced upon her, if she can but discover and tap the wellspring of her true identity.
-The Publisher