Preview Ladders to Fire
Ladders to Fire, Anaïs Nin's first full-length novel, was revolutionary in that it addressed woman's role in a male-dominated world in the mid-1940s. Through her iconic characters Lillian, Djuna, and Sabina, and their relationship with Jay, Nin was able to examine "the destruction in woman...woman's struggle to understand her own nature."
Lillian, trapped in a conventional marriage, was "traversing a street... She was not attacked, raped, or mutilated. She was not kidnapped for white slavery. But as she crossed the street...she felt as if all these horrors had happened to her, she felt the nameless anguish, the shrinking of the heart, the asphyxiation of pain, the horror of torture whose cries no one hears." She confides in Djuna, provides nurturing to the needy Jay, and finds the freedom she seeks in the fiery Sabina, with whom she has a failed sexual relationship.
The prose is classic Nin—take, for example, the following passage:
"With each mouthful Lillian...
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