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Summary
Points to the many ways in which the study of autobiography can contribute to the theory, practice, and politics of women’s studies as curriculum, and to feminist theory more generally.
“What I like most about this book is the fine balance between theory and pedagogy it achieves. The theoretical discussions are carefully developed, thoughtful, and richly provocative, drawing on complex theories to unpack the subtleties and contradictions of women’s autobiography in its many forms. Yet the essays themselves are full of valuable and very accessible information that could be used to develop and/or enrich courses in women’s autobiography and women’s studies in general.
“The book is very interesting to read. The essays raise some fascinating questions about what constitutes women's autobiography, the implications of woman representing themselves as 'subject,' and the role of language in the construction of subject.”— Sandra Jamieson, Drew University
Women's Lives/Women's Times reflects the growing interest in life-writing as a basis for both feminist theorizing and women-centered education. Itdiscusses the many ways in which the study of autobiography can contribute to the theory, practice, and politics of women's studies as curriculum, and to feminist theory more generally.
This volume is concerned with the application of theory to text--particularly with the assumptions and discourses of postmodernism--but also in exploring how general theories of the subject do not always fit comfortably with the specifics of autobiographical writing. It also recognizes the challenge women's autobiography offers to theory, taking us, in its complex weave of the personal, the political, and the theoretical, beyond the usual generic and disciplinary boundaries.
Trev Lynn Broughton is Lecturer in Women’s Studies at the Centre for Women’s Studies, University of York. Linda Anderson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University, Newcastle Upon Tyne.
Table of Contents
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
PART I HISTORIANS OF THE SELF
Introduction
1. "Life Has Done Almost as Well as Art": Deconstructing The Maimie Papers
Margaretta Jolly
2. "A Short Account of My Unprofitable Life": Autobiographies of Working Class Women in Britain c. 1775-1845
Jane Rendall
3. "Pondering All These Things in Her Heart": Aspects of Secrecy in the Autobiographical Writings of Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen
Elspeth Graham, Hilary Hinds, Elaine Hobby, and Helen Wilcox
4. Striking Rock: The Letters of Ray Strachey to Her Family, 1929-1935
Johanna Alberti
PART II SELVES AND OTHERS
Introduction
5. In Search of a Voice for Dopdi/Draupadi: Writing the Other Woman's Story Out of the "Dark Continent"
Ranjana Khanna
6. Leslie Stephen, Anny Thackeray Ritchie, and the Sexual Politics of Genre: Missing Her
Trev Lynn Broughton
7. What Is [Not] Remembered: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Gabriele Griffin
8. The Memoirs of Halidé Edib: A Turkish Woman Writer in Exile
Ayse Durakbasa
PART III SUBJECTIVES
Introduction
9. Autobiography and Orality: The Work of Modernist Women Writers
Sabine Vanacker
10. Silent Witness: Memory and Omission in Natalia Ginzburg's Family Sayings
Judith Woolf
PART IV LIVES IN PRACTICE
Introduction
11. Their Wars
Nicole Ward Jouve
12. "Invisible Presences": Life-Writing and Vera Brittain's Testament of Friendship
Marion Shaw
13. "Tidal Edges" in Contemporary Women's Poetry: Towards a Model of Critical Empathy
