Saul Bellow is one of those writers who became actually aware of the inner contradictions of social life in America in the post Second World War period. Bellow grapples with the problem of a sensitive individual caught up in an uncongenial social environment in big cities produced by rapid industrialization. The fictional world of Saul Bellow is predominantly a male world. The women characters in Bellow tend to be passive sufferers or they are cast in traditional moulds and are not seen as undergoing the inner turnmoils experienced by the male protagonists. The women characters in Bellow's novels are not viewed as full-fledged human beings and those characters who seem to assert their humanity are mistrusted resulting in a portrayal marred by palpable biases. The very fact that Bellow doesn't pick up any woman character who is endowed with imaginative powers and strength of character to offer resistance to the conformist pressures indicates that at a subtler level, there are some patriarchal prejudices in his vision as a novelist. This book is an endeavour to penetrate the women characters in Saul Bellow with the purpose of tracing his patriarchal leanings. There may be unconscious biases, the portrayal of women as belonging to certain types of roles may be partly a reflection of what is actually happening in society. But it may at-least partly be because the author refuses to recognize some potentialities in women's personalities. Saul Bellow has not introduced in his novels the women characters who have critical intelligence, independence of thinking and a conscious concern for the preservation of the integrity of one's autonomous self, the attributes found in his male protagonists. An exploratory study of Bellow's attitude towards women characters in his novels and interpretation and interrogation of the values he associates with them will certainly enable the reader to have a more adequate understanding and better assessment of his work.
