Unveiling the female `I' : autobiographies by Australian women born in the 1920s

摘要

This study fulfils the need for research intoudautobiographies of writers who have a number ot commonudtraits which will provide specific conclusions aboutudthe art of autobiography. Unveiling the Female ' I' ;udAutobiographies by Australian Women Born in the 1920sudlooks at works by fourteen writers who share the sameudnationality, gender and decade of birth.udThe Introduction documents the elusiveness ofudwomen's autobiographies and briefly surveys theudcritical situation to date, noting the lack ofudconsensus in just what an autobiography is. Criteriaudhave been established for extracting women'sudautobiographies from the large range of femaleudautobiographical writings and the validity of theudlinguistic devices used to examine these works isudjustified.udWorking from the proposition by Chodorow thatudwomen are defined through process and by "other".udChapter 1 looks at character and style in four autobiographiesudof childhood to establish how thisudforms the identity ot Australian women born in theud1920s.udChapter 2 discusses two autobiographies ofudchildhood which focus on other aspects of personaluddevelopment: Spence's Another October Child presents audportrait of the development of a writer and Lindsay's Portrait of Pa is argued to be an autobiograpby of Janeudrather than a biography or Norman Lindsay.udThe life stories of adults treated in Chapter 3uddemonstrate the fallacy of the "quest" metaphor for femaleudwriters and offer other life metaphors as moreudappropriate for conveying their truths of identity.udThe position of women in Australian society hasudreceived close attention in recent years, and theudautobiographies by migrant and Aboriginal women whichudare the topic of Chapter 4 illustrate their alienationudthrough their lack of cultural experience. Placeudbecomes cultural as well as physical for these women.udDorothy Hewett's recently published Wild Card bothudconfirms and confounds the pattern of Australianudwomen's autobiography depicting the same period in audhighly and elaborately patterned way. Chapter 5udexamines its statement about the role of truth inudautobiography.udChapter 6 continues this direction and breaks newudground by looking at the implications of "naming" andudphotographs in both the structural and metaphoricudstrands of the re-creation of identity.udThe Conclusion considers how Australian women bornudin the 1920s see their world and their values inudcomparison with the male view of history. The studyuddraws together the threads of identity, world and truthudas represented in these self- life-writings.