Cirrus@Austlit

'Stead did not publish the kind of literary criticism that would help us reconcile her practice as a novelist with her political commitment. Her most important public comment on her art is probably the notes for her speech to the League of American Writers' Congress in June 1939, entitled "Uses of the Many-Charactered Novel" where she argues for a "novel of strife" that offers multiple viewpoints rather than a thesis, leaving readers to make their own conclusions' (p.81).