Autobiography and Questions of Gender

Description

Originally published in 1991. Addressing the ways in which the ideology of gender and its social construction determine autobiographical self-representations, the essays here consider several women’s works in the light of the social and historical conditions which enabled their production. Some examine diaries as a feminine form and ask about the ways in which thematic content such as childbirth can or cannot be represented in diaries and public discourse at different historical junctures. Others show the pressures of gender roles and how they have led to new genres in which self-representation is often a refraction of the representation of others. With the tools of gender theory, the representation of hermaphroditism, masculinity and male bodies is analysed and the ways in which gender intersects with racial, sexual and class ideologies is also looked at, in seeing autobiography as a form of agency in self-construction. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Original Title Original Copyright Contents Acknowledgements Autobiography and Questions of Gender: An Introduction Auto/Bio/History: Modern Midwifery Refracting Selves: Kate Millett's The Basement From the Inside Out: Lily Briscoe a Self-Portrait: an autobiography by Mary Meigs A Signature of Lesbian Autobiography: "Gertrice/Altrude" Women's Autobiography: The Self at Stake? Engendered Autobiographies: The Diary as a Feminine Form Delivery: The Cultural Re-presentation of Childbirth Figuration and Disfigurement: Herculine Barbin and the Autobiography of the Body Autobiography, Bodies, Manhood Poet and Patriarch in Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men The Autobiographical Manifesto: Identities, Temporalities, Politics