In strong contrast to Madame de S---- in _Under Western Eyes_ is Sophia Antonovna, an influential veteran revolutionary. A striking woman with her gray-white hair and bright red blouse, she is “the true spirit of destructive revolution.” Shawcross’s daughter-in-law Alice is a direct descendant of Sophia Antonovna. Shortly after her return from Moscow, a letter is published addressed by Zinoviev to the Communists of Britain urging uprisings in the Army and Navy. Implying that Ramsay MacDonald had been pushed into treaties with Russia by Communist pressure, it helps cause the fall of his government. Noting the time of Alice’s visit and the intensity of her devotion to Communism, Shawcross suspects that she had helped Zinoviev to plan and write the letter. Dos Passos’ militant women Communists such as Jane Sparling throw themselves into Party activities almost more zealously than the men. One of the women in _Yet Other Waters_ might be listed under political pathology as well as here. She is Alice Robertson, a nymphomaniac and frustrated novelist whose regard for her current lover does not prevent her from reporting on him to the Party. There is no Joan of Arc in these political novels, but in Hemingway’s book one hears about the fiery La Pasionaria, and in _The Age of Longing_ and _Nostromo_ the actions of two women evoke mention of the name of Charlotte Corday. In Conrad’s novel Antonia Avellanos is as fierce a patriot as her father Don José, who had nearly died in inhuman captivity by dictator Guzmán Bento. Her fierce anger against General Montero, a modern Bento, is one of the forces which brings cynical dilettante Don Martin Decoud to throw himself into the struggle which leads to his death. She suggests Charlotte Corday to him, as does Hydie Anderson indirectly to Jules Commanche when she asks that Feyda Nikitin be expelled from France. But Hydie’s patriotism does not have the fire of Antonia’s. She has come to recognize Feyda’s brutality and immorality, but the immediate cause of her action is his humiliation of her which breaks off their affair. This gesture is the first positive one she has made. Up to this point she has seemed about to apply for membership in the Ravens Nevermore. Her disillusionment, like theirs, has come from rejection of a strong and disciplined system which answered all her questions and assuaged all her doubts. Her break with the Roman Catholic Church has left her quite as adrift as Dellatre or his companions. And when her gesture fails, she feels herself slipping back into the old despondency, the craving for sureness, for a set of positive values.