Women's Lives into Print : The Theory, Practice and Writing of Feminist Auto/Biography

by Polkey, Pauline

• ISBN13: 9780312223526
• ISBN10: 0312223528
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1999-10-29
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Women's Lives into Print is a remarkable collection by feminist scholars and writers who focus on the theory, practice, and writing of women's auto/biographies. Not only does it foster debate about the reading and interpretation of women's lives, it also explores issues relating to research methodology, and raises questions about the representation of women within feminist auto/biography. Working across a range of subject disciplines, this book comprises a vital and ground-breaking critical text for anyone interested in auto/biography.

Author Biography

Pauline Polkey lectures in women's writing and feminist theory at Nottingham Trent University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgements	viii
Notes on the Contributors	ix
Introduction	xiii
PART I THEORY
Putting Women's Lives into Print: Feminist Ethics, Methodologies and Epistemologies
How Do We Know about Past Lives? Methodological and Epistemological Matters Involving Prince Philip, the Russian Revolution, Emily Wilding Davison, My Mum and the Absent Sue	3	(19)
Liz Stanley
Terrible Times: Experience, Ethnicity and Auto/Biography	22	(12)
Bogusia Temple
Memory, Truth and Orality: the Lives of Northern Women Textile Workers	34	(10)
Christine Kenny
Feminist Ethics and Issues in the Production and Use of Life History Research	44	(17)
Lesley Forrest
Judy Giles
PART II PRACTICE
Recovering and Reading Women's Lives: Interpretive Issues
Recuperating the Love-Passions of Edith Simcox	61	(19)
Pauline Polkey
Travelling towards Selfhood: Victorian Religion and the Process of Female Identity	80	(16)
Joss West-Burnham
Other People's Truths? Scientific Subjects in the Personal Recollections, From Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville	96	(13)
Julia Swindells
Alice Havergal Skillicorn, Principal of Homerton College, Cambridge, 1935-60: Gender and Power	109	(14)
Elizabeth Edwards
When Writing the Other is Being True to the Self: Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother	123	(14)
Alison Donnell
Self-Image and Occupational Identity: Barbadian Nurses in Post-War Britain	137	(15)
Julia Hallam
The Lives of Indira Gandhi	152	(21)
Katherine Frank
PART III WRITING
Representing Women's Lives: the Life-History Project
A Good School Revisited	173	(12)
Mary Evans
The Most Difficult Door	185	(12)
Catherine Byron
Digging Up Tangled Roots: Feminism and Resistance to White Working-Class Culture	197	(19)
Val Walsh
The Swashbuckler, the Landlubbing Wimp and the Woman in Between: Myself as Pirate(ss)	216	(13)
Jo Stanley
Index	229