The story of feminism as told by Julia Kristeva in ‘Women's Time’ begins with the utopian vision of ‘Woman’ as a self–knowing subject who acts as an equal to all other individuals in the social system. This is also the point where my exploration of Russ's work will take off in Part One, tracing the materialist feminist moment through her short stories and novels. The main site of intersection between Russ's fiction and radical materialist feminism lies in both discourses’ desire for women's agency and knowledge of self. The epigraph for this chapter from Monique Wittig crystallizes this impulse. However, Russ—like Wittig—also challengesfundamental assumptions of materialist feminism such as the notion that ‘woman’ constitutes a stable, universal social class.

In this context, ‘agency’ signifies the power and ability to effect changes in the process of human history, combined with the recognition by others that the agent is indeed the origin of that change. In other words, I am an agent, if I do something and society (which includes myself) acknowledges the products of this activity as effected by me. This concept builds on two premises: first, that the actions of an individual constitute her identity and second, that agency is prerequisite for human existence within the cultural context. If I am denied this capacity, I do not exist as part of society. My point here is not that agency is essentially and necessarily the basis of identity, but that it has this function in a materialist feminist analysis of society. From this materialist feminist perspective, a patriarchal society is a society which fully or partially denies women agency. The desire for agency underlies issues such as voting rights and reproductive rights, as well as images of women in literature and the visual arts—most of which are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago. This feminist moment, therefore, strives to create an equal existence for women (and by extension all members of society) and to transform the socio–economic framework.

In Russ's fiction, agency as a political concept operates in complex ways. Its availability or non–availability governs not only women's stories in Russ's fictional worlds but also the ways in which the protagonists relate to the acts of narration and writing.