'Rethinking the Victim is a passionate and scholarly study that provides the first comprehensive investigation into representations of violence in contemporary Australian women’s writing. It is not only stimulated by a pressing social problem increasingly debated in public, but also responds to an increasing number of literary texts by Australian women writers who address gendered violence in their works. As a result, it opens up a new field of research, taking an innovative approach to existing material by focusing mostly on novels, poems, short stories, and life-histories published during the past ten years.' (Introduction)