Women in Roth's fiction

Roth's women is a subject for much discussion and debate, and it pains me to say that, great as his fiction is in many, many ways, one of the weaknesses throughout his is treatment of women, who, with very few exceptions I think, play subordinate roles in his stories and novels and, even more troubling, are often objects of scorn and ridicule (to be fair, many male characters are are well) and are often seen as hindrances or burdens that prevent men from fully expressing their talents or from fully enjoying life. You can certainly see this issue early in his career, in his debut collection, Goodbye, Columbus, which I am just finishing. Some of the stories (Defender of the Faith, You Can't Tell a Man by the Song he Sings) are entirely male - one set in the Army, another in what appears to be an all-boys high school (maybe it's not, but that's telling in itself). The title story is perhaps the kindest to its women characters, at least to the lead character, Brenda, who, though a prototypical Jewish-American princess who can't stand up to her parents, in the end, is at least a smart and talented young woman. Most of the other women are either over-protective or meddlesome, especially in the weaker and less well-known stories later in the book (this may by why they're less well known) - one of which involves an elderly Jewish businessman who embarks on an affair with a loose-living neighbor and pays a price (with his shrewish wife, we're almost sympathetic about his dalliance). The last story in the collection, Eli, the Fanatic, involves a wife who repeatedly tries to help her husband in variance kind and thoughtful ways and is repeatedly rebuffed and ridiculed. Maybe she could be a sympathetic character, but it seems that Roth's interest in her is only as a comic foil - his real interest is in the men and their world (in this case, a legal skirmish about an unlicensed Yeshiva school in a leafy suburb - it's "bad for the Jews"). There are a few exceptions in later Roth works, but not many, not enough. Sympathetic women characters remain a blind spot in Roth's vision, copious as it is, have probably hurt his chances for a Nobel, which I still think he deserves.