Zola’s Reviews > Becoming Madame Mao > Status Update

I don't like that the writer keeps calling her "the girl" when she's well into adulthood. I've noticed that attempts to "add nuance" to complicated historical women often involves a sort of condescending removal of agency and ideology, as if they're just victims of circumstance rather than agents of history. Funny to think of that as "feminist" - in fact it's deeply sexist.