The Company of Women is a novel by Irish-American author Mary Gordon. First published in 1981, it is a coming-of-age story which details the sheltered upbringing of a well-educated Catholic girl named Felicitas, and how her values are challenged and altered by the turbulence of the 1960s protest movement. The book earned Gordon a second Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize.

Plot

Father Cyprian is a Catholic priest whose parishioners include five women. These five form a circle of friendship. Among them is a child, Felicitas Maria Taylor, a serious-minded girl with no use for boys, dating, or fun. Rather, she dreams of the day she can become a great writer like Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

. Felicitas develops as a composite of the older women.