The Bleeding Heart was published by Summit Books in 1980, French’s follow-up to the phenomenal success of The Women’s Room. Where the first novel ended in isolation (Mira alone with her consciousness), the second asks whether a feminist woman can sustain a romantic relationship with a man formed by patriarchy — whether love between equals is possible when neither party was raised for equality.
Dolores is a feminist literary scholar spending a year in Oxford. Victor is an American businessman, recently divorced, also in England temporarily. They meet, are attracted, and begin a love affair that is simultaneously passionate and embattled — because the patterns of their previous marriages (his dominance, her submission; his obliviousness, her resentment) reassert themselves despite their conscious intentions.
The novel is structured as extended conversation: Dolores and Victor talk — about their marriages, their children, their expectations, their anger. The conversations are the relationship’s substance, and French uses them to dramatize the difficulty of genuine communication between people whose emotional vocabularies have been shaped by different experiences of power. Victor genuinely believes in equality but cannot hear what Dolores is saying; Dolores genuinely wants connection but cannot stop interpreting Victor’s behavior through the lens of her first marriage.
The title has multiple resonances: the “bleeding heart” as political epithet (both characters are accused of excessive sensitivity), as romantic image (hearts that bleed for love), and as the religious icon (sacred suffering that may or may not be redemptive).
Collecting The Bleeding Heart
First edition (Summit Books, New York, 1980): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$25
- Signed first edition: $20–$50