The body of the book consists of behavioral studies of three women writers: Madame de Stael, Madame de Charriere, and George Sand were chosen as subjects "because their writing can be seen to rise so directly from the necessities of their conveniently documented psychological situations." [vi]. They each claimed to be important, and resorted to writing novels to reinforce their claims in the face of "the large demands of love denied in early life".

The author criticizes literary criticism for its painstaking analysis of the works when so much more can be learned from behavioral studies of writers. He rejects the "binary theory of personality" (for the artist who wants to write on one plane and live on another), and confidently projects the future of literary criticism as a form of applied (and clinical/behavioral) psychiatry. In this world, the work of art is not autonomous, and the artist is not unique. They adopt roles like all human beings in response to stresses consistent with their programming.

De Stael is translated as a predecessor of Proust, in having a genius for self-delusion, and knowing the arts while being insensitive to them.

Almost alone, the author reveals de Charriere as clearly dying of a hidden wound close to her heart, and not the arrogant monster so often depicted by the biographers of James Boswell and Benjamin Constant.

The author explains his interest in Sand as more than simply the desire to know the process by which the young beauty drawn by Delacroix became the person in the photographs taken of her in older age. He asks the readers to dismiss the notion "that I have written about her because she was a monster". She was repeatedly given convincing reasons for believing she could improve the realities with which she was confronted. She could take refuge in fantasy; she could become a writer.