How to Fail as a Woman

I was struck by Susan Hertog’s statement in her dual biography, Dangerous Ambition: Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson: New Women in Search of Love and Power, that both West and Thompson had “failed as women.” They were successes as people, that is certain. West is the author of one of the world’s greatest books of travel writing, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, and Thompson was a journalist who influenced foreign policy and interviewed Adolf Hitler. But did they fail as women?