This text argues that when dominated groups such as women create publicly-oriented social movements, they seek to frame their demands in compelling narrative forms. Through these new tales, they can become, for the first time, active subjects in their own stories. Developing this theoretical model, the author offers new interpretations of Habermas and Arendt as well as of feminist debates about their work. Critically relating Wellmers and Ricoeurs 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 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.