Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography (review)

Abstract

336 biography Vol. 12, No. 4 Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography. Edited by Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1988. xii, 363 pp. $39.95. Life/lines, a metaphor of "interdependence and communication," may be "ropes thrown to ships or persons" in troubled waters, cords that connect "the deep-sea diver to the mother-ship," "essential routes of communication," or mystery-revealing "lines in the palm of the hand" (ix). Life/Lines "proposes to reexamine in a careful assemblage of texts some of the assumptions of feminist theory concerning women's autobiographies , clarifying and questioning extant systems of valuation of the autobiographical text" (xi). In particular, the authors "explore the many 'lines' women have devised to speak of themselves for themselves and for their readers" (xi). The seventeen essays in this outstanding anthology examine "the wide diversity of routes by which women," as individuals and as groups, "in vastly different circumstances, have asserted their place as active subjects challenging the oppressive representation and actions of powerful hierarchies" (xi). In their introduction, Brodzki and Schenck provide a concise overview of what they refer to as "the masculine tradition" of autobiography, the Western autobiography theory that has virtually ignored the real and the literary presence of women. As a corrective to such an imbalanced theoretical base, they propose a "female autobiographical tradition" (7), using as primary examples the works of Margaret Cavendish and Gertrude Stein, who both "find a way to challenge inscription into conventional feminine identity and autobiographical representative selfhood while exploiting the textual ambiguity of their partnership with significant others." In fact, "[b]eing between two covers with somebody else," the editors insist, "ultimately replaces singularity with alterity in a way that is dramatically female, provides a mode of resisting reification and essentialism, and most important, allows for more radical experimentation in autobiographical form" (11). Conceived as an extension of Estelle Jelinek's Women's Autobiography and Domna Stanton's The Female Autograph, Life/Lines aims "to restore the bio" so often deleted in discussions of autobiography by those who are suspicious of the " 'facile assumptions of referentiality' " (12). Such elimination of the life, according to Brodzki and Schenck, "ignorefs] the crucial referentiality of class, race, and sexual orientation" (12-13), critical foci of identity for several of the autobiographers discussed. With this in mind, the seventeen contributors write from a wide range of feminist theoretical approaches: "from ethnographic to psychoanalytic, from Marxist to formal, from generic to cultural and historicist, as well as the rich proliferation of French critical approaches" (13). Rather than reductive generalizations, then, the authors present specific complexities. Often the diverse approaches contradict one another, but rather than leading to argument or chaos, this generates a sense of animated conversation, a textual dialogism. After Germaine Brée's foreword and the editors' introductory essay, the book is divided into four main parts. The first part, "Positioning the Female Autobiographical Subject," focuses on how women represent themselves in autobiography—quite often in relation to an/other rather than as an autonomous individual. Narratives by medieval and Renaissance English women, French female writers, English and American women of privilege, and lesbians are discussed. In "Colonized Subjects and Subversive Discourses," part two, five essays address how colonialism affects female voices, using as examples Latin American testimonials, Native American life histories REVIEWS 337 mediated by ethnographers, the personal narrative of the founder of the "Egyptian Feminist Union" (155), and African-American and French-Canadian autobiographies . Part three, "Double Messages: Maternal Legacies/Mythographies," includes essays on Margaret Oliphant, Audre Lorde, Nathalie Sarraute and Christa Wolf as well as a discussion of two Francophone writers. "De-Limiting Genre: Other Autobiographical Acts," the final section, expands the realm of autobiography with discussions of poetry and autobiography, eighteenth-century German epistolary tradition, the invented autobiographical form of a "Jewish woman in occupied France" (14), and women's self-representation in film. These essays, then, range from discussions of a female self and its many autobiographical representations, inventions, and challenges , to reconsiderations of the boundaries of autobiography as a genre. Life/Lines is an apt metaphor for this important book. Collectively the authors toss sturdy ropes into the sometimes "troubled waters...