MISS HERBERT
by CHRISTINA STEAD 308 pages. Random House. $8.95.
THE MAN WHO LOVED CHILDREN
by CHRISTINA STEAD 527 pages. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
$12.50.
Feminist novels today tend to present women in two ways: as either prisoners of gender or lately freed to pursue Tom Jones' pleasures and echo Alexander Portnoy's complaints. Christina Stead's Miss Herbert belongs to a less transitory category. It is a novel about an Englishwoman that does not discriminate on the basis of sex.
At 73, the Australian-born author has published more than a dozen books of fiction that have slowly earned her a reputation as one of the world's most skillful...
