Developing this theoretical model, Lara offers new interpretations of Habermas and Arendt as well as of feminist debates about their work. Critically relating Wellmer's and Ricoeur's aesthetic ideas to public sphere theory, she also confronts the limitations of the Foucaultian tradition that informs so much post-structuralist feminism today.

In making her argument, Lara examines a very wide range of women's narratives, from autobiographies of eighteenth-century salonnieres and of contemporary women activists to the novels of Jane Austen and the portrayal of women in television and film. Taking stock of contemporary feminist writings in social science, history, literature, jurisprudence and philosophy, she suggests that they can be viewed not only as empirical accounts of injustices but as cultural narratives that have transformed women's particular identities even as they have expanded universal moral claims in a revolutionary way.