The most in-depth piece of work on radical and socialist feminist, Doctor Madeleine Pelletier. In this biography Gordon charts Pelletier's life from her childhood in relative poverty to her death in a Parisian psychiatric hospital. In the interim Gordon follows Pelletier's extraordinary journey in which she was one of the first qualified female doctors ion France. She also introduces the reader to Pelletier's research in anthropology and psychiatry, her radical political action, her feminism and her cross-dressing.