Sexual Politics by Kate Millett
Published 1970 · 120,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism, Feminist Literature, Nonfiction
How hard is Sexual Politics to read?
Sexual Politics scores 52 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 42 out of 100
- Academic vocabulary from literary criticism, political theory, and psychoanalysis.
- Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
- Scholarly prose. Long, carefully argued sentences.
- Abstraction: 48 out of 100
- Theoretical framework combining literary analysis with political theory.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense with close reading, historical analysis, and theoretical argument.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Systematic argument: theory, then literary analysis, then history.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- Sex as political act. Literature as ideology.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- Millett's readings expose the politics beneath celebrated prose with cool precision.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Millett diagnoses patriarchy comprehensively. Revolution is called for but not mapped out.
- Structural complexity: 32 out of 100
- Three parts: theory, literary criticism, historical survey.
How Sexual Politics is regarded
Sexual Politics holds a literary regard score of 59 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.