Counterfeit Perversion:Vita Sackville-West'sPortrait of a Marriage

Abstract

A standard formula in criticism of autobiography is to contrast autobi? ography as accurate recording of a self to autobiography as a slippery mask. Critics easily pinpoint early criticism, such as Philippe Lejeunes or Elizabeth Bruss's work, which sensibly equates the genre with an historical account ofthe self, a record of subjectivity, and a truthful presentation of facts. Those equations posit autobiography as the literary genre most closely linked to experiential fact, citing a reader's expectation of truth and understanding of contract.1 In contrast, by analyzing the role of textual construction (often through a realization of the influence of gender on presentation of the self), autobiographys shifting I?created, mirroring, and doubling?becomes apparent. Leigh Gilmore's mark of the I, Paul De Man's revolving door, Jean Starobinski s double deviation, and Susanna Egans mirroring all meta? phorically represent the shifting textual I. Authenticity ofthe self, it seems, when it depends upon a text, can never be secure. Gilmores work on trauma bridges these two standard polarities when she theorizes autobiography as characterized less by a set of formal elements than by a setting in which a person places herself or himself within testimonial contexts as seemingly diverse as Christian confession, the scandalous memories ofthe rogue, and the coming-out story in order to achieve as proximate a relation as possible to what constitutes truth in that discourse (3). The autobiographer writes a self in terms of that discourse, seemingly historical and truthful, with the self necessarily fictionalized to fit the available rhetorical setting. Usually, one would suspect, an autobiographer would choose a dis? course that allows him to express himself most fully. When that supposition