In an e-mail, Eisenman described her “tenuous relationship to ‘womanhood.’ ” She wrote, “Some feminist writers have made analogies between a woman’s body and a house. Interior, domestic, hospitable, private, decorated. . . . For me, it’s more like being in a rental apartment. Why get invested? Why make a big change? I just don’t care that much. This is an imperfect metaphor, but you get the idea.”

“...there are (at least) four kinds of frustration: the frustration of being deprived of something that has never existed; the frustration of being deprived of something one has never had (whether or not it exists); the frustration of being deprived of something one has had; and, finally, the frustration of being deprived of something one once had, but can’t have again.”