Don’t Go Away Feeling Unequal

‘The Time of Her Time’ and Mailer’s Conciliatory Impulse

Authors

  • Enid Stubin Kingsborough Community College Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.68910/xnm3sq56

Keywords:

"The Time of Her Time", gender relations, sexual politics, postwar American literature, masculinity

Abstract

This essay examines “The Time of Her Time” within the framework of Advertisements for Myself, arguing that the story reveals a conciliatory dimension in Norman Mailer’s treatment of gender and sexual politics. Through close reading, it situates the text alongside related stories to trace recurring figures, narrative strategies, and conflicts shaped by class, ethnicity, and power. While often read as overtly misogynistic, the story is reinterpreted as a satirical exploration of mutual vulnerability and instability in gender relations. Placed in its cultural context, the work emerges as a self-reflexive meditation on masculinity and the shifting dynamics of postwar American life.

Author Biography

  • Enid Stubin, Kingsborough Community College

    Enid Stubin is a Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, where she teaches composition and literature.  Her areas of interest include the intersection of culture and power in seventeenth- and twentieth- and twenty-first-century writing.

The Mailer Review v.16: 20 Years of the Review

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Published

2026-11-04

Issue

Vol. 16 (2026): Special Edition: 20 Years of the Review

Section

I. Monument to Method: Ideology, Gender, and the Cultural Stakes of Mailer

How to Cite

Stubin, Enid. “Don’t Go Away Feeling Unequal: ‘The Time of Her Time’ and Mailer’s Conciliatory Impulse”. The Mailer Review, vol. 16, no. 1, Nov. 2026, pp. 15–21, https://doi.org/10.68910/xnm3sq56.