Autobiography as Dissidence: Subjectivity, Sexuality, and the Women's Co-operative Guild

Abstract

This article examines British working-class women's autobiography as a form of political dissidence. Crucial to guildswomen's collective autobiographical practice was writing about the reproductive body within the socio/historical context of class and gender relations from the perspective of women. As revealed in Maternity: Letters from Working Women (1915) and in Life as We Have Known It (1931), guildswomen's life writing contested boundaries between political and domestic spheres, shifted emphasis from the individual to a collective identity, and demanded the inclusion of reproductive rights within the domain of human rights.