The Unpredictable Adventure : A Comedy of Woman’s Independence

A fantasy adventure well ahead of its time, ""The Unpredictable Adventure"" satirises contemporary cultural norms and demonstrates the hazards awaiting a woman who dares to think and act in defiance of the gender roles assigned her.

Considered ""too risque"" and therefore banned by the New York Public Library, the Los Angeles Times described it as reminiscent of ""Pilgrim's Progress"" but ""more instructive than most manuals about what a young girl ought to know"".

Rather than positing a utopian world, the author of this allegorical tale questions male authority in ways that anticipate contemporary concerns.

The journey catalogues the patterns of western thought and tradition that have made men knowledgeable, and hence privileged, over women.

Utopia becomes that place within the heroine's consciousness where the concepts of thought and emotion, masculine and feminine, work and love all coalesce in a moment of spiritual wholeness.

The story is as follows: Tellectina (intellect) embarks on an odyssey through the forbidden country of Nithking (thinking) in search of Mount Certitude, where she expects to discover Truth and reach Self-Realisation.

Drawing on her own life experiences, the author uses anagrams to establish all allegorical pattern while satirising cultural norms, thereby exploring society's double standards that divide woman against herself.

She invents a mythology of sexual initiation rites and examines the problems of marriage, religion, divorce and earning a living, while portraying women's universal struggle to achieve a balanced life.

In the afterword, Miriam Kalman Harris provides background details on Owen's life and places her work in the context of 20th-century women's writing.

A glossary, printed at the end of the book, provides translations of the author's anagrams and references to the many literary and historical figures the protagonist of the book encounters throughout her journey.