Breaking Feminist Waves

Series Editors
Alison Stone
Philosophy and Religion
Lancaster University
Lancaster, United Kingdom

Linda Martin Alcoff

Department of Philosophy
Hunter College
New York, New York, USA
This series promises to invite feminist thinkers from a variety of disciplinary
backgrounds to think theoretically about feminisms history and future -
work that needs to be done. I look forward to incorporating titles from this
series into my womens and gender studies teaching. Alison Piepmeier,
Director, Womens and Gender Studies Program, The College of
Charleston For the last twenty years, feminist theory has been presented
as a series of ascending waves. This picture has had the effect of deempha-
sizing the diversity of past scholarship as well as constraining the way we
understand and frame new work. The aim of this series is to attract original
scholars who will offer unique interpretations of past scholarship and
unearth neglected contributions to feminist theory. By breaking free from
the constraints of the image of waves, this series will be able to provide a
wider forum for dialogue and engage historical and interdisciplinary work to
open up feminist theory to new audiences and markets. LINDA MARTN
ALCOFF is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the City
University of New York Graduate Center, USA. Her most recent books
include Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self; The Blackwell Guide
to Feminist Philosophy (co-edited with Eva Kittay); Identity Politics
Reconsidered (co-edited with Moya, Mohanty and Hames-Garcia); and
Singing in the Fire: Tales of Women in Philosophy. ALISON STONE is
Professor of European Philosophy at Lancaster University, UK. She is the
author of Petried Intelligence: Nature in Hegels Philosophy; Luce
Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference; An Introduction to
Feminist Philosophy; and Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and Maternal
Subjectivity; and the editor of The Edinburgh Critical History of
Nineteenth-Century Philosophy.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14794
 Malin Lidstrm Brock

Writing Feminist
Lives
The Biographical Battles over Betty Friedan,
Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem,
and Simone de Beauvoir
Malin Lidstrm Brock
Lule University of Technology
Lule, Sweden

Breaking Feminist Waves

ISBN 978-3-319-47177-8 ISBN 978-3-319-47178-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47178-5

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To Michael, Always
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1
Ideological Battles of the 1990s 2
The Biographies 4
Reading Biography 6
Chapter Outline 8
Notes 10

2 A Question of Authority 17
The Personal is Political 18
Twentieth-Century Criticism of Autobiography 21
Realist Biography 29
Writing Womens History 36
Notes 39

3 Negotiating the TraditionFeminist Realist Biography 51

Historicizing the Womens Movement in Biography 52
The Unhappy American Housewife 54
A Reluctant Socialist Heroine 57
A Woman of Profound Contradictions 68
The Autonomous Woman 79
Revamped Femme Fatale 81
Notes 92

vii
viii CONTENTS

4 Breaking New GroundFeminist Exemplary Biography 107

Emancipation Narratives and Feminist Literary Criticism 108
A Bunnys Tale 113
The Embodiment of an Effective Story 117
Talk About a Dream Team! 126
Notes 142

5 Deconstructing the LifeFeminist Poststructuralist

Biography 151
Poststructuralist Perspectives 153
Feminist Re/constructions 154
Le deuxime sexe/The Second Sex 160
The Autobiographies 162
Life as an Intertextual Network 165
Everybodys Beauvoir 179
Notes 187

6 Conclusion 203
Notes 208

Bibliography 211

Index 227
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

What value can biography have in the wake of the dismantling of narrative
authority and the belief in the integrity and knowability of the human
subject? What value, more specically, can biography have for feminists,
who have particular reasons for being skeptical of modern ideas about the
subject and the author, yet who also have pressing reasons to remain
faithful to those ideas? These questions highlight the central role occupied
by ideas about subjectivity, the self and the author in critical discussions of
both feminism and biography. In Writing Feminist Lives, I set out to
answer these questions by identifying how battles over feminism and its
meaning have been articulated in the biographies of some of the most
inuential feminists of the twentieth century. The women whose biogra-
phies are the subject of this book are Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer,
Gloria Steinem and Simone de Beauvoirall pivotal characters in the
history of late twentieth-century Western feminism and women who
have contributed to modern feminism through political writing that
includes autobiographical elements.
As part of distinct political statements, these autobiographical elements
contribute to differentiating the four women ideologically and epistemolo-
gically. Friedan and Steinem are self-proclaimed humanists, whoseengage-
ment with politics grew out of careers in left-wing and liberal journalism.
Friedan, however, is commonly viewed as a liberal feminist, while Steinem
refers to her political viewpoint as radical feminist.1 In contrast to Friedan
and Steinem, Beauvoirs feminism has a philosophical basis and is rooted in

The Author(s) 2016 1

M. Lidstrm Brock, Writing Feminist Lives, Breaking Feminist Waves,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47178-5_1
2 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

Hegelian Marxism and Sartrean existentialism. Her phenomenological

account of what it means to be a woman originates in theories that stress
the situatedness of lives, as well as womens domination by and potential
liberation from oppressive social structures.2 Finally, Greer has referred to
herself as both an anarchist and a Marxist, while her political writing reects a
libertarian feminist and occasionally almost Romantic view of the subject.3
The dawn of a new millennium and the end of the twentieth century set off
an evaluation of the centurys major events, including so-called second-wave
feminism.4 The effect was an outpouring of histories and memoirs of, in
particular, the American womens movement.5 During the 1990s, seven
biographies of the four women were also published. In Writing Feminist
Lives, I read these biographies as symptoms of an ideological battle over the
meaning and future of feminism. Friedan, Greer, Steinem and Beauvoir are all
contestants in this battle through autobiographically informed political argu-
ments. When the authors of the seven biographies wrote these womens lives,
an interesting dilemma thereby presented itself to them. Inevitably, the bio-
graphers became participants in the ideological battle, but not always on the
same side as their subjects. In reading the biographies, I am seeking to identify
the ideological distance that the biographers try either to establish or to
overcome in relation to their subjects autobiographically informed political
writing or theories of subjectivity. In the process of ascertaining how the
biographers maintain or reduce such a distance, I wish to introduce a further
fold of nuance into considerations of biography and feminism.

IDEOLOGICAL BATTLES OF THE 1990S

The 1990s was a time of crisis for both feminism and biography, as key
concepts and ideas related to both areas were being questioned and refor-
mulated. One purpose of Writing Feminist Lives is to identify the biogra-
phies positions in the decades feminist and biographical disputes, or
battles. These battles appeared in the wake of a general postmodern critique
of the thoughts and ideas that characterize the modern era. Postmodern
and poststructuralist critics have seriously challenged the ideological and
epistemological foundations of both feminism and biography. Their sys-
tematic dismantling of the human subject threatens the ideas of agency and
self-realization on which modern feminism relies.6 The theories advanced
by postmodern critics have also been interpreted as direct attacks on bio-
graphy, resulting in skepticism of the rational and coherent biographical
subject, and the biographer as the sole authority on the life.7
 INTRODUCTION 3

The modern, universalist Enlightenment ideas that came under attack

in the twentieth century were not rendered obsolete, however, by the
introduction of postmodern theories.8 On the contrary, old ideas became
more visible when contrasted with the new, often gaining in strength and
precision from the attacks.9 Furthermore, feminists before the inuence of
postmodern theorizing have criticized the modern project from within, by
insisting on womens particularity.10 In the 1960s and 1970s, disagree-
ments over how to dene womens particularity resulted in the formation
of various feminist phalanges and political ideals (which did not prevent
feminists from sharing a belief in womens universal rights).11 Competing
notions of womens particularity continued to play a vital role in feminist
discussions also after the development of postmodern and poststructuralist
feminist theories in the 1980s and 1990s.
That is to say, when the seven biographies were rst published, femin-
ism was an active battleeld consisting of multiple and simultaneously
existing ideological positions, which both conrmed and complicated
the modernpostmodern dichotomy. Central to this battleeld were the-
oretical disputes concerning the (female) self, the subject and her con-
sciousness, and the related ideas of the author and his presumed death.12
These disputes take particularly interesting shapes, to borrow a phrase
from Liz Stanley, when they are examined in connection with the seven
biographies at hand.13
In part, the reason is that the biographies in question portray women
with their own highly politicized notions of (female) subjectivity. By the
1970s, the idea of personal change had become an important concept in
feminist politics.14 As a consequence, womens autobiography moved to
the center of the feminist literary canon and feminist critics increasingly
looked for a biographical structure in womens ction.15 At the same time,
the female self and the idea of female subjectivity became central concerns
in feminist analysis. This is the case also with the political writing by the
four women whose biographies I discuss in this book. The biographies
merit closer examination partly because the biographers have engaged in
some way with the autobiographical elements in their subjects political
arguments. The reason, of course, is that biographers are similarly caught
up in discussions about selfhood, subjectivity, intentionality and
authorship.
The turn from autobiography to biography further complicates such
discussions. Mary Rhiel and David Suchoff observe that in the 1990s
marginalized groups were increasingly turning to biography to tell life
4 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

stories that had been previously unheard by the larger culture. The new
interest in the genre resulted in what Rhiel and Suchoff call battles over
biography.16 Biography, Lisbeth Larsson observes, promised new aca-
demic disciplines, such as feminist theory, black criticism, new historicism,
and postcolonial and cultural studies, the possibility to present solid,
knowable selves and a means to identify social and political oppression.17
On the other hand, biographys truth-claims were also being openly
questioned by academics, critics and journalists.18 Certain feminist groups,
too, welcomed the criticism of what Cheryl Walker refers to as the mono-
lithic authorial presence in biography and argued for a pluralistic concept
of subjectivity.19 To postmodern feminists, biography must display con-
sciousness of multiple and conicting discourses pertaining to the concept
woman. Such an approach promised to avoid what Sharon OBrien calls
falsely unifying notions of the female self, without denying the impor-
tance of gender to female experience.20
In Writing Feminist Lives, I read the seven biographies in the context of
two kinds of battles that are not only related, but are taking place simulta-
neously both within and among the biographies. That is, I view the
feminist battles within the biographies as inextricably linked to the bio-
graphical battles that are also taking place among them. By identifying
how the seven biographies are constructed, and with a special focus on
how the biographers dene subjectivity and authorship, I aim to establish
the biographers respective positions in the 1990s feminist and biographi-
cal disputes.

THE BIOGRAPHIES
According to Laura Miller, modern feminism after the 1960s was burst-
ing with fascinating, combative, maddening and outrageous characters.21
Despite such a colorful group to choose from, biographies of only four
women associated with second-wave feminism appeared in the 1990s.22
Among those are the seven biographies considered in this book.23 Lack of
biographical information partly explains the absence of biographies of
other women who were, in Jennifer Scanlons words, catalysts in devel-
oping the American womens movement.24 In this respect Friedan, Greer,
Steinem and Beauvoir are important exceptions. Most likely, the four
womens already established reputations as signicant contributors
to modern feminismreputations created largely in and by the main-
stream mediahelped motivate biographers, publishers and readers to
 INTRODUCTION 5

focus on these particular women also in the 1990s, when feminism was
coming under new scrutiny.25
The womens pre-existing fame forms a signicant part of their bio-
graphical recognition, as William H. Epstein denes the term.26 For
Epstein, biographical recognition is a way of being and becoming to
which special signicance is attached, a closely monitored process of
inclusion and exclusion.27 Ultimately, he views such recognition as a
form of interpretative violence.28 Epsteins denition of the term, how-
ever, does not take into account the possibility that biographical recogni-
tion also promises to make visible marginalized groups experiences and
ideals through individual examples.29 In Writing Feminist Lives, I seek to
identify the ideologies behind the four womens biographical recognition.
The appearance of the seven biographies at a time of ideological crisis
suggests that Friedans, Greers, Steinems and Beauvoirs respective poli-
tical positions, originally formulated in a modern context, remained highly
contestable also in the 1990s feminist debates.
The four women have achieved fame and inuence at least partly by
presenting themselves as in some way exemplary feminists. For this
reason, I view the autobiographical elements in their political writing,
too, as part of their biographical recognition. In other words, what is at
stake in the seven biographies is not just the life stories by which the four
women are commonly recognized (as told by themselves or others), but
their respective feminist politics as well. In my reading of the biographies,
I strive to determine how each biographer relates to the subjects own
politicized version(s) of her self, but I also consider the seven biogra-
phers respective methodologies. My aim is to establish how their biogra-
phies are positioned not just in the struggles to dene feminism and
feminist politics, but in the struggles over biography itself.
The seven biographies can be roughly divided into two categories,
which both conform to and complicate the modernpostmodern divide.
The rst category consists of biographies whose authors emphasize the
ideological aspects of their approach; the second consists of biographies
whose truth-claims are articulated in, supposedly, non-ideological terms.
In Toril Mois and sa Mobergs biographies of Simone de Beauvoir, the
explicit articulation of a feminist perspective is central to their respective
methodologies. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, on her part, wrote an early and
inuential feminist theory of biography, Writing a Womans Life, which
acts as precursor to her later biographical approach to Gloria Steinem.30
In contrast, Betty Friedans biographers Daniel Horowitz and Judith
6 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

Hennessee, Germaine Greers biographer Christine Wallace, and

Steinems biographer Sydney Ladensohn Stern make few, if any, explicit
references to the ideological or political aspects of their biographical
methods.31
The rst category of biographies mentioned above indicates an emer-
ging theoretical interest in the genre among 1990s feminists, and awoke
my curiosity about the other biographies published in the period. Indeed,
the explicit links between method and ideology in Heilbruns, Mois and
Mobergs respective texts suggest the relevance of exploring the ideologi-
cal and epistemological dimensions of all seven biographies. In my read-
ings, I have discovered signicant ideological differences among the
biographies, as well as (when this is the case) between the biographer
and the biographical subject. As a result, I am making a distinction in this
book among biographies that at rst appear to share a common
methodology.

READING BIOGRAPHY
Biography is a genre by which we strive to make sense of the world. By
presenting a life, the biography purports in some way to tell us how things
really are and, in so doing, to offer us guidelines for our own lives. For this
reason the genre is, Epstein writes, a vital contemporary arena of dis-
pute, in which important issues can be, indeed, cannot avoid being,
contested.32 In Writing Feminist Lives, I approach the seven biographies
in question as ideological accounts of a life. By ideology I refer to the
network of spontaneous or hidden assumptions about the world and
the human condition on which we base our everyday understandings.33
Yet, I also dene ideology as the term for manifest expressions of what is
true, right and good, expressions that in turn function as politically
more explicit guidelines to living.34 In auto/biography, ideology is pre-
sented in the form of a life, or more generally speaking as a concrete
case, or an example of how to liveor, as the case may be, how not to
live.35
The premise of my approach is that the seven biographers are telling
more than the story of a womans life. They also present distinct views of
feminism. As such, the biographers become participants in larger ideolo-
gical battles over feminism and its meaning. The purpose of Writing
Feminist Lives is not to establish the literary merit of the respective
biographers, or the historical accuracy of their accounts. Nor do I try to
 INTRODUCTION 7

evaluate the epistemological or political credibility of their respective

methods. In line with Michael J. Shapiro I do not believe that there is
any unmediated form of truth against which to judge biographical
truth-claims.36 Rather, I wish to explore the political uses that the bio-
graphers in question are making of the genre. By use I refer to the
assumption that biographers shape, or hope to shape, the way readers
come to understand the integrity and coherence of a life, or, alternatively,
its multiplicity and openness to radical change. Ultimately, I strive to
identify the way that the life story implicitly or explicitly illustrates a
political cause. Underlying my approach is the idea that the biographies
are, as Stanley puts it, material practices that are symbiotically related
to their ideological origins.37
Through comparative readings, I initially seek to identify differences
and similarities between the biographies and the autobiographical ele-
ments in Friedans, Greers, Steinems and Beauvoirs political texts. The
comparisons allow me to better understand how the biographers charac-
terize their respective subjects. Still, the ideological dimension of biogra-
phy cannot be fully grasped, I argue, unless the text is analyzed both on the
level of characterization (bio) and on the level of narrative structure
(graph). To achieve this double aim, I approach the biographies as
forms of discourse. As I dene the term, discourses are groups of state-
ments and utterances that convey meaning and truth according to
certain vantage points of interest or authority, and provide the narrative
frame, or structure, for each biography. According to the Oxford English
Dictionary, the word discourse also refers to combat, or battle, suggest-
ing that discourses do not stand by themselves but exist, as Diane
Macdonell claims, through their relation to another, ultimately an oppos-
ing discourse.38 In this book, the opposing discourses sometimes
include, but are not limited to, the subjects own account(s) of her life.
In addition to comparing biographies and autobiographies, I wish to
expose internal conicts in the seven texts by focusing on what John
Worthen calls the necessary ignorance of a biographer.39 That is to
say, I am drawing attention to meaningful silences that the biographical
narrative strives to conceal.40 Particularly, I focus on instances when the
narrative frame collapses, when inconsistencies and gaps appear in the plot
or characterization. The identication of gaps renders visible the universe
of the undiscussed, to use Pierre Bourdieus phrase, and draws attention
to the biographies as both literary and ideological constructions.41
Ultimately, identifying the gaps and inconsistencies in the texts means
8 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

making visible the internally conicted nature of the seven biographies,

which I read as an effect of the authors attempts to negotiate their loyalty
to, or their skepticism of, the idea of an exemplary (feminist) life. In the
chapters that follow, some of the biographers will appear more self-
aware, or consciously strategic, about the conicted nature of their
works than the others, but from this statement does not follow that
I view the other biographers as politically or methodologically more
nave than their theoretically explicit counterparts. On the contrary, I
approach all biographies in this book as political constructions of a life,
whether or not that is how their authors present them.

CHAPTER OUTLINE
Writing Feminist Lives is broadly organized to mirror twentieth-century
historical changes in (feminist and non-feminist) biography theorizing.
The advantage of this disposition is that it illustrates how feminist
approaches to biography have been affected by the introduction of post-
modern and poststructuralist theories. The biographies analyzed in each
chapter can be understood as responses to questions that are raised in
preceding chapters, which facilitates a comparison among the biographies.
The disadvantage of this structure is that the books disposition risks
giving the false impression of a historical development from bad mod-
ern biography to good poststructuralist biography. For this reason,
I wish to emphasize that I juxtapose modern and poststructuralist biogra-
phy to make visible, as clearly as possible, struggles that I see as being
fought simultaneously, not just within, but among, the seven biographies.
Chapter 2 outlines the feminist turn from autobiography to biography
and contextualizes the analyses in subsequent chapters. Changes in how
critics dene the autobiographical genre have undermined the autobio-
graphers authority, and contesting denitions of autobiography appear in
all seven biographies through arguments by which the biographer either
challenges or conrms, or sometimes both, his or her subjects version(s)
or her life. Nowhere are arguments against autobiography more rmly
articulated than in the most common type of biography, namely modern,
or realist, biography. Throughout the rest of Writing Feminist Lives,
I read the seven biographies as either conforming to or departing from the
realist biographical model, which is why the second half of the chapter
deals with the realist biographical genre at some length.
 INTRODUCTION 9

In the remaining three chapters I turn to the seven biographies to analyze

how their authors have handled the autobiographical elements in their sub-
jects political writing. In Chapter 3, I look more closely at the use feminist
(and non-feminist) biographers have made of the realist genre, by exploring
the purportedly objective author positions taken up in Judith Hennessees
Betty Friedan: Her Life (1999), Daniel Horowitzs Betty Friedan and the
Making of the Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and
Modern Feminism (1998) and Christine Wallaces Germaine Greer:
Untamed Shrew (1997).42 These biographers establish biographical truth
by avoiding, to the greatest degree possible, as I will demonstrate, any visible
political bias or other kind of prejudice. That is, the biographers are,
allegedly, positioning themselves outside all ideological discourses. As a con-
sequence, the biographers are also distancing the biographies from the auto-
biographical elements in their subjects political writing. What the three
biographers gain is the appearance of a supposedly objective and neutral
account in which they dismiss their subjects life stories and politics.
How to avoid the interpretative violence that Epstein associates with
biography is a question that feminist biographers were increasingly asking in
the 1990s. In Chapter 4, I shift the attention from realist biographys
objectivity claims to the topic of feminist sympathy in biography through
a reading of Sydney Ladensohn Sterns Gloria Steinem: Her Passions,
Politics, and Mystique (1997) and Carolyn G. Heilbruns The Education of
a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem (1995).43 These biographers approach
auto/biography both as the truthful reconstruction and the imaginative
construction (or story) of a life. The resulting ambiguity throws suspicion
on all auto/biographical truth-claims, but allows Stern to present Steinem
as a feminist role model, while still dismissing her expressed politics.
Similarly, the ambiguity enables Heilbrun to authenticate her biography
in subjective rather than objective terms, that is, by expressing sym-
pathy with the autobiographical elements in Steinems political writing. In
both cases, as I will show, the biographers end up presenting Steinems life
as an exemplary story of a womans emancipation.
At the center of Chapter 5 are two poststructuralist (more precisely,
feminist materialist) biographies of Simone de Beauvoir, namely Toril
Mois Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman (1992)
and sa Mobergs Simone och jag: Tankar kring Simone de Beauvoir
(1996).44 Moi and Moberg, I will argue, have abandoned modern deni-
tions of subjectivity and authorship, and instead dene the subject as a set of
overdetermined texts, which they interpret from multiple social, historical
10 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

and psychological perspectives. Their respective approaches suggest that

biographers readings are similarly overdetermined and require multiple
reader interpretations. The result is an undermining of the author position
in the biographies and an endless mirroring of the authentication (or
truth-producing) process, which is only temporarily arrested and given
meaning by the biographers explicit political perspectives. By examining
the provisional but authoritative truth-claims, I seek to identify how the
biographers establish themselves in the 1990s battles over feminism.
In terms of a Life, Schlaeger writes, subjectivismboth in the
writer and in his/her subjectis a conditio qua non.45 To this writer
and subject couple I would like to add the reader and the critic. To write
and to readauto/biography is always to confront and be confronted
with notions of authorship, subjectivity and, ultimately, with oneself. In
this book, I hope to demonstrate that how one understands the feminist
life cannot be separated from the question of how one understands the
world. When these questions are asked in biography, furthermore, the
answers will always be mediated by a genre informed by its own history of
subjectivity and authorship. To understand how Friedans, Greers,
Steinems and Beauvoirs respective biographers have approached the
idea of writing a feminist life, the connection between feminism and life
writing, especially womens autobiography, must rst be outlined. The
next chapter provides an overview of that connection, followed by an
account of the feminist turn from autobiography to biography and the
use feminist historians, especially, have made of the most common form of
biography, namely realist biography.

NOTES
1. On Friedan as a liberal feminist, see, for example, L. Susan Brown, The Politics
of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism and Anarchism (Montreal:
Black Rose Press, 1993). On Gloria Steinems radical feminist position, see
Marianne Schnall, Interview with Gloria Steinem: Excerpts of an Interview
Conducted by Marianne Schnall, Feminist.com, April 3, 1995, http://
www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/interviews/gloria.htm.
2. Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman
(1948; repr. New York: Citadel, 1976), 10.
3. Ian Turner and Chris Hector, Greer on Revolution Germaine on Love,
Overland 50/51 (Autumn 1972), republished in Radical Tradition: An
Australasian History Page, last modied January 25, 2005, http://www.
takver.com/history/sydney/greer1972.htm. Greers political afliations
 INTRODUCTION 11

have changed over the years. In 2008, she identied herself primarily as a
Marxist. Four years later, she told the panel and viewers of the BBCs
Question Time that she had voted for the Liberal Democrats in the (then)
latest election. See Germaine Greer, Writing Politics, Q&A, ABC
Television, broadcast August 14, 2008, http://www.abc.net.au/tv/
qanda/txt/s2327956.htm; and Question Time, BBC, broadcast January
19, 2012.
4. The prex second-wave is commonly used to separate the 1960s and
1970s (American) womens movement from previous womens movements.
First-wave feminism usually refers to British and American suffragettes of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while feminisms that
developed after the late 1970s are sometimes referred to as third-wave
feminism. The terms are useful when identifying different moments in
feminist history, but obscure the fact that certain topics have remained of
feminist interest over time. Nor do they take into account that several,
disparate feminist positions may exist simultaneously at any one time in
history.
5. See Flora Davis, Moving the Mountain: The Womens Movement in
America Since 1960 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991); Ann
Snitow and Rachel DuPlessis, eds., The Feminist Memoir Project:
Voices from Womens Liberation (New York: Three Rivers, 1998);
Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (New York:
Dial, 1999); and Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, eds., Dear
Sisters: Dispatches from the Womens Liberation Movement (New York:
Basic, 2000).
6. Robyn Wiegman views postmodern feminism as the effect of an intellectual
exhaustion among feminists in the 1990s and traces this exhaustion to a
disillusionment with the possibility of social transformation in a decade
characterized by the dissolution of much of identitys democratic gains.
Robyn Wiegman, Feminisms Apocalyptic Futures, New Literary History
31, no. 4 (2000): 805.
7. Throughout this book, I place certain words, such as authority, truth,
subject and life, within quotation marks to remind readers that these
are contested concepts in the debates that I outline here.
8. Sven-Eric Liedman speaks of soft modern ideas, that is, those of a poli-
tical, legal, ethical, religious and/or aesthetic (as opposed to a scientic or
technological) kind. Unlike hard ideas, soft ideas are characterized by
great tenacity, or historical stickiness. That is, they tend to exist alongside
new ideas rather than simply being replaced by them. Sven-Eric Liedman, I
skuggan av framtiden: Modernitetens idhistoria (1997; repr. Stockholm:
Bonniers, 1999), 50, 26. The above and subsequent translations of
Liedmans text are mine.
12 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

9. Ibid., 131.
10. According to Seyla Benhabib, the modern project combines ideas about
human freedom and happiness with the scientic-technologically based pro-
gress of productive forces. Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm and Utopia: A
Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986), 328. Liedman observes that arguments for womens particular-
ity tend to gain in popularity when universalist human rights promise to
become a practical reality. This is the reason, he continues, why ideas about
womens particularity also form part of many anti-feminist arguments. Liedman,
I skuggan av framtiden, 161162. A similar idea is brought forth in Thomas
Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
11. Ginette Castro, Feminism: A Contemporary History, trans. Elizabeth
Loverde-Bagwell (New York: New York University Press, 1990), 2.
12. Liz Stanley, The Auto/biographical I: The Theory and Practice of Feminist
Auto/biography (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 4.
13. Ibid.
14. Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social
Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 51.
15. Ibid.
16. Mary Rhiel and David Suchoff, Introduction: The Seductions of
Biography, in The Seductions of Biography, ed. Mary Rhiel and David
Suchoff (New York: Routledge, 1996), 1.
17. Lisbeth Larsson, Sanning och konsekvens: Marika Stiernstedt, Ludvig Nordstrm
och de biograska berttelserna (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2001), 13.
18. Rhiel and Suchoff, Introduction, 1.
19. Cheryl Walker, Persona Criticism and the Death of the Author, in
Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of
Biography and Biographical Criticism, ed. William H. Epstein (West
Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1991), 114.
20. Sharon OBrien, Feminist Theory and Literary Biography, in
Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of
Biography and Biographical Criticism, ed. William H. Epstein (West
Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1991), 128129.
21. Laura Miller, When Feminists Were Divas, Salon.com, June 9, 2000,
http://www.salon.com/2000/06/09/divas_3/.
22. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, only nine women mentioned in the
biographical dictionary Signicant Contemporary American Women had
been the subjects of full-length biographies. They were Bella Abzug, Rita
May Brown, Paula Gunn Allen, Shirley Chisholm, Angela Davis, Wilma
Mankiller, Alice Paul (later Henry), Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem.
Only two of these biographies were published in the 1990s, namely
 INTRODUCTION 13

Daniel Horowitzs biography of Friedan and Carolyn G. Heilbruns biogra-

phy of Steinem. See Jennifer Scanlon, ed., Signicant Contemporary
American Women: A Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999).
23. Even though Deirdre Bairs biography of Simone de Beauvoir was published
in 1990, I am not discussing it in Writing Feminist Lives. Bairs study of
Beauvoir was published before the cusp, as it were, of the 1990s reconsi-
derations of feminism and biography and, as such, it does not add insights to
my exploration of the feminist use of biography.
24. Scanlon, Signicant Contemporary American Women, xi; There are addi-
tional reasons why more women associated with the American womens
movement did not appear in biography in the 1990s. Many of the early
participants in the womens movement typically discouraged individual
leadership and stressed collaboration and democracy as crucial aspects of
the organizational structure. As a result, the editor of Signicant
Contemporary American Feminism points out, they left little behind in
the way of biographical information. Ibid, xii.
25. A 1988 group biography dealing primarily with Friedan, Greer and Steinem,
as well as Kate Millett, further conrms these womens already established
reputations as signicant feminists. The book was described as an inti-
mate history of the most important social revolution of our timethe
[American] womens movement and purported to tell the history of the
movement through the lives of some of its leading gures (quoted from
dust jacket). Marcia Cohen, The Sisterhood: The True Story of the Women Who
Changed the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988). The Sisterhood
was praised for nally [giving] the group their much earned praise for
changing the way this society treats its female members. Eleanor
Randolph, Daughters of an American Revolution, Washington Post, July
24, 1988: X3. Other critics, among them the subjects themselves (speci-
cally, Millett and Greer), were less enthusiastic, lamenting instead Cohens
focus on the well-known personalities of the womens movement at the
expense of other, less visible or palatable groups. Garry Abrams, Sniping
At Sisterhood: Author of History of Womens Movement Taken Aback by
Feminists Critique, Los Angeles Times, part 5, August 4, 1988: 1. A few
reviewers also picked up on the biographys introductory words, namely that
the social and political changes would have happened without these parti-
cular women because there were so many othersbrushres burning, a
grass-roots movement. Cohens only reply to the criticism was that
these were the voices that [she had] heard the most. Jonathan Kirsch,
Four Women Whose Message Was in the Media, Los Angeles Times, part
5, July 13, 1988: 4. The Sisterhood became a bestseller, was included in the
Book of the Month Club and submitted by the publishers Simon & Schuster
for a Pulitzer Prize.
14 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

26. William H. Epstein, (Post)modern Lives, in Contesting the Subject: Essays

in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical
Criticism, ed. William H. Epstein (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University
Press, 1991), 219. Friedans, Greers, Steinems and Beauvoirs previous
biographical recognition was established partly through earlier, full-length
or group biographies aimed either at a young adult or general readership. In
Signicant Contemporary American Feminists lists of biographical works
associated with the American womens movement, Friedan and Steinem
feature as subjects in biographies aimed at young adult readers more often
than any other women mentioned in the dictionary. In contrast, Christine
Wallaces biography is the only full-length account of Germaine Greers life.
Greer, however, has been the subject of several group biographies, biogra-
phical sketches and memoirs, which do not always focus on her role as a
feminist. Finally, Simone de Beauvoirs status as a feminist icon exceeds
that of the other three women. Her recognition by an audience familiar with
her public persona, but not always with her writing, resembles Virginia
Woolfs. See Brenda R. Silver, Virginia Woolf Icon (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1999), xvi. Beauvoir has also been the subject
of several full-length biographies and critical studies with a biographical
perspective.
27. Epstein, (Post)modern Lives, 219.
28. Ibid., 222.
29. Although Epstein views biography as a violation of the subject, he also
recognizes its power. For him, the entrance of the biographical subject
into written discourse is still a momentous occasion, an event that can,
among other things, reafrm cultural eminence, contextualize social
action, alter literary opinion, deputize political inuence, or instruct
economic conduct. Ibid. In other words, a persons biographical recog-
nition can also work for, rather than against, him or her.
30. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Writing a Womans Life (New York: W. W. Norton,
1988).
31. Hereafter, the short form for Sydney Ladensohn Stern will be Stern.
32. William H. Epstein, Introduction: Contesting the Subject, in Contesting
the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biography and
Biographical Criticism, ed. William H. Epstein (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue
University Press, 1991), 2.
33. Liedman, I skuggan av framtiden, 277. See also Louis Althusser, Lenin and
Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly
Review, 2001), 96.
34. Liedman, I skuggan av framtiden, 277.
 INTRODUCTION 15

35. Toril Moi, What is A Woman? And Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999), ix. See also Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 5.
36. Michael J. Shapiro, The Politics of Representation: Writing Practices in
Biography, Photography, and Policy Analysis (Madison, WI: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1988), 65.
37. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 3.
38. Diane Macdonell, Theories of Discourse (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 3.
Macdonells denition of biography resembles Epsteins, which proposes
that the narratives of biography and biographical criticism are life-texts,
powerful and inuential discourses precisely and strategically situated at the
intersections of objectivity and subjectivity, body and mind, self and other,
the natural and the cultural, fact and ction, as well as many other con-
ceptual dyads with which Western civilization has traditionally theorized
both the practices and the representations of everyday life. Epstein,
Introduction, 2.
39. John Worthen, The Necessary Ignorance of a Biographer, in The Art of
Literary Biography, ed. John Batchelor (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 227.
40. Shapiro, The Politics of Representation, 77.
41. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 168.
42. Judith Hennessee, Betty Friedan: Her Life (New York: Random House,
1999); Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine
Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism
(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998); and Christine
Wallace, Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew (1997 in Australia; repr.
London: Richard Cohen, 1999).
43. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem
(1995 in the USA; repr. Clays Ltd. St. Ives: Virago, 1996) and Sydney
Ladensohn Stern, Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics, and Mystique
(Secaucus, NJ: Birch Lane, 1997).
44. sa Moberg, Simone och jag: Tankar kring Simone de Beauvoir (1996; repr.
Stockholm: Norstedts, 2002) and Toril Moi, Simone de Beauvoir: The
Making of an Intellectual Woman (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers,
1992). Translated into English, the title of Mobergs biography reads
Simone and I: Thoughts on Simone de Beauvoir. The above and subsequent
translations of Mobergs book are mine.
45. Jrgen Schlaeger, Biography: Cult as Culture, in The Art of Literary
Biography, ed. John Batchelor (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 58.
 CHAPTER 2

A Question of Authority

Who owns the great? Lyndall Gordon asks in her biography of Mary
Wollstonecraft.1 Who possesses the authority to tell the truth about a
life? Since the 1970s, autobiography is the life writing genre that has
attracted the most attention from feminist critics. Feminist politics after
the 1960s developed largely out of womens own life stories, which tended
to be read as authentic accounts of womens experiences. To write ones
life was seen as an act of self-realization and several of the seminal political
texts written by second-wave feminist thinkers and activists include auto-
biographical elements. A biographers contestation of his or her subjects
autobiography must therefore be understood as a highly political act.
But the idea of what autobiography is has, of course, changed over
time. Changes in the critical denition of autobiography have affected the
genres role, or usefulness, in feminist theorizing, including the genres
function in feminist political writing. Feminist critics inuenced by post-
modern theories, especially, gradually moved away from reading autobio-
graphy as an authentic and unmediated account of a womans life and
came to stress the genres literary and ideological aspects. By the 1990s,
autobiography had lost its privileged position in feminist theorizing. In
contrast, the feminist interest in biography was increasing.
Biography has proven more resistant to postmodern criticism than auto-
biography.2 So-called modern, or realist, biographers are able to distance
their accounts from alternative versions by telling a life in, supposedly,
objective and neutral terms. Arguments against autobiographical

The Author(s) 2016 17

M. Lidstrm Brock, Writing Feminist Lives, Breaking Feminist Waves,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47178-5_2
18 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

truth reappear in realist biography as a way to establish the genres truth-

claims, a subject I will return to later in this chapter. The realist biographers
omniscient perspective promises insights that the biographical subject is
seen as unable to provide. At times, the distance between autobiographical
and biographical truth takes the form of a direct contestation of the
subjects version of her life.
Among feminists, feminist historians especially have gravitated towards the
realist genre.3 Realist biographys purportedly objective approach functions as
verication, or authorization of the feminist historicizing of womens life
in scientic and fact-based terms. Yet the criticism voiced against auto-
biography can be understood as criticism against all forms of life writing. The
postmodern skepticism of autobiographys truth-claims, and its dismantling
of the individual as the point of origin for knowledge about the self and the
world, inevitably throw suspicion on realist biographys truth-claims, as well.
The genre poses additional problems for feminists. When realist biographers
contest a subject with her own, autobiographically informed political theory,
they are simultaneously contesting the subjects right to interpret her own life
story, a right fundamental to a central claim made by feminists in the 1960s
and 1970s, namely that the personal is also political. Before outlining the
problemsand possibilitieswith writing a feminist life in the form of realist
biography, autobiographys changing role in the feminist politicization of the
personal requires some examination.

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL

The politicization of womens lives has been fundamental to the development
of both the American womens movement and feminist theory, and has
inuenced how feminists have understood and politicized womens lives.
With the approach of a new millennium, few chroniclers of twentieth-century
society neglected to mention the womens movement and discuss its impact.4
Parallels were drawn to the American Revolution and the movement was
sometimes interpreted as the realization of Abigail Adams futile plea to her
husband, John Adams, that he should: Remember the Ladies, and be more
generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.5 Indeed, Ruth Rosen
calls the American womens movement the longest revolution while simul-
taneously stressing its swiftness in modern political history and its dramatic
inuence on individual lives.6 Unlike other movements, Rosen argues, the
modern feminist phenomenon was led almost exclusively by women and
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 19

brought about profound changes in the minds and everyday lives of millions
of ordinary people, all within the time span of a single generation.7
According to Rosen, the womens movement changed lives in ways that
are rare in the history of social movements. Living life as a feminist wasand
isan intensely personal and dramatic experience.8 Whether one agrees
with Rosens interpretation of the events, her emphasis on the individual
experience of the womens movement can be understood as a direct con-
sequence of what has been described as a highly self-conscious period in
American womens lives.9 The raising of womens consciousness is com-
monly understood as a foundational part of second-wave feminism.
Consciousness-raising took its most visible and, arguably, most inuential
shape in the formation of so-called consciousness-raising groups. In 1968,
Kathie Sarachild presented A Program for Feminist Consciousness-
Raising, designed to raise womens awareness of their shared experiences,
by encouraging women to talk about and compare their emotions in
groups.10 The programs underlying assumption was that womens feelings
were repressed and denied in male culture because they were saying some-
thing fundamental about womens shared condition. In the consciousness-
raising groups, womens feelings and private experiences were central, or as
Sarachild states it, we assume that our feelings are telling us something from
which we can learn . . . In our groups, lets share our feelings and pool them.
Lets let ourselves go and see where our feelings lead us. Our feelings will lead
us to ideas and then to actions.11 The purpose of the group meetings was to
raise womens consciousness but also, as Ginette Castro observes, to develop
an ideology and an action program appropriate to a political movement,
based on the premise that the personal is also political.12
American feminist theory, Castro claims, emerged largely out of the
actual life experiences of women. More to the point, I wish to argue, the
theory emerged from the stories women told about their experiences.13
The life story served a double function as it both constituted the founda-
tion of feminist theory and operated as an interpretative tool within the
same. As explained by the Personal Narratives Group in 1989:

Listening to womens voices, studying womens writings, and learning from

womens experiences have been crucial to the feminist reconstruction of our
understanding of the world. Since feminist theory is grounded in womens
lives and aims to analyze the role and meaning of gender in those lives and in
society, womens personal narratives present and interpret womens life
experiences.14
20 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

The Personal Narratives Group stressed American feminist critics invest-

ment in and dependence on individual womens life stories and feelings.
To the group, womens personal narratives presented but also helped to
interpret womens experiences by positioning them in a collective
narrative, which served to increase their political signicance.
By the 1970s, autobiography moved from the periphery to the center
of the literary canon as minorities or otherwise marginal groups gravitated
towards the genre. Catherine N. Parke explains the shift by referring to
autobiographys focus on personal experience.15 She stresses in particular
the genres association with confession and witnessing. Womens ction
and, eventually, autobiography became popular objects of study among
feminist literary scholars, who looked for what they perceived as confes-
sional tendencies in the texts.16 The justication for the search was often
identical to that of consciousness-raising groups. Among early feminist
critics, the confessional was viewed as a straightforward reference to, or
reconstruction of, an authentic self. Or, as Rita Felski explains it, the
critical assumption was that the confessional text seeks to distill an
unmediated subjectivity, an authentic expression of authorial self which
circumvents as far as possible the constraints of narrative organization and
of literary structure.17 This view of autobiography helps to explain why
1970s feminist political arguments frequently include autobiographical
elements. The inclusion of such elements suggests rsthand knowledge
of the topics under discussion. Furthermore, the autobiographical pre-
sence in a feminist analysis supposedly conrms and veries the impor-
tance of politicizing the personal. Finally, autobiographical elements
were included to encourage female readers to reinterpret their own lives
through example. In the 1970s, feminist interpretations of ction and
autobiography implied that womens writing was in some sense always
autobiographical.18
Changes in the critical view of autobiography, particularly womens
autobiography, eventually undermined autobiographical interpretations
of womens writing, as well as the feminist politicization, or use, of the
genre. The critical emphasis gradually shifted to a denition of autobio-
graphy as a kind of story and a distinction was increasingly made
between the life and the text. By the 1980s, the genre had generally
come to be understood as a literary or ideological construction, or both.
To understand the consequences of this change for feminist critics and
practitioners of autobiography, the perspective must widen to include
non-feminist views on the genre.
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 21

TWENTIETH-CENTURY CRITICISM OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Twentieth-century autobiography is commonly dened as a Western,
post-classical literary form, concerned with the life of an individual and
written by himself or herself. Like for other genres, denitions of auto-
biography have changed over time and have served to exclude as well as
classify texts. Here, the critical perception of autobiography will be
roughly divided into two categories: general and feminist approaches to
the genre. Special attention will be given to arguments by which womens
autobiography has been dened as an inferior, or failed, example of
autobiography. It is against such arguments that the feminist theorizing of
autobiography must be understood.
According to Estelle Jelinek, critics in the early twentieth century
mostly focused on the content of autobiography and tended to judge
texts on the basis of the authors moral character.19 The idea that auto-
biography communicated something true and signicant, not just about
an individual, but about the human condition in general, permeated most
of the research.20 Jelinek observes that formal distinctions between auto-
biography and biography were rarely made before the 1930s.21 Studies
typically also included letters, journals and other types of written
reminiscences.22
During the 1950s and 1960s, Jelinek continues, critics began to view
autobiography as a separate literary genre rather than a branch of his-
tory.23 Yet, the same critics also stressed the referential aspects of the
genre. In other words, autobiography was still seen as communicating
something true and signicant, but after World War II, many critics saw
such truth as communicated indirectly, through the texts formal fea-
tures.24 As a result, content and form were increasingly understood as
indistinguishable parts of autobiography. Denitions of the genre nar-
rowed, as exemplied by Roy Pascals references to ideal or proper
autobiography. According to Pascal, it is necessary rst to discriminate
between autobiography proper and other literary forms that have an
autobiographical content.25 In his 1960 study, Design and Truth in
Autobiography, Pascal denes proper autobiography as the authors
attempt to give his life meaning by establishing a relationship between
the self and the world. More specically, proper autobiography becomes
a matter of aesthetics, that is, of the authors ability to create a coherent
and noteworthy narrative, presented as a set of interrelated, changing life
stages.
22 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

Pascal views autobiography as a metaphor, standing both for the indi-

viduals attempt to understand his life and the general human search for a
meaningful existence. To Pascal, life writing is a humanistic project.26
The autobiographers task is to present events that are symbolic of his
personality, yet unfolding not solely according to its own laws, but also in
response to the world it lives in.27 For this reason, Pascal continues, the
contradictory and incoherent life story is always a failure. The best, or
proper, autobiography is written by those with a certain power over
their circumstances:

What distinguishes the story of people with an established public achieve-

ment and personality is a consistent relationship, a sort of harmony, between
outward experience and inward growth or unfolding, between incidents and
the spiritual ingestion of them, so that each circumstance, each incident,
instead of being an anomalous fact, becomes part of a process and a revela-
tion within.28

Pascals references to life as growing and unfolding underscore his view

of proper autobiography as an organic whole, the result of an autobio-
grapher in possession of the social and psychological means by which to
perceive and convey the full meaning of the anomalous fact[s] that
make up his life.
Pascal refers to a number of historical texts to exemplify his ideal,
among them two paradigmatic works of autobiography: Jean-Jacques
Rousseaus Confessions and Benjamin Franklins Autobiography. Despite
their differences, he observes, Rousseaus and Franklins texts represent
exemplary versions of autobiography proper. Both authors organize their
life story according to a pre-established design. Franklin, who views his
public achievements as a worthy standard by which to evaluate his life,
presents the most obvious example of Pascals proper autobiography.
Rousseaus Confessions, on the other hand, is a search for what Pascal calls
Selbstbesinnung, or the search for ones own inner and outer standing.29
The inner life, Pascal explains, has to have an outward shape in the
narrative, the result of a collusion of inner and outer life, of personality
and society.30 Rousseaus insistence that he possessed unique insights into
his own selfhood suggests that the self is something over which the
proper autobiographer is in control and upon which he can reect.
Denitions of proper autobiography prevailed into the 1980s,
according to Liz Stanley.31 Nevertheless, autobiography critics in the
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 23

1960s and 1970s began to concern themselves less with questions of true
or ideal autobiography and more with the concrete and the personal.32
The proliferation and variety of autobiography caused some critics to
doubt whether the genre had a comprehensive history.33 Others sought
to explain the new interest in autobiography among new social groups and
movements. In the 1980s, critics were also becoming increasingly inter-
ested in the textual production, or construction, of the autobiographical
self.34 Like Pascal, James Olney argued that autobiography must be
understood as an individuals attempt at self-understanding.35 Yet it is
in the very act of writing, Olney claimed, that the self is created.
Although he identied the text as the locus for this self, Olney presup-
posed an individual as the texts origin, subject and agent. It is an interest
in the pre-textual self or individual, he believed, that explains the contin-
uous appeal of autobiography and encourages various historical, socio-
cultural and anthropological approaches to the genre.36 This is why
autobiography has become the focalizing literature for various politically
engaged areas of study, Olney concluded.37
The preoccupation with the literariness and aesthetics of autobiography
paved the way for poststructuralist approaches to the genre. The result was
a redenition of autobiography and its truth-claims. To a critic such as
Olney, autobiography offered a welcome escape from the poststructuralist
ground of intertextual play. In contrast, poststructuralist critics perceived
the autobiographical self as created in and by the text, and not as a direct
or mediated reection on a pre-textual individual. According to poststruc-
turalist critics, such as Roland Barthes, the pre-textual self to which auto-
biography refers is never realized in the text. In his 1975 autobiography
Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, Barthes systematically rejects many of
the concepts that had previously provided the foundation for autobiogra-
phy.38 Structurally, he breaks with the tradition of linearity and coherence
by presenting a fragmented text. Unlike Pascal, whose proper autobio-
graphy assumes an unproblematic relationship between the self and lan-
guage, Barthes views auto/biography as a destructive act, which xes and
thereby reduces the life.39 Throughout his autobiography, Barthes
deconstructs the notion of a writing self with the ability to communicate
the true story of his or her selfhood.40 Language separates the human
being from his or her existence, he argues, and the coherent and harmo-
nious text is always a falsity. Although his approach throws doubt on the
autobiographer, other critics, such as Liz Stanley, have pointed out that
Barthes never expresses doubt concerning the dominant authorial
24 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

presence in this activity.41 Although Barthes questions the link between

the life and the text, he never questions the (authorial) critical posi-
tion from which he draws his conclusions.
When feminists turned to autobiography in the 1960s and 1970s,
autobiographical authority was a motivating factor, but in Pascals
study of autobiography womens texts are mentioned almost exclu-
sively as failed or inferior examples of the genre.42 Pascal denes
womens autobiography as incoherent and inconsistent, written by
authors who express uncertainty regarding themselves and their role
in society.43 In womens texts, he identies a lack of harmony between
the subjects outward experiences and her inner growth, or gradual
unfolding. He observes that incidents and circumstances do not form
parts of an inner process or development, and facts often lack an
explanatory context.44
Unlike Pascal, feminists initially viewed womens autobiography as a
direct reection, or unmediated reconstruction, of the authors sense of
self.45 Before the mid-1980s, feminists saw no need to theorize the
genre.46 The non-theoretical approach to autobiography can be traced
back to Georg Misch, who denes the genre as a powerful and direct
(unmediated) form of self-expression.47 According to Laura Marcus,
Misch makes no distinction between the autobiographers self-aware-
ness and his or her self-actualization, or self-assertion.48 A similar
connection between self-assertion and autobiography was made by fem-
inists in the 1970s, who read womens life stories as authentic accounts
of womens experiences and expressions of female agency. Feminists at
that time interpreted the stories as saying something signicant and true,
both about the individual and about womens situation in general.
In 1980, Estelle Jelinek made a rst attempt to theorize womens
autobiography from a feminist perspective. In Womens Autobiography:
Essays in Criticism, she argues the constructed nature of womens writ-
ing.49 Like Pascal, Jelinek denes womens autobiography as incoherent
and fragmentary, but argues that such writing should not be considered
inferior. On the contrary, womens autobiography must be read apart
from dominant perceptions of self-writing. An analysis of womens auto-
biography must, Jelinek insists, disregard previous notions of proper
autobiography. If it does, such an analysis will signicantly alter the canon.
This is especially true, she continues, if the denition of womens auto-
biography also includes other kinds of writing, such as memoirs, letters,
diaries and ction.50
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 25

Jelineks early criticism had a signicant impact on subsequent feminist

research. Her rst study suggests that womens autobiography constitutes
a separate tradition. Autobiography by women rarely focuses on the sub-
jects career, it is not representative of its time, nor does it function as a
mirror to reect its era. Instead, female autobiographers tend to empha-
size personal relationships with friends and family, at the expense of world
affairs. To Jelinek, autobiography is the artistic, but still authentic,
construction of a writing self. She points out that criteria such as
orderliness, wholeness and harmony often are not applicable to womens
texts and explains this absence by referring to the multidimensionality of
womens socially conditioned roles, which she believes has resulted in
confusing and diverse patterns in womens writing.51
Jelineks later theorizing on womens autobiography came to focus
more on the genres ctional aspects. Her changed position reects a
general critical change towards life writing. In her second study of
womens autobiography, The Tradition of Womens Autobiography: From
Antiquity to the Present, Jelinek moderates her denition of womens
autobiography and observes that both male and female autobiographers
often fail to meet all the criteria set up by male critics, such as Pascal.52 She
nds, for example, that the autobiographical mode of introspection is a
fallacy.53 Both male and female autobiographers, Jelinek argues, fre-
quently omit painful and intimate details from their stories, an observation
she makes already in her rst study: The admission of intense feelings of
hate, love, and fear, . . . the detailing of painful psychological experiences
are matters on which autobiographers . . . are generally silent.54 Her
research suggests that rather than an authentic expression of authorial
self, the confessional aspects of autobiography are the result of organi-
zation and literary structure.55
During the 1980s, a gradual shift took place in feminist autobio-
graphical research. In her inuential study, Writing a Womans Life
(1988), Carolyn G. Heilbrun explicitly stresses the constructed nature
of autobiography and the need for a new type of womens auto/
biography that departs from the conventional romance plot.56
Feminist critics also began to question the very possibility of writing
womens lives in ways that resemble poststructuralist views on the
genre.57 As Lisbeth Larsson observes, Barthes fragmentary, non-
chronological and genre-defying autobiography reads like Jelineks
early denition of womens autobiography. Larsson observes that in
poststructuralist theories the feminine becomes the term for that
26 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

which disturbs and renews the given order, but warns that the fem-
inine also stands for that which is silenced or distorted by the domi-
nant discourse, or language.58
Inuenced by a poststructuralist language pessimism, feminist critics
have increasingly read womens autobiography as examples of the impos-
sibility of the autobiographical project.59 Sidonie Smith argues that
women cannot escape the dominant Western paradigm for telling life
stories. The subject of this paradigm is always male, she insists, and so is
its truth. As a consequence, autobiography offers neither liberation for
women, nor the truth about womens lives.60 Felski, in turn, expresses
another concern when she asks whether,

the act of confession [is] a liberating step for women, which uncovers the
political dimensions of personal experience, confronts the contradictions of
existing gender roles, and inspires an important sense of female identica-
tion and solidarity? Or does this kind of writing merely reveal what
Christopher Lasch calls the banality of pseudo-awareness, a narcissistic
soul-searching that uncritically reiterates the jargon of authenticity and
the ideology of subjectivity-as-truth which feminism should be calling into
question?61

Drawing on Lasch, Felski does not discard all literature in the confessional
vein, in which self-disclosure is used to gain insight to the historical
forces, reproduced in psychological form, but she argues that the indivi-
dual search for authentic feelings risks becoming narcissistic and of
little relevance for feminisms larger political goals.62 Despite their differ-
ent views on the potential problems that female autobiographers face,
Smith and Felski both suggest that a woman who writes autobiography
risks reproducing dominant discourses that threaten to falsify her life
story.
In contrast to the language pessimism that characterizes Smiths and
Felskis respective views on autobiography, later feminist critics express a
more optimistic view of the genre. Typically, these critics focus on the
intersubjective aspects of the autobiography, that is, the ways in which
every self is structured by interactions with other selves and various
social institutions.63 Carolyn Steedman observes that the genre originates
not only in the male middle- and upper-class proclivity for telling stories
about the inner self, but also in the extortion of working-class life stories
by ofcialdom. An intersubjective approach to autobiography, she
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 27

explains, must nevertheless take into account the dialogic relationship

between personal narratives and available public stories, and she points
out that we know very little about the way in which . . . [the modern
literary character was] taken and used in innumerable acts of self-fashion-
ing and self-perception.64 Felicity Nussbaum, on her part, suggests that
intersubjectivity can be read as a form of self-defense, where the female
self legitimizes itself through the dominant discourse, while simulta-
neously resisting it.65
The modern feminist interest in autobiography originated in the assump-
tion that the genre offers an authentic and immediate account of a
womans life, which was thought to encourage reader identication. As such,
the genre relies on a female subject with absolute authority over her story.
This is the strength of the confessional, but also its weakness, as the authen-
tication depends on the ontological unassailability of the female author/
subject. Yet the feminist appraisal of womens life stories in the 1970s rarely
took into account how womens life stories were received by a mainstream
audience. Larssons study of the auto/biographies of the Swedish literary
couple Marika Stiernstedt and Ludvig Nordstrm reveals that in these texts,
no distinction between styles can be made based on sexual difference.
Instead, the main difference between the texts written by men and women
in the study is their reception by general readers and critics. The way
womens texts have been read, Larsson argues, is consistent in its reduction
of womens truth-claims to mere opinions. It is in the act of reading, and not
in the act of writing, she observes, that the breakdown of meaning and
truth in these womens life writing takes place.66
The conclusion I draw from Larssons observations is that truth in
autobiography is not just a matter of facts, how these facts are presented
and by whom. It is also a question of how they are read. When a woman
writes about her life, there is always a possibility that these descriptions will
be judged differently than if she were a man. Womens autobiography has
been dismissed as incoherent and illogical. It has also been described as too
tendentious or polemical to offer the truth about its subject. By the 1990s,
subjectivity in all autobiography had come into question, which suggested to
some feminists that the foundation of feminist theory had to be re-evaluated.
As a result, biographys political usefulness to feminists was also
reconsidered.
Changes in twentieth-century critical attitudes towards biography
resemble those towards autobiography, and feminist critics of autobiogra-
phy have sometimes included biography in their criticism.67 Among
28 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

postmodern and poststructuralist critics, biography is understood as a

quintessentially modern form, which has successfully resisted attempts to
deconstruct the genre, its author and its subject.68 This is certainly the case
with realist biography, in which the biographers truth-claims are estab-
lished through an author that insists on complete, or near complete,
knowledge of and authority over a subject whose life is deemed worthy
of being told. Attracted to the possibility of presenting solid, knowable
selves as a means to identify social and political oppression, the genre has
gained interest among various marginalized groups. Among feminists,
historians especially have been drawn to the genre.
Realist biographys preoccupation with so-called worthy lives seems
especially suitable for attempts at making visible exceptional women in
history and shedding light on womens unique culture through an
exemplary life told in supposedly objective and neutral terms. Yet, in
the process of establishing its authority the genre relies upon some, if
not all, of the arguments often presented against (womens) autobiogra-
phy. As such, realist biography has also been dismissed by feminists, who
have sought alternative, less authoritarian or, to use Epsteins terminol-
ogy, violent ways to write a womans life. As subsequent chapters in this
book will demonstrate, however, realist biography remains the life-writing
approach from which other biographical approaches continue to expressly
distance themselves. When Heilbrun, Moi and Moberg write their bio-
graphies of Steinem and Beauvoir, respectively, they are conscious of
breaking realist biographical conventions.
Four of the seven biographies discussed in this book can be dened as
realist biographies: Horowitzs and Hennessees respective biographies of
Betty Friedan, Wallaces biography of Germaine Greer and Ladensohn
Sterns biography of Gloria Steinem. Tracing the history of realist biogra-
phy offers clues to what has motivated these biographers choice of
method (a subject discussed in Chapter Three). The genres history also
provides insights into realist biographys popularity and explains the fem-
inist criticism voiced against the genre. The next section will present two
types of realist biography: socio-historical biography and psychobiogra-
phy. The rst approach seeks to uncover socio-historical truths, the
other personal and psychological ones. As will be discussed further in
Chapter Three, these approaches result in radically different understand-
ings of the ideal biographical subject and her motivations, yet both
methods rely on the biographers authorial stance in establishing their
truth-claims.
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 29

REALIST BIOGRAPHY
Contemporary scholars sometimes stress the dissemination of generic
boundaries. Stanley argues that no methodological difference between
autobiography and biography exists, and reminds readers that little dis-
tinction was made between autobiography and biography before the
seventeenth century.69 Samuel Johnson famously referred to both kinds
of writing merely as biography, while later critics have sought to identify
structural and thematic differences between the genres.70 For example,
autobiography is typically told in the rst person, while biography is
generally understood as a third-person account.71 Moreover, it has been
argued that only biography can include the subjects death in the narra-
tive.72 Other critics have refuted these attempts at categorization by
pointing at exceptions to these and other assumed differences.73 What is
important here, however, is not whether the genres can be identied as
separate, but how they are understood and evaluated as distinct accounts
of truth.
Inevitably, distinctions between autobiographical and biographical
truth come back to who is telling the life story. Jrgen Schlaeger
denes autobiography as a discourse of anxiety.74 Autobiographys
truth criterion, he writes, can be understood as the desire to
authenticate an inside view. The opportunity for self-knowing
and self-realization prompted the 1970s feminist interest in the
genre.75 The state of self-knowing was seen as a rst step towards a
collective narrative of female experience and constituted a central
aspect of the feminist struggle for social, cultural and political change.
In contrast, Schlaeger views biography as a discourse of usurpation.76
The authors usurpation, or appropriation, of the subjects life is, I
wish to argue, most fully executed in modern, or realist, biography.77
In realist biography, authority over the life story is no longer in the
hands of the subject/autobiographer, but in those of the biographer,
and the authentication of the life story rests on the biographers
verication of supposedly objective facts about the subject. For
these reasons, the genre has been criticized by feminists and postmo-
dern critics alike.78
Although subject to criticism, realist biography dominates the biogra-
phy eld.79 Stanley observes that as a rule, many professional biographers
are content to dene biography as an authorial construction, yet their
work continues to be driven by the motor of realism.80 The assumption
30 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

behind realist biography is the idea of a neutral and objective bio-

grapher, who is able to unearth the supposedly real and signicant inu-
ences on the subjects life. I classify four of the seven biographies in this
study as realist biography. These biographies do not share a single meth-
odology, nor do their biographers present identical denitions of femin-
ism, but each biographer purports neutrally to uncover reality as they
understand it. More precisely, their respective approaches correspond with
one of two common types of realist life writing: socio-historical biography
and psychobiography.
As the name suggests, socio-historical biography provides the context
of the times to help explain the life.81 Journalist and biographer Steve
Weinbergs investigative biography offers a working denition of the
approach. His criteria for good investigative biography are practical,
that is, they do not have an articulated theoretical foundation. According
to Weinberg, biography must follow the life as it was lived, that is, it
must be told chronologically.82 Psychoanalysis of the subject should be
used sparingly, since so-called psycho[bio]graphy is always in danger of
degenerating into gossip.83 Good biographers, Weinberg continues,
must admit to lling gaps in the subjects life, and when lling such gaps
proves impossible, admit that this is the case. They must also go the extra
mile to check out data, never settling for secondary data when additional
effort might uncover primary data.84 Furthermore, he cautions, biogra-
phers should avoid traps of illogic and take style as seriously as
substance.85
Investigative biography presupposes a subject whose life is worth
investigating. Weinberg brings up the strengths of the unauthorized
biography of living persons. Unauthorized biography, he concedes, has
its disadvantages (such as an unwilling and sabotaging subject), but it also
offers many advantages to the biographer, such as a rsthand understand-
ing of the social context in which [the subject] operates.86 Furthermore,
the unauthorized biography never starts with nothing, having at the very
least the subjects autobiographical writings to check for anecdotes, dis-
crepancies, signicant omissions, and psychological insights.87 In other
words, Weinberg believes that a persons identity, or essence, can always
be captured in writing. Autobiography, his reasoning suggests, gives a
rst, but ultimately incomplete, insight into the subjects identity, or
self. Only (realist) biography can offer a complete, or near complete,
perspective on the individual.
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 31

Weinberg bases his criteria for good biography on bestselling biogra-

phies, such as Robert Caros The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of
New York and Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steeles Empire: The Life,
Legend and Madness of Howard Hughes. He also makes frequent refer-
ences to Leon Edels denition of the biographers task. Still, some of his
criteria differ from Edels notion of ideal biography, notably his dismissal
of psychological approaches to biography and his preference for chrono-
logical narratives. While Weinberg speaks of biography primarily as a craft,
Edel refers to it as an art.88
Edels ideal biography typies psychological biography, or psychobio-
graphy. Despite his preoccupation with the genres literary aspects, Edel
denes biography as the reconstruction of a life. The fancy of the bio-
grapher, he argues, resides in the art of narration, not in the substance
of the story, yet the substance exists before the narration begins.89 The
most viable biographical approach is to deal with the biographical subjects
doubts, his failures, [and] his struggles, effectively turning the subject
into an analysand.90 According to Edel, the aim of the biographer is to
organize the subjects often incoherent and seemingly random feelings (or
symptoms) into a coherent, rational whole.91 That task is best suited
to a biographer who, like a psychoanalyst, has the advantage of being able
to see through his subjects private myth (or Selbstbesinnung, in Pascals
terminology) to reveal divisions, weaknesses, unconscious motives and
desires.92
To establish biographys status as the artistically arranged truth about
(or the diagnosis of) an individual, Edel points to the autobiographers
dependence on selective and faulty memory as indicative of autobiogra-
phys fundamental unreliability. His argument suggests that in compar-
ison, the biographers perspective is both objective and omniscient.93
Like Pascal, Edel views life writing as a humanistic project, which is best
realized by a detached and unbiased biographer, who writes about a
subject whose life can be organized into a coherent and meaningful
story.94 Such organization (or healing of the divided and conicted
subject) can be chronological, but it can also be arranged thematically.
Indeed, Edel views the thematic arrangement of the life as a measure of
the biographers artistic talent. Despite distinct views of the genre,
Weinberg and Edel both dene biography as objective and neutral
in its methodology. Empirical research methods and, in Edels case, a
systematic interpretative method inspired by psychoanalysis supposedly
32 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

assure the biographers neutral stance. To both critics, the objective

approach establishes and conrms the genres scientic status.
The close scrutiny demanded by socio-historical biography and psycho-
biography calls for a particular type of worthy or exemplary biogra-
phical subject. A short history of this subject begins to explain the feminist
criticism voiced against realist biography, as well as the genres continuous
appeal among (feminist) historians. From a historical perspective, the
attention to the individual life in realist biography seems to have
demanded a heroic or otherwise unique life.95 The focus on heroic
subjects and their public lives dominated theories of biography in nine-
teenth-century England and the United States, albeit for different reasons
and in somewhat different forms.96 Scott E. Casper and Ira Bruce Nadel
observe that, by this time, biography had become an institution on both
sides of the Atlantic.97 The forerunner to psychobiography, Casper writes,
found its early expression in James Boswells Life of Samuel Johnson.98
Boswell advocates an intimate biographical approach and expresses
closeness to his subject through the use of certain intimacy tropes.99
Larsson points out that in many ways his intimate biography resembles
the ideal biography as described by Samuel Johnson himself.100 To
Johnson, the biographer should deal with domestic privacies, that is,
the interior, private realm of the subjects life. Private habits, not public
deeds, he believed, were the truest measure of character.101
According to Casper, nineteenth-century English and American critics
came to view Johnsonian biography as the ideal.102 In the United States,
Johnsons notion of character coincided with the development of liberal
individualism and evangelical Christianity.103 Habits of industry, temper-
ance and pity came to be linked with a persons character, or true self.
Such habits, Casper explains, were seen to determine ones success or
failure in public. There is a Romantic side to this perception of character,
he continues. Critics emphasized the unique individual and believed
that the example of a truly exceptional subject could help readers to
develop their own particular genius. According to this argument, the
best biographies inuenced the readers character through inspiration,
not imitation.104
Casper notes that nineteenth-century biography of women typically
belongs to this intimate category of biography. His overview of nine-
teenth-century critics of biography suggests that womens public appear-
ance in biography had to be justied in a Christian context, which stressed
the subjects pious character.105 According to Elizabeth Jay, English
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 33

biographies of contemporary famous women typically strove to re-estab-

lish their female subjects in their proper, private sphere. A case in point
is Elizabeth Gaskells The Life of Charlotte Bronte, which consistently
foregrounds the domesticity of its subject.106 Perhaps this is why twenti-
eth-century critics turned to the novel when looking for accounts of
nineteenth-century womens experiences.107 The realist novel, this turn
suggests, permitted the presentation of womens experiences from an
objective and scientic perspective, but in the guise of ction.
According to Gilbert and Gubar, the realist novel both restricted (ctio-
nalized) and allowed nineteenth-century women to articulate their
experiences.108 In contrast, earlier biography of women tended to deal
with public gures, such as female royalty. As such, they belong to another
category, existing alongside the intimate life.109
The intimate, Johnsonian biography focused on the individuals devel-
opment. But, as Casper points out, biography also could reinforce or
challenge prevailing narratives about a nation and its past.110 This, he
argues, seemed to call for a biography that focused on the subjects public
life and deeds. The historical miniature, the life and times biography and
the spiritual biography were all part of English life writing in the eight-
eenth and nineteenth centuries. These forms dealt with the public man
and have classical origins.111 According to Nadel, rst-century BCE author
Plutarchs short, moralizing biography, with its revealing anecdotes and
life summaries, eventually merged with Enlightenment notions of rational
and coherent individuality.112 The result was a certain kind of Victorian
life writing, exemplied by the entries in Leslie Stephens Dictionary of
National Biography.113 The heroes in these entries were typically men
but included a few exceptional women, such as female royalty and
saints.114 Casper observes that in the short biographical entries to the
Dictionary of National Biography, there is little room for the attention
to detail that Boswell practiced in his biography of Johnson. Furthermore,
Johnsons belief in the moral lessons that could be learned by studying an
individuals faults rarely appealed to biographers who wished to teach
solely by heroic example.115
In the twentieth century, both types of biography continued to our-
ish, although the genres scientic claims came to depend on predomi-
nantly Freudian psychoanalysis and social (Marxist) historiography. The
inuence from these interpretative strands is noticeable in both Edels and
Weinbergs respective biographical ideals. The Freudian, or psychological,
perspective notably gained ground through Lytton Stracheys group
34 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

biography Eminent Victorians, written in reaction to the Victorian hagio-

graphical tradition.116 Edel views Strachey as the father of psychobiogra-
phy.117 He draws attention to the biographer as an artist in his own right,
whose method of selection and creative details communicate a truth
beyond the immediate.118 Weinberg, on his part, emphasizes the social
and historical context of the life. His investigative biography has its roots
in accounts of heroic public men. Like the life and times biographers
of the nineteenth century, his investigative biography offers a detailed
account of the social and temporal circumstances in which a person
develops what might be called individual purpose.119
The historicizing of great men (and, occasionally, great women)
establishes biography as a historical subcategory. Yet the genres position
in contemporary historiography is precarious, to say the least, as suggested
by Patrick OBriens denition of historical biography. Inuenced by
so-called new social history, OBrien views the majority of political bio-
graphy as too supercial, too focused on the subjects personal life, and
not successful enough in persuading the reader of the subjects merit and
importance. Historical biography, OBrien argues, must aspire to gain a
proper understanding of evolving political institutions and processes, as
well as an appreciation of the lasting achievements of signicant indivi-
duals operating within those systems.120 The historical biography, he
continues, must not seek its validation through psychological categories
and vocabularies, which he believes will discredit the work. Clearly favor-
ing a socio-historical approach over psychobiography, the only biography
OBrien reluctantly accepts is a fully contextualized biography, which
can specify and document, in a historically acceptable fashion, its sub-
jects exceptionality and transcendence of the limitations of his or her
social place.121 Unfortunately, OBrien concludes, most biography falls
short of these requirements.
The uncertain position that biography holds in contemporary historio-
graphy compels historians to ask a set of questions about their discipline
and biography as a properly scientic genre. These questions can be
traced back to the development of modern historiography and to conict-
ing notions of biography as either a literary or an historical genre. How
contemporary historians interpret historical events from either an
individual, or a collective, perspective is of particular interest here, as it
sheds light on biographys usefulness for their discipline. Historical per-
spectives on the individual have varied, but also have overlapped. It is a
truism that the Renaissance interest in the individual replaced the
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 35

Medieval, collective understanding of human existence. On the other

hand, Reed Whittemore observes that the notion of the individual as
separate from collective thoughts and movements emerged already in
Medieval Christian debates.122 Casper similarly observes that as early as
the 1700s, historians and philosophers were arguing that larger trends of
ideas and affairs, not great men, shaped history, but he still stresses that
the ancient tendency to portray notables only as exalted, public gures
continued unabated into and throughout the nineteenth century.123
Changing trends in historiography in general have also affected biogra-
phys status. In the twentieth century, Marxist historiography, Freudian
psychology and a more systematic application of positivist study methods
seriously challenged the historical focus on (exceptional) individuals.124
With the introduction of new social history in the 1960s, historical
research experienced a further shift from the public to the private
sphere.125 Advocates of new social history criticized the dominant histor-
ical narratives of the past, which had typically focused on high politics,
diplomacy or intellectual life. Historians, they argued, should focus on
social and economic processes and investigate the conditions of previously
ignored groups, such as women, immigrants and workers.126 Quantitative
research methods should also be employed.
A central goal for new social historians was to provide what Martin J.
Burke calls a usable past for contemporary movements that advocated
social change.127 The biography genre came to be perceived as a particu-
larly unscientic genre, a telling example of traditional historys focus
on great men and their public deeds. As historians became inuenced by
poststructuralist theories that questioned the notion of the autonomous
individual, biography was increasingly dismissed as commercial and non-
intellectual. Indeed, among contemporary British and American scholars,
biography is often dened as trivial, revisionist, exploitative, ctive, a
corrupter of pure texts and probably also of scholarly morals.128
Despite such devastating judgment, biography remains a popular form
of history writing.129
The genres continued popularity can be attributed to the ways twen-
tieth-century biographers adjusted to the scientic demands posed by
Marxist historiography and Freudian psychology. These changes can be
understood as a reaction against twentieth-century denitions of biogra-
phy as a predominantly literary genre.130 The adjustments also form part
of a twentieth-century reaction to certain aspects of the modern project,
such as the idea of social progress and the rational, knowable individual.
36 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

As Liedman points out, both Freud and Marx describe human existence as
inuenced by forces beyond the individuals control, whether these forces
are social and historical, or the human unconscious.131
Regardless of the adjustments biographers have made in the direction
of Marx and Freud, suspicions against biography remain among historians.
The latter still feel compelled to ask if the genre offers merely an idealized
(ctional) and ideological account of an individual, or if biography can
provide a scientic (because factual and objective) account of a
person, while simultaneously revealing something signicant about our
common social, cultural and political reality.132 When the questions are
asked in the context of feminist historiography, they are complicated by
the specic expectations that feminists have of the history discipline.
Carina Nyns observes that the attitude towards biography among femin-
ist historians is more positive than that of historians in general.133 The
reason is likely the important role womens life stories have played in the
development of modern feminism.

WRITING WOMENS HISTORY

In line with new social historians, feminist historians of the 1960s were
motivated by a desire for social change.134 Yet much of early womens
historiography had focused on so-called women worthies of great
achievement.135 Like previous studies of exceptional or heroic men,
these studies often took the form of biography.136 As feminists in the
1960s and 1970s started to ask themselves what it meant to be a woman,
the biographical treatment of exceptional women was increasingly chal-
lenged.137 Many feminist historians began to view biography of women
worthies as too idealized and unable to reveal anything signicant or
true about the average woman and her actual social condition.
Historians, it was argued, should not focus on individual womens lives.
Rather, they should focus on the larger social and economic mechanisms
that underlie womens oppression.
At the same time, womens ction and autobiography were coming
under intense scrutiny by feminist critics in the elds of literature and
sociology.138 Through womens own writing, feminist academics hoped
to gain access to what was perceived as womens unique, yet shared,
experiences. Similarly, many feminist historians were reluctant to give up
the detailed reconstruction of womens worlds that biography pro-
mises.139 Nevertheless, feminist literary critics, too, eventually became
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 37

suspicious of life writing. As previously pointed out, feminist critics in the

late 1980s were no longer reading autobiography referentially, but more
often as authorial or social constructions of the self. The focus shifted
from autobiographys content to its formal features.140 Half a decade later,
this perspective had extended to biography.
By the 1990s, contemporary feminist historians who wrote biography
had a range of theories by which to relate their work and methods.
Nevertheless, theoretical formulations of biography by feminist historians
remained comparatively rare. In 1992, Carolyn Steedman dened feminist
historical approaches to biography as a politics rather than a theory.141
She also voiced frustration with women historians use of theory originat-
ing in feminist literary studies. Literary feminism, she observed, has out-
lined a feminist aesthetics that favors experimental forms of biography.
However, for historians, biographys usefulness is bounded by certain
material and methodological constraints. History writing must,
Steedman insisted,

be constitutive rather than fragmentary: it will serve to add women to the

past, alter accounts we already have by placing them within the frame. The
written history of women . . . cannot do the work that the feminist aesthetic
attempts in literary studies: of writing polyvalency and fragmentation as
resistance and critique of an existing order.142

Steedmans reservations suggest that formal experimentation in feminist

biography may compromise the empirical (scientic) study of womens
material condition and the political aims of feminist historians.143 From
this perspective, realist biography appears as an ideal form of life writing
since the genre relies on the same empirical research methods as more
conventional (new) history writing.
But Steedmans denition of feminist historys purpose represents only one
of two common feminist historical uses of realist biography. Her empirical
feminism can typically be performed by both male and female historians, as
long as gender, understood as social sex, is added to the research criteria.144
Unlike empirical feminists, so-called feminist standpoint theorists believe that
certain historical insights can only be reached by women historians, whose
marginalized position in society enables them to detect issues and explore
perspectives invisible to men.145 While empirical feminists wish to add women
to existing historical narratives with the purpose of changing those narratives,
the political aims of feminist standpoint theorists originate in the belief that
38 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

men and women are fundamentally different. Standpoint feminists strive to

highlight sexual difference by re-evaluating what they see as womens specic
experiences. As a result, the demands that feminist standpoint historians make
of biography differ from those of empirical feminists. To standpoint historians,
realist biography offers an opportunity to explore a supposedly shared and
uniquely female culture through the individual and exemplary life.
Realist biography promises to fulll the aims of both empirical feminists
and feminist standpoint historians. To empirical feminist historians, a
focus on the social and historical circumstances of an individual womans
life will add more women to the past and place them, in Steedmans
words, within the frame of history. For standpoint feminists, psycho-
biography promises the exhibition of shared female experiences, which
women have internalized and patriarchal culture has suppressed. In both
cases, scientic and systematic methodologies serve to verify the
authenticity and objectivity of both approaches. Similarly, the bio-
graphers distanced and omniscient approach to the subjects autobio-
graphy is expected to result in a more insightful (true) and
exemplary life story than the subjects own.
To distance themselves from the subjects supposedly incomplete
version of her life, realist biographers must appear to stand outside the
very power and gender dynamic that they explore in and through their
biographies. The contestation of autobiographical elements in the
subjects political writing contributes to the impression of the biogra-
pher as a neutral observer. In feminist historiography, the ideal or
exemplary female subject in realist biography is understood to have
risen above her social and historical circumstances. Alternatively, she
has freed herself from the unconscious internalization of social and
psychological ills. But the female biographical subject can also serve a
third purpose for feminist historians, by being presented as a socially
and psychologically constrained individual, who remains under the
spell of patriarchal society. In this case, the life story is presented as a
political deterrent, or warning, to female readers, at best serving only
as an indirect incentive for political and personal change.146 In the
next chapter, I will look more closely at three biographies in which
Betty Friedans and Germaine Greers respective feminist politics are
contested in realist biographical terms, precisely by portraying the two
women as awed feminists, who never fully identied the political
implications of their personal lives, or the inuence their personal lives
might have had on their politics.
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 39

NOTES
1. In her biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, Lyndall Gordon states that
already [on the day Wollstonecraft died], a struggle for possession had
begun, starting with the question: what version of this womans life will be
transmitted to posterity? Lyndall Gordon, Vindication: A Life of Mary
Wollstonecraft (London: Virago, 2006), 364.
2. To Liz Stanley, biography seems stuck in a time-warp, protected from and
resistant to the winds of change. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 126.
3. Carolyn Steedman, La Theorie qui nen est pas une, or, Why Clio Doesnt
Care, History and Theory 31, no. 4, Supplement 31: History and Feminist
Theory (December, 1992): 34.
4. See, for example, Richard W. Bulliet, ed., The Columbia History of the 20th
Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Hugh Brogan, The
Penguin History of the USA: New Ed. (New York: Penguin, 2001); Howard
Zinn, The Twentieth Century: A Peoples History (New York: Harper Perennial,
2003); and J. M. Roberts, The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century: The
History of the World, 1901 to the Present (New York: Penguin, 2004).
5. Quotation taken from a letter by Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31,
1776. Abigail Adams (1776), in The Feminist Papers: From Adams to de
Beauvoir, ed. Alice S. Rossi (Toronto: Bantam, 1974), 10.
6. Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Womens Movement
Changed America (New York: Penguin, 2000), xi.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., xv. It is debatable, however, whether the modern womens movement
was ever a revolution. As Marcia Cohen points out, no one was ever shot
at. No one was ever murdered in the fray or beaten in jail cells or left to rot as
a political prisoner. Cohen, The Sisterhood, 373.
9. Sara Alpern et al., eds., The Challenge of Feminist Biography: Writing the
Lives of Modern American Women (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press,
1992), 3.
10. In November 1967, Shulamith Firestone, Anne Koedt, Kathie Sarachild and
Carol Hanisch held their rst meeting in Koedts apartment. Sarachilds
program was presented at the First National Convention of the Womens
Liberation Movement that took place in Chicago in November 1968. Over
the next few years, small-group feminist consciousness-raising spread to
cities and suburbs throughout the United States. Castro, Feminism, 2125.
11. Kate Sarachild, A Program for Feminist Consciousness-Raising, in
Public Women, Public Words: A Documentary History of American
Feminism 2, ed. Dawn Keetley and John Pettegrew (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littleeld, 2005), 167.
12. Castro, Feminism, 2425.
40 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

13. Women in consciousness-raising groups exchanged stories of their experi-

ences. They did not exchange actual experiences, or opportunities for (new)
experiences. Written down, these stories took numerous forms, including
biography, autobiography and life stories of other kinds, such as diaries,
journals and letters. See The Personal Narratives Group, eds., Interpreting
Womens Lives: Feminist Theories and Personal Narratives (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), 4.
14. Ibid.
15. Catherine N. Parke, Biography: Writing Lives (New York: Twayne,
1996), 108.
16. See, for example, Susan Kopperman Cornillon, Images of Women in Fiction:
Feminist Perspectives (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Press,
1972).
17. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 83. Felskis examples of confessional
texts span from 1973 to 1984 (ibid., 85).
18. Ibid., 27. The modern feminist tendency to read womens writing as
in some sense always autobiographical resembles that of biographer
and biography critic Georg Misch, who, according to Laura Marcus, viewed
autobiography as the reection of a self-knowing subject and discover[ed]
autobiographical works everywhere he look[ed]. Laura Marcus, Auto/bio-
graphical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1994), 149. See also Georg Misch, A History of
Autobiography in Antiquity, trans. E. W. Dickes, 2 vols. (London:
Routledge, 1951).
19. Estelle Jelinek, The Tradition of Womens Autobiography: From Antiquity to
the Present (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1986), 1. For an early example of feminist
autobiography criticism, see Anna Robeson Burr, Autobiography: A Critical
and Comparative Study (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifin, 1909).
20. Larsson, Sanning och konsekvens, 77.
21. Jelinek, The Tradition of Womens Autobiography, 12.
22. Ibid., 2.
23. Ibid.
24. Jelinek refers to critics, such as Wayne Shumaker, Barrett John Mandel,
Georges Gusdorf and Robert Sayre, who dened autobiography as a literary
genre, distinct from biography. Jelinek, The Tradition of Womens
Autobiography, 2. Later critics, who express similar views, include Philippe
Lejeune, who introduces the term autobiographical pact in Le Pacte
Autobiographique (Paris: Seuil, 1975).
25. Roy Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1960), 3.
26. According to Pascal, proper autobiography communicates universal
values by providing readers with the intuitive knowledge of some unique
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 41

experience (ibid., 186). Pascal quotes from Susanne Langer, Feeling and
Form: A Theory of Art (New York: Scribner, 1953).
27. Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography, 185.
28. Ibid., 10.
29. Ibid., 182.
30. Ibid., 185.
31. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 89.
32. Jelinek, The Tradition of Womens Autobiography, 4.
33. See, for instance, Avrom Fleishman, Figures of Autobiography (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1983) and Paul John Eakin, Fictions in
Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1985), mentioned in Jelinek, The Tradition of
Womens Autobiography, 4.
34. Larsson, Sanning och konsekvens, 99.
35. James Olney, Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1980), 19.
36. Ibid., 22.
37. Ibid.,13.
38. Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard
(1975; repr. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977).
39. Larsson observes that Barthes is compulsively preoccupied with the empty
and dead I. Larsson, Sanning och konsekvens, 104. The above and subse-
quent translations of Larssons text are mine.
40. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 56.
41. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 17.
42. The only womans autobiography that really passes muster with Pascal is
Saint Teresas The Life of Saint Teresa of vila by Herself. See Pascal, Design
and Truth in Autobiography, 168.
43. See Pascal on The Book of Margery Kempe. According to Pascal,
Kempes autobiography displays an almost consistent fortuitousness
of relationship . . . between her actions, the incidents in her outward life,
and her inward convictions and urge. To Pascal, Margerys [auto-
biography] moves in a haphazard world without which itself then
makes the personality seem haphazard and wayward. Pascal, Design
and Truth in Autobiography, 186. Pascal insists, however, that his
examples have not been chosen to suggest that women are incapable
of writing great autobiography. Pascal, Design and Truth in
Autobiography, 65.
44. About Beatrice Webbs My Apprenticeship, Pascal notes that Webbs diary
entries are often unaccompanied by comment . . . From the autobiography,
however, we expect a coherent shaping of the past; and if diary entries or
letters are quoted, we need the explanatory, interpretative commentary of
42 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

the author, a requirement that causes him to dismiss Webbs published

diary. Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography, 5.
45. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 83.
46. For one of the earliest feminist theoretical approaches to autobiography, see
Cynthia Stodola Pomerleaus study Resigning the Needle for the Pen: A Study
of Autobiographical Writings of British Women before 1800 (Ph.D. thesis,
University of Pennsylvania, 1974), http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/view
content.cgi?article=1000&context=miscellaneous_papers.
47. Marcus, Auto/biographical Discourses, 151.
48. Ibid.
49. Estelle Jelinek, Womens Autobiography: Essays in Criticism (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 1980).
50. Ibid., 19.
51. Ibid., 17.
52. Jelinek, The Tradition of Womens Autobiography, 5.
53. See also Trev Lynn Broughton, who nds that ideals, such as auton-
omy, transcendence, authenticity, subjecthood, authority, literary hero-
ism, expertise, self-possession and so on, which are commonly used to
dene canonical auto/biographical narratives have largely
gone unquestioned. As a consequence, critics have ignored that auto/
biographical canonical male texts are not as straightforward, their
inuence as irresistible, nor their relationship to male power as direct
as is commonly supposed. Trev Lynn Broughton, Men of Letters,
Writing Lives: Masculinity and Literary Auto/Biography in the Late
Victorian Period (London: Routledge, 1999), 910.
54. Jelinek, Womens Autobiography, 13.
55. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 83.
56. It all needs to be invented, or discovered, or resaid. Heilbrun, Writing a
Womans Life, 19.
57. Larsson, Sanning och konsekvens, 106107.
58. Ibid., 105.
59. Ibid., 106107.
60. Sidonie Smith, A Poetics of Womens Autobiography: Marginality and
Fictions of Self-Representation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1987), 40.
61. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 86. Christopher Laschs critique of con-
fessional tendencies in contemporary culture does not include a gender
perspective. Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life
in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979; repr. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1991), 17.
62. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 17.
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 43

63. Tess Cosslett, Celia Lury and Penny Summereld, Introduction, in

Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods, ed. Tess Cosslett,
Celia Lury and Penny Summereld (London: Routledge, 2000), 7.
64. Carolyn Steedman, Enforced Narratives: Stories of Another Self, in
Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods, ed. Tess Cosslett,
Celia Lury and Penny Summereld (London: Routledge, 2000), 3031.
65. Felicity A. Nussbaum, The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in
Eighteenth-Century England (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1989), 179, also discussed in Larsson, Sanning och konsek-
vens, 116117.
66. Larsson, Sanning och konsekvens, 126.
67. For example, see Susan Groag Bell and Marilyn Yalom, eds., Revealing
Lives: Autobiography, Biography and Gender (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1990) and Susan Magarey, ed.,
Writing Lives: Feminist Biography and Autobiography (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 1990). See also Marcus, Auto/
biographical Discourses.
68. According to Stanley, biography offers a considerably tougher challenge
[than autobiography], for its present-day form and content derive from
positivist and foundationalist origins and assumptions. Stanley, The Auto/
biographical I, 154.
69. Ibid., 3.
70. Samuel Johnson, [Autobiography] The Idler, no. 84 [85] (Saturday,
November 24, 1759), in Samuel Johnson: A Critical Edition of the Major
Works, ed. Donald Green (London: Oxford University Press, 1984),
298300. For an example of a later critic, who sought to separate the
two genres, see Wilhelm Dilthey, Der Aufbau der geschichlichen Welt in
der Geisteswissenschaften (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft,
1958), discussed in Marcus, Auto/biographical Discourses, 142.
71. Other critics view the self in autobiography as a character in its own
right. For example, see Linda R. Anderson, Autobiography: New Critical
Idiom (New York: Routledge, 2001), 3. Because narrator and protagonist
are not identical, these critics argue, the difference between a rst-person
and a third-person autobiography has less to do with facts and truth
than with genre conventions. See Jean Quigley, The Grammar of
Autobiography: A Developmental Account (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 2000), 107.
72. Of course, many autobiographers reect on, or imagine, their own, future
death. For example, see Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele (1929; repr.
London: John Murray, 2004).
73. For example, see Stanley, The Auto/biographical I.
44 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

74. The autobiographers anxiety, Schlaeger argues, comes from seeking to

be true to oneself and, at the same time, true to the image one would
like to present to the public or to posterity. In contrast, the truth-criter-
ion in biography is founded on the consistency of the narrative and the
explanatory power of the arguments. Jrgen Schlaeger, Biography: Cult
as Culture, in The Art of Literary Biography, ed. John Batchelor (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995), 59.
75. According to Marcus, critics after the 1950s typically viewed subjectivity
in autobiography as a form of self-knowing. Biography was more often
dened as an account of the exemplary man (or woman) by a detached
and objective biographer, who remained largely absent from the text. The
result, Marcus continues, was a total separation between autobiography
and biography. Marcus, Auto/biographical Discourses, 183, 143. See also
Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 125.
76. Schlaeger Biography: Cult as Culture, 59.
77. In this book, the term realist biography corresponds roughly with
Stanleys denition of modern biography. Stanley, The Auto/biographical
I, 11. Stanley also makes a distinction between alternative biographical
approaches, such as meta-biography, sociological biography and psy-
cho-biography. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 126. The two latter
approaches resemble socio-historical biography and psychobiography,
respectively, but should not be understood as identical.
78. Epstein argues that (realist) biography is not a neutral vessel waiting to be
lled. Instead, he views the genre as part of systems that are self-repre-
sentative of a masculine subject. He also refers to biography as a generic
abduction which (metaphorically speaking), is most frequently enac-
ted . . . between two men over the body of a woman, an excluded other.
Epstein, Introduction, 221, 230, 219. See also Stanley, The Auto/biogra-
phical I, 249250.
79. In 1992, Stanley observes that then-contemporary (British) biographers
tended to state (rather than argue) classic modernist ideas about biography.
Indeed, she continues, they were inclined to see ideas associated with
postmodernism as a subtle . . . (and) not so subtle denigration of biogra-
phy. See Eric Homburger and John Charmley, The Troubled Face of
Biography (London: Macmillan, 1988), 6, quoted in Stanley, The Auto/
biographical I, ix.
80. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, ix.
81. Steve Weinberg, Telling the Untold Story: How Investigative Biographers Are
Changing the Craft of Biography (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri
Press, 1992), 21.
82. Ibid., 20.
83. Ibid., 25.
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 45

84. Ibid., 30.

85. Ibid., 33.
86. Ibid., 17.
87. Ibid., 19.
88. Leon Edel, Writing Lives: Principia Biographica (New York: W. W. Norton,
1984), 15. Weinbergs focus on popular and investigative biography and
Edels exclusive preoccupation with literary biography contribute to their
respective denitions of the genre. Weinberg, especially, defends the type of
biography he idealizes. He observes that since 1975, specialist academics no
longer dominate the eld of biography. Biography, he writes, has become a
journalistic as much as a literary or historical genre. Despite its reputation as
sensationalist and exploitative, Weinberg continues, most biography by
investigative journalists is, in his words, responsible and objective.
Weinberg, Telling the Untold Story, 2.
89. Edel, Writing Lives, 25.
90. Ibid., 64.
91. Ibid., 164.
92. Ibid., 173.
93. According to Edel, the biographer must seek to identify with the subject to
discover the effects of casual connections, unconscious psychological deter-
minism and . . . conicts that characterize the subject. All the same, he also
stresses what he sees as the constant threat to objectivity of such involve-
ment. In identifying with, that is, in becoming, this subject, the biogra-
pher risks everything. Edel, Writing Lives, 6364.
94. Edels views on the biographers omnipotence come forth most
clearly in the following quotation: All biography is, in effect, a repro-
jection into words, into a literary or a kind of semiscientic and
historical form, of the inert materials, reassembled, so to speak,
through the mind of the historian or the biographer. His becomes
the informing mind. He can only lay bare the facts as he has under-
stood them. Edel, Literary Biography (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1959), 13.
95. The two traditions outlined in the following sections should not be under-
stood as an exhaustive account of biographys development since the 1700s.
Rather, the aim is to provide the historical background to Edels and
Weinbergs respective notions of their ideal biography, and to feminist
historians use of the genre.
96. Scott E. Casper stresses the specically republican character of
American biography. Nineteenth-century critics called for American
biography to assert the nations place beside European monarchies.
They wanted American biographies that would glorify the nation and
its early heroes. Scott E. Casper, Constructing American Lives:
46 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

Biography and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill,

NC and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 3536.
97. Casper, Constructing American Lives, 2; and Ira Bruce Nadel, Biography:
Fiction, Fact and Form (London: Macmillan, 1984), 15.
98. Casper, Constructing American Lives, 207208. See also James Boswell, The
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791; repr. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth
Classics of World Literature, 1999).
99. Larsson identies Boswells frequent use of quotations and dramatization as
examples of typical intimacy tropes. Larsson, Sanning och konsekvens, 242
244.
100. Ibid., 244.
101. Samuel Johnson, [Biography] The Rambler, no. 60 (Saturday, October
13, 1750), in Samuel Johnson: A Critical Edition of the Major Works, ed.
Donald Green (London: Oxford University Press, 1984), 203.
102. Casper, Constructing American Lives, 33.
103. Ibid., 6.
104. Ibid., 7. However, Casper also points out that ideas about the Romantic
self included a view of individual development that did not necessarily
correspond with socially prescribed models of virtue and action (ibid.,
32).
105. Ibid., 113.
106. Elizabeth Jay, Introduction to Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte
Bront (1857; repr. London: Penguin, 1997), xiii.
107. See, for example, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in
the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary
Imagination (1979; repr. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University
Press, 1984).
108. Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, 68. The effects of the
philosophies and sciences inuencing the nineteenth-century novel are also
discernible in realist biography. Larsson draws particular attention to the
inuence of Hippolyte Taine, who stressed the impact of race, the age and
the environment on the individual. Larsson, Sanning och konsekvens, 253.
Analogies were made between biological concepts (such as natural selec-
tion and inheritance) and human society, while new social theories
argued an objective logic of social progress. See Paul Wood, The
Avant-Garde and the Paris Commune, in The Challenge of the Avant-
Garde, ed. Paul Wood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999),
116. The inuence of Taines positivist materialism and rigid systematiza-
tion limited the biographical subjects agency to an effect of his social
circumstances, Larsson points out. Furthermore, Taines preference for
abstraction led him to look for the one inuence that, more than all others,
determined a particular individuals thoughts and actions. Yet to better
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 47

understand nineteenth-century realist biography, Larsson continues, one

must also take into account the inuence of the literary critic Charles-
Augustin Sainte-Beuve. Sainte-Beuves approach to literature included
knowledge of the authors life. His psychological and Romantic approach
to biography aimed to reveal the authors unique personality. As such, it
resonated strongly with Johnsons intimate biography. Larsson, Sanning och
konsekvens, 253254. Richard D. Altick, too, stresses the similarities
between Boswells intimate biography and the nineteenth-century realist
novel. See Richard D. Altick, Lives and Letters: A History of Literary
Biography in England and America (New York: Knopf, 1965), 62, also
mentioned in Larsson, Sanning och konsekvens, 244. For biographys inu-
ence on the novel, see Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel
16001740 (London: Century Hutchinson, 1988), 90128.
109. Casper, Constructing American Lives, 110111.
110. Ibid., 7.
111. Ibid., 32.
112. Ibid., 17.
113. Nadel, Biography, 13.
114. It is perhaps Thomas Carlyle who best summed up the life and times
biographical subject and his relationship to world events. The History of
the World, Carlyle proclaimed in 1840, is the Biography of Great Men.
Thomas Carlyle, Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History
(Tuesday, May 5, 1840), repr. in Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero
Worship (London: Collins Pocket Classics no. 61, n.d.), 23.
115. Casper, Constructing American Lives, 3940. Biographys status as histor-
ical record came to depend on the degree of documentary truth upon
which it was based. The reliance on veriable documents of the past,
distinct from oral lore and fuzzy sentiment increased throughout the
century, in an attempt to raise the genres scientic and professional
status. Casper, Constructing American Lives, 89. The inuence of the
materialistic study of history, and the new study of literature, resulted in
what Larsson refers to as a collision between idealistic (ofcial) life writing
and the new search for the truth about the individual. Larsson, Sanning
och konsekvens, 257. The controversy surrounding James A. Froudes bio-
graphy of Thomas Carlyle, which offered a portrait of the great man, yet
also revealed intimate and scandalous details about the Carlyles marriage,
exemplies this clash. See James A. Froude, A History of the First Forty Years
of Carlyles Life, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1882) and James A. Froude, A
History of Carlyles Life in London, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1884).
116. Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (1918; repr. London: Penguin, 1986).
117. Edel, Writing Lives, 143.
118. Ibid., 3337.
48 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

119. Weinbergs investigative method resembles Boswells scrupulous recording

of the many details in Johnsons life. At one point, Weinberg refers in
positive terms to the quarter million pages of records and documents
that Howard Hughes biographers compiled in the course of their research.
Weinberg, Telling the Untold Story, 103. Stanley points out that Boswell can
be seen as both a scrupulously objective recorder of the details of Samuel
Johnsons life and an arch selector and interpreter: not representing but
reconstructing, according to his own authorial views and understandings,
the inner truth of his subject. Liz Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 11.
120. Patrick K. OBrien, Political Biography: A Polemical Review of the Genre,
Biography 2, no. 1 (Winter, 1999): 51.
121. Ibid., 56, 55.
122. Reed Whittemore, Pure Lives: The Early Biographers (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1988), 3, mentioned in Carina Nyns, Jag ser
klart?: synen p den heliga Birgitta i svenska 1900-talsbiograer (bo: bo
University Press, 2006), 30.
123. Nyns, Jag ser klart?, 320.
124. Ibid., 60.
125. Brian Harrison and James McMillan, Some Feminist Betrayals of Womens
History, The Historical Journal 26, no. 3 (June, 1983), 376.
126. Martin J. Burke, U.S. Social History, Science Encyclopedia: History of Ideas
Vol. 2, http://science.jrank.org/pages/8087/Social-History-U-S.html.
127. According to Burke, an important agenda for the new social history that
emerged in the United States in the 1960s . . . was the project of rewriting
history from the bottom up, and providing a usable past for contempor-
ary movements for social change. Burke, U.S. Social History.
128. Richard Holmes, The Proper Study?, in Mapping Lives: The Uses of
Biography, ed. Peter France and William St. Clair (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004), 7.
129. Jill Roe, The Appeal of Biography, in Writing Lives: Feminist Biography
and Autobiography, ed. Susan Margarey (Adelaide: Australian Feminist
Studies, 1992), 310. See also Nyns, Jag ser klart?, 8586.
130. The question of biographys scientic status has been asked throughout the
history of biography. Indeed, as Nyns observes, even the rst known
biographer, Xenophon (400 BC), expresses conicting views on the subject.
Nyns, Jag ser klart?, 29.
131. Liedman, I skuggan av framtiden, 58.
132. Steedman, La Theorie qui nen est pas une, 34, 4142.
133. Nyns, Jag ser klart?, 95.
134. Feminisms inuence on historiography can be traced back to early twen-
tieth-century historical studies inspired by Olive Schreiners and Ray
 A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY 49

Stracheys feminist writing. Barbara Caine, Feminist Biography and

Feminist History, Womens History Review 3, no. 2 (1994): 248.
135. According to Leila J. Rupp, womens historians have come to use the term
the history of women worthies . . . to describe and criticize writings that
focus on exceptional women without gleaning much about the lives of other
women. Leila J. Rupp, Women Worthies and Womens History, Review
of American History 12, no. 3 (September, 1984): 409.
136. All the same, not all historians who strive to complement ofcial history by
retrieving women from the past dene themselves as feminists. See, for
example, Harrison and McMillan, Some Feminist Betrayals of Womens
History, 375376.
137. For example, see Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women
in History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
138. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 4.
139. Caine, Feminist Biography and Feminist History, 249.
140. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 125.
141. Stedman, La Theorie qui nen est pas une, 33.
142. Ibid., 34.
143. See also Robert Blake, who argues that biographies are works of
reference and unless they are accurate, get the persons date of birth
right, mention his principal achievements, say who the subject married
and tell us when he or she died, they are of no use. Robert Blake, The
Art of Biography, in The Troubled Face of Biography, ed.
Eric Homberger and John Charmley (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988),
7677. Despite her misgivings about formal experimentation in biogra-
phy, Steedman is also the author of a now classic, genre-defying (auto/
biographical and sociological) study of working-class women. See
Carolyn Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives
(London: Virago, 1986).
144. Christina Ericsson, Inledning, in Genus i historisk forskning, ed. Christina
Ericsson (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1993), 7. On the classication of femin-
isms, see also Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-
epistemology/.
145. Ericsson, Inledning, 7.
146. This use of biography is not limited to feminist historiography. See, for
example, Samuel Johnsons belief in the moral lesson learned from the
biographical study of an individuals faults and mistakes. Johnson,
Biography, 205. See also Casper on criminal biography and its social
and political uses. Casper, Constructing American Lives, 86.
 CHAPTER 3

Negotiating the TraditionFeminist

Realist Biography

Realist biography promises feminist historians a methodology by which to

add women to history or make visible womens purportedly unique life
experiences and, occasionally, to do both. The genres ostensibly omnis-
cient and neutral perspective can, of course, serve additional purposes. The
realist perspective allows the biographer to challenge a womans presenta-
tion of herself as somehow exemplary or inspirational and to re-evaluate
her historical signicance in supposedly objective terms. To feminist his-
toriographers, the socially or psychologically constricted biographical
female subject can function as a warning, or deterrent, for female readers,
as an example of womens social or psychological subordination under
patriarchy.
The 1990s saw the publication of biographies of both Betty Friedan
and Germaine Greer. Christine Wallaces biography of Germaine Greer
was rst published in Australia in 1997. In 1998, Judith Hennessees
biography of Betty Friedan appeared in the USA, followed by Daniel
Horowitzs biography of Friedan in 1999. In all three biographies,
Friedan and Greer are presented precisely as socially constricted and
psychologically damaged subjects. As such, the three biographies differ
markedly from how Friedan and Greer have presented themselves in and
through their feminist writing. In their own texts, Friedan and Greer are
active and determined subjects, whose life choices support and exemplify
their feminist theories. By questioning the two womens biographical
recognition as pioneering feminists, I wish to argue in this chapter, the

The Author(s) 2016 51

M. Lidstrm Brock, Writing Feminist Lives, Breaking Feminist Waves,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47178-5_3
52 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

biographers are challenging not only their subjects self-portrayals, but

also their roles in the history of second-wave feminism. As the biographers
re-evaluate the two womens feminist signicance, they simultaneously
present revised versions of the history of the American womens
movement.

HISTORICIZING THE WOMENS MOVEMENT IN BIOGRAPHY

An important part of womens history has been the historicizing of
womens rights struggles, particularly the organizational and institutional
history of the womens movement, and its leaders.1 Yet modern femin-
isms history is a politically contested area and there is little agreement on
how it should be told. In her review of Wallaces biography of Germaine
Greer, Camille Paglia offers an interpretation of the womens movements
history that sees the 1990s emergence of biographies of second-wave
feminists as especially signicant. Paglia reads these biographies as symp-
toms of an identity crisis within 1990s American feminism. The uncertain
future of feminism has resulted in a ight back to the past through
introspection and reminiscence, she argues.2
Other critics have identied a similar crisis already in the late 1980s,
originating in the many changes of the assumptions that once guided,
inuenced and helped structure the modern womens movement. The
result of these changes, this argument goes, is confusion regarding the
goals and contents of contemporary feminist politics. In 1993, Seyla
Benhabib claimed that after a decade of paradigm struggles, we are no
longer sure that there is one movement; in fact, we know that there is not a
single organization with the agenda of which a majority of women in this
country would agree.3 Benhabibs interpretation of the 1980s as a decade
of paradigm struggles implies an earlier period of political consensus.
Paglia similarly identies a dominant group of 1970s feminists, which
she believes alienated ordinary women from the womens movement and
disqualied feminism as a viable political theory. Consisting of activists
from the 1960s and 1970s, this feminist establishment represents to Paglia
a particularly doctrinaire, Leftist and elitist kind of feminism. To her, the
women involved in this group have since acquired inuential positions in
the public domain and, consequently, have come to dominate later fem-
inist discussions.4
Undoubtedly, individual second-wave feminists have played an impor-
tant part in public debates over the meaning of feminism and the womens
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 53

movements ideological origins.5 Of particular interest here is Paglias

claim that the biographies of such women can be read as symptomatic of
these debates. Despite her identication of a so-called feminist establish-
ment with roots in the 1960s and 1970s, her claim suggests that feminists
of that period do not constitute a politically homogeneous group against
which a new generation of feminists can be clearly identied. Instead, the
1990s disputes over which women contemporary feminists should repre-
sent can be traced back to the very emergence of the 1960s womens
movement. The same, I wish to argue, can be said of disagreements over
modern feminisms ideological origins and what constitutes feminist pol-
itics. These struggles have appeared as conicts among different feminist
groups, but they have also appeared as conicts among individuals, who
have been associated with distinct political views and factions.
Since the 1960s, the media in the United States has focused on indivi-
dual women as representatives of, or spokespersons for, the womens
movement. The focus on individuals has been facilitated by a movement
that lacked a central organization and consisted of participants who
stressed the need for equality and democracy in all decision processes. As
a result, Patricia Bradley observes, the idea of individual leadership was
often actively discouraged by feminists, which left the media free to create
its own feminist leaders.6 While many feminists protested against the
medias single-minded interest in individual women, others took advan-
tage of the publics desire for charismatic characters and encouraged the
medias attention to both their cause and their person.7 Media exposure
became a means by which informal leadership in the womens movement
could be established.8 In their distinct ways, the four women whose
biographies are discussed here and in the following chapters have had an
impact on the publics impression of modern feminism and the womens
movement. None of the women, however, has occupied a position of
leadership in any traditional way.9 This has left them and the movement
that they ostensibly represented vulnerable to the media in which they
appeared. For instance, reports in the media tended to focus on personal
conicts and scandals more often than on the womens political views.10
Biography, then, seems to have a central, if equivocal, place within the
historicizing of the womens movement, but this concern with individuals
lives is of course not simply an extrinsic imposition, as the four womens
feminist writing includes autobiographical elements. This fact adds a poli-
tical dimension to their life stories and an autobiographical aspect to their
political writing. It is precisely against such politicized autobiography,
54 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

which forms part of the womens biographical recognition, that the three
realist biographers in this chapter have positioned their narratives. The result
is a conict between autobiographical and biographical truth-claims, a
conict that must also be understood in ideological and political terms.

THE UNHAPPY AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE

In Betty Friedans case, autobiographical anecdotes appear already in her
feminist study, The Feminine Mystique, rst published in 1963. The study
was an instant bestseller and turned Friedan into a public gure in the
American mind. American society, she argues in The Feminine Mystique,
communicates a false female ideal to women that equates the road to
personal fulllment with marriage, childbearing and homemaking. But
for women to reach their full potential as human beings, they must be
given the same opportunities as men to achieve their ambitions. More
precisely, Friedan advocates higher education and a professional career as
paths towards womens self-fulllment. To emphasize some of her points,
Friedan describes her own experience of living in a New York suburb. She
was a wife and mother of three small children and only half-heartedly
left the house to work outside the home, while feeling guilty for not living
up to the image of the perfect housewife.11 The portrayal of the indoc-
trinated, dissatised housewife, who eventually saw through patriarchal
ideology and turned into a feminist spokesperson, became part of
Friedans ofcial life story, or biographical recognition.
Today, The Feminine Mystique is considered a modern feminist classic.12
According to Friedan, the driving forces behind the study were not just her
own experiences, but a survey sent to her former classmates at Smith
College.13 The answers in the survey revealed that like her, many middle-
class women were suffering from a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfac-
tion, a yearning.14 In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan labels this feeling
the problem that has no name.15 Those who felt the most dissatised
were women who tried the hardest to live up to the pervasive image of the
happy American housewife.16 The study urged women to reinterpret their
lives in light of her ndings.
In The Feminine Mystique, Friedans life story functions as a rhetorical
tool and political instrument. From a modern feminist perspective, the
inclusion of autobiographical elements in the study both authenticates the
studys political message and politicizes the life story itself. When Friedan
claims that she was suffering under a problem that has no name and
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 55

subsequently calls it the feminine mystique, she identies, demysties

and politicizes a supposedly psychological and personal problem that she
found herself sharing with other women, notably those white, middle-
class, college-educated women who had replied to her survey.17 The
survey answers and her own life story can be understood as a collective
narrative of female experience, which Friedan then uses as an interpretative
tool for raising the feminist consciousness of her readers.
Consciousness-raising undoubtedly forms part of Friedans liberal fem-
inist politics. As a rst step towards womens self-fulllment, she advocates
a drastic reshaping of the cultural image of femininity.18 This is a
strategy that she shares with radical feminists. Based on the many similar
survey answers that she received, Friedan draws the conclusion that most
likely certain messages in society aimed specically at women are to blame
for womens feeling of dissatisfaction. She analyzes a wide range of social
and cultural phenomena, including media images and the works of pop-
ular psychiatrists, social scientists and educators. Educators, parents,
magazine editors and guidance counselors, she concludes, must stop
encouraging girls and young women to become just a housewife.19
Friedan does not believe, however, that consciousness-raising alone will
cure womens unhappiness: To face the problem is not to solve it.20
Signicantly, the autobiographical elements in The Feminine Mystique
introduce only a handful of the many chapters and they never result in
an uninterrupted or longer narrative. Nor does Friedan look for the cause
of the dissatisfaction solely in culture and its images of women.21 Instead,
her life story and the survey provide the rationale for a social study by more
conventional social scientic methods, including the collection and analy-
sis of quantitative and qualitative data from several related perspectives and
disciplines, such as sociology, psychology and anthropology.
The political solutions that Friedan presents in The Feminine Mystique
reect both her liberal feminism and a particular notion of female sub-
jectivity. Cultural images of femininity, she argues, have stunted womens
maturity, identity, [and] completeness of self.22 To achieve real change
women must organize politically.23 Specically, a woman must be given
the opportunity to compete professionally with men, not as a woman,
but as a human being.24 This statement is perhaps best understood in the
context of her denition of womens liberation, where she states that
there is only one way for women to reach full human potentialby
participating in the mainstream of society, by exercising their own voice
in all the decisions shaping that society. For women to achieve their full
56 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

potential and freedom, they must have economic independence.25

Friedans identication of womens freedom with economic independence
is the strongest indication of The Feminine Mystiques liberal feminist
foundation. She questions the present structure of social, educational
and political institutions, but her feminist revolution does not include
the elimination of the institutions themselves. Capitalism, she argues,
should be regulated politically, rather than replaced with alternative eco-
nomic systems.26 Ontologically, the politics of The Feminine Mystique
relies on a notion of men and women as fundamentally rational human
beings, equally able to make decisions regarding the future shape of
society. Nevertheless, Friedan reminds women that they must also con-
front their sexual nature, that is, they must take into account womens
ability to give birth, as well as the human reality of our need to love.27
In other words, the social and political restructuring must include mea-
sures that will ensure womens participation in society in their own
right, such as womens right to birth control and safe abortion, the
right to maternity leave and professional child care.28
Friedans biographical recognition developed after the publication of
The Feminine Mystique and is informed largely by the autobiographical
elements in her feminist study.29 In 2000, she published a full-length
autobiography, Life So Far.30 Here, she repeats and lls out the story of
her feminist awakening and subsequent escape from the suburbs. This is
the liberal feminist narrative of awakening from which Friedans two
biographers, Daniel Horowitz and Judith Hennessee, are distancing
themselves, albeit for politically different reasons and by different biogra-
phical methods. As the biographers contest Friedans own account of her
personal journey towards feminist awareness, they simultaneously establish
their distinct positions in the ideological battle over feminism itself.
Friedan did not let these contestations of her life story go by unnoticed,
however; she referred to her full-length autobiography as a direct reply to
the two biographies.31
In Writing Lives, Leon Edel asks how a biographer chooses those
points of departure which will enable him to proceed.32 He comes to the
conclusion that to some extent, they depend on the importance of the life
that is being written.33 My answer to Edels question is that in the story
about a famous or public person, the points of departure are often those
that are already heavily invested with narrative power, that is, those aspects
of the life already given signicance by previous accounts. In Friedans case
that includes the autobiographical segments in The Feminine Mystique.
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 57

The textual starting point for my comparative reading is an event in her life
that both Friedan and the biographers have decided was of central concern
for her development as an individual and as a political being. One could
call it a turning point, or life crisis. Apart from her life in the suburbs, it is
the only moment in her life that Friedan discusses at relative length in The
Feminine Mystique.34 The moment in question occurred in 1943, when
Betty Friedan refused a fellowship from the University of California,
Berkeley, which would have allowed her to write a dissertation in psychol-
ogy. Neither biographer has spoken directly to Friedan about the episodes
that preceded her departure from Berkeley.35 Although the events them-
selves are never questioned, the reasons why Friedan declined the fellow-
ship differ in all three accounts.
Betty Friedan herself blames the feminine mystique for making her
turn down the offer, that is, her unconscious internalization of patriarchal
ideology.36 In her autobiographical accounts, the moment signies a low
point in her life. According to Friedan, three events in particular determined
the choice: rst, her then boyfriend David Bohms negative reaction to the
offer; second, a play witnessed by Friedan, which portrayed a woman giving
up her career in order to keep her husband; and third, the death of her
father and her resulting feelings of guilt.37 From fear of one day having to
sacrice a future husband for a career, by making him feel as inadequate,
[as] inferior as her father had felt in his marriage, Friedan declined the
fellowship. If I took that fellowship, she explains, if I went on in this
academic world where it was so easy for me to be brighter than the boys,
I would never be able to be the kind of woman my mother wasnt.38 Her
accounts in The Feminine Mystique and in the later autobiography, Life So
Far, situate her personal dilemma and nal decision within a larger cultural
framework: the either/or choice facing women of her generation and social
position, where an academic career was considered incompatible with a
happy family life.39 In other words, both the autobiography and the auto-
biographical elements in The Feminine Mystique serve to conrm Friedans
political analysis of womens limited choices.40 The question that follows is
how her biographers have interpreted the event.

A RELUCTANT SOCIALIST HEROINE

In the introduction to his 1998 biography, Betty Friedan and the Making
of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, The Cold War, and Modern
Feminism, Daniel Horowitz calls himself an intellectual historian, whose
58 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

primary purpose with the biography is to offer the story of Betty

Friedans life.41 More specically, he is interested in where ideas come
from, how they develop, and what forces shape and reshape them.42
Horowitz identies the primary forces behind Friedans ideas as social
and political, and expresses a desire to restore a sense of connectedness
between [Betty Friedans] life and the world it illuminates.43 The bio-
graphy deals mainly with Friedans life up to the publication of The
Feminine Mystique. The rest of her life is covered briey in the nal
chapter, 1963 to the Present.
Horowitzs wish to restore Friedans connection to her social environ-
ment and his particular focus on her early life suggest that he does not accept
the liberal feminist analysis in The Feminine Mystique. Instead, and true to the
title of his book, he reinterprets the intellectual background to Friedans study
of the suburban housewife myth to establish a political connection between
the feminist movement and the American Left of the 1940s and 1950s.44
Politically, Horowitz distances himself from Friedans own life story by
arguing that her real and original political cause was not liberal feminism,
but Marxist socialism. It was McCarthyism, he suggests, that impelled Friedan
to deny this radical past and made her channel her left-wing politics into an
emerging feminist movement. In establishing his version of Friedans life,
Horowitz relies on a social-historical biographical approach, where Friedans
choices are interpreted in a social, cultural and historical context.
A closer look at Horowitzs description of Friedans refusal of the fellow-
ship at Berkeley highlights the differences between his and Friedans
accounts. Comparing the two accounts makes clear how Horowitz estab-
lishes the truth-claims in his biography, yet the comparisons also draw
attention to revealing gaps in the biographys narrative framework. In the
chapter titled A Momentous Interlude: Berkeley 19421943, Horowitz
calls Friedans decision to refuse the fellowship a positive choice.45 He
insists that her explanation for the refusal must be looked at with a
skeptical eye.46 Horowitz acknowledges Friedans statement that the
years at Smith College (her undergraduate college) and Berkeley inuenced
the rest of her life, but suggests that the determining factors were different
than those Friedan presents.
Typical of the biography, Horowitz stresses what he believes were his
subjects political opinions and ambitions as a young woman. In particular,
he points out the differences in political activism at Smith and Berkeley
and how the transition from one educational institution to the other
sharpened Friedans sense of (political) identity. He also mentions a
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 59

series of major medical and emotional crises, thereby suggesting an

additional, emotional, perhaps even pathological, explanation for her
actions.47 According to Horowitz, the reasons Friedan refused the fellow-
ship were a depression caused by her fathers death, the muted intellectual
and political life at Berkeley and a lack of opportunities to participate
passionately in issues that interested her. Combined with a suspicion that
her Jewish background might hamper her advancement within the aca-
demic world, these factors caused Friedan to give up her studies for a more
actively political life within a profession that lay open to her despite her
backgroundjournalism for the labor press.
In the biography Horowitz creates a socio-historical and political con-
text in which he then inserts what he considers facts about Friedan. He
describes Berkeley as an institution whose faculty was primarily in favor of
an all-out war effort.48 He also calls attention to the (secret) role
Berkeley played in the creation of Oppenheimers atomic bomb and the
relatively insignicant opposition, The Young Communist League, that
existed on campus.49 Within this political climate Horowitz then positions
Friedan, whose political sympathies at this time he insists were well to the
Left. While he is uncertain whether Friedan ever tried to become a
member of the Communist Party, he mentions her work for Professor
Ralph Gundlach on combining psychology and Marxism as proof of her
radical political position at the time.50
Horowitz briey refers to sexism and anti-Semitism as possible reasons
why Friedan chose to terminate her studies at Berkeley, but he does not
apply a gender perspective to the socio-historical context that he has
created. This becomes most obvious when he mentions Jean McFarlane
as a positive role model for Friedan. She was a woman who helped put
her husband through medical school before they divorced. She never
remarried and lived with her mother.51 In The Feminine Mystique,
Friedan describes the typical, unfullled, intellectual spinster:

The few college presidents and professors who were women either fell into
the line or had their authorityas teachers and as womenquestioned. If
they were spinsters, if they had no babies, they were forbidden by the
mystique to speak as women . . . In terms of the new mystique, the woman
scholar was suspect, simply by virtue of being one.52

When comparing Horowitzs account of Jean McFarlanes life and the

spinsters in Friedans study the similarities are striking, yet in Horowitzs
60 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

version of Friedans life such comparisons are notably absent. As a result,

Friedans feminist social criticism of the academic life goes unacknowledged
in the biography.
In light of Friedans feminist study, Horowitzs idealization of
McFarlane is surprising, to say the least. The feminist inuence on histor-
iography since the 1960s has resulted in womens historians paying parti-
cular attention to historical changes in the understanding of gender.53
Alterations in the demographic structure of Western societies in the 1960s
and 1970s have contributed to this change of focus. The emergence of
womens movements and a new interest among historians in the everyday
experiences of ordinary people, especially those experiences understood as
private or personal, have facilitated the integration of gender as a valid
tool in historical research about women.54 Horowitz, however, never
mentions womens specic situation at institutions of higher education
in the 1940s. While he discusses the details of Friedans life, the general-
izations he makes are all, ostensibly, gender-neutral. When reading his
biography next to Friedans own accounts of her life, however, a telling
inconsistency materializes. This inconsistency, or interpretative gap, draws
attention to the ideological aspects of Horowitzs narrative framework.
Friedan herself never acknowledged that her early journalistic work had
any inuence on her 1960s feminism. Undoubtedly, McCarthyism had a
profound effect on intellectuals living under its shadow long after it had
lost its actual power, but this argument does not fully explain why, in
Horowitzs words, Friedans story remains personally compelling but
open to question and why a person who [has never kept] her distance
from controversy would go to such lengths to deny the importance of her
past.55 In other words, it does not explain why Betty Friedan, fty years
after the McCarthy era ended, refused to admit a political connection that
Horowitz claims she once had, much less why she refused to acknowledge
its inuence on her feminism.
Horowitz recognizes Friedans denial, yet he does not let it inuence
his interpretation of her past. He admits that the differences, or distance,
between his version and hers appear puzzling, yet he goes on to explain
the interpretative gap in his analysis by referring to the difculty in
gaining full access to Friedans views.56 According to Horowitz, these
limitations turn my story into one in which ideas and political commit-
ments matter more than feelings, friendships, and debates carried on
beyond the reach of the historian. They make it more difcult for me to
write a feminist biography that connects the personal with the political.57
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 61

Through his argument, Horowitz can account for omissions or gaps in his
story, yet the argument also highlights his views on feminism and history
writing.
By suggesting that the gap in his analysis can only be lled by intimate
knowledge of Friedans feelings, Horowitz distracts the reader from other
possible explanations. According to Steve Weinberg, a biographers admis-
sion of partial failure to get to the whole story is an effective means to
establish the biographys objectivity.58 In addition, the personal is
not historically important, Horowitzs argument implies, except in a
feminist biography, where such a perspective serves an expressly political
function. Through this argument, Horowitzs biography gains in political
neutrality. Horowitzs research methods, especially his reliance on writ-
ten records and documents, add to the impression of a referential,
scientic and impartial account, positioned outside all ideological
discourses. This impression is strengthened by the distinction he makes
between facts and feelings: One story focuses on how she felt, the
other on what written documents reveal. A feisty nature and a radical past
do not preclude a sense of being trapped by the feminine mystique.59
The sexist overtones in his description of Friedans character (feisty
rarely refers to men) suggest a lack of gender awareness. More impor-
tantly, his denition of what constitutes biographical proof challenges
Friedans version of her life story. Feelings, Horowitzs argument implies,
are not a sufcient basis for convincing truth-claims. His line of reason-
ing challenges the feminist analysis in The Feminist Mystique, which is
precisely a study of feelings, especially of the problem that has no
name and the way in which feelings are shaped by their social and
political context.
Horowitzs denition of biographical proof equally serves to validate
his emphasis on the text The Feminine Mystique. A central part of his
argument consists of reinterpreting The Feminine Mystique as a coded
phrase for what else was capturing Americathe fear of atomic war, Cold
War suspicion, and, most immediately, McCarthyism.60 The decoding
of Friedans study establishes a hierarchy among historically worthy areas
of study. In Horowitzs view, state and social movement politics take
precedence over gender politics. Of course, his decoding of
The Feminine Mystique throws suspicion on all of Friedans texts and
consequently on his own argumentation. To establish the radicalism of
Friedans youth, Horowitz relies on the written records of her early years
(such as her political writing for Smith College Weekly and Federated
62 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

Press).61 His reinterpretation of her later, feminist writing opens up the

possibility that Friedans early writing, too, was unduly inuenced by her
social and political setting.62 In her 2000 autobiography, Friedan implies
the she was subject to such an inuence and subsequent self-censorship.
In the autobiography, she argues that the ofcial reason for turning down
the fellowship, which was to work for the revolution, was created to
disguise the fact that she longed to be just a woman, that is, living the
feminine mystique, yet this was hardly a reason I could give out loud,
even to myself.63 Read next to Horowitzs argument, her statement
draws attention to the central role the reinterpretation of The Feminine
Mystique plays in his biographical plotting.
In his study Reading for the Plot, Peter Brooks denes plot as the
principle of interconnectedness and intention in narrative.64 All narration
needs plot to give the impression of intelligible wholes, or as Brooks
writes, plots are not simply organizing structures, they are also inten-
tional structures, goal-oriented and forward-moving.65 Plot is the logic
and dynamic of narrative and narrative itself a form of understanding and
explanation.66 In addition, plot is the internal logic of the discourse of
mortality.67 What this means, in its simplest form, is that we read to gain
knowledge of death, or, putting it differently, that we read to nd out
about the end, since only the end can nally determine meaning, close
the sentence as a signifying totality.68 Nowhere is this truer than in realist
biography, where the end usually means the literal end, or near end, of a
life. Reading a biography backwards provides a critical reader with clues
for understanding its plot.
Signicantly, the major part of Horowitzs biography describes
Friedans life up to the publication of The Feminine Mystique.
The ending offers clues to the particular plotting of Horowitzs narrative
as well as to its ideological foundations. His decoding of The Feminine
Mystique is an attempt to ll in what he believes is missing from the study,
more specically, the radical socialist ideas from earlier versions and
Friedans time as a writer of feminist texts for the labor press in the
1940s and 1950s. By lling in what he sees as autobiographical blanks,
Horowitz can argue that Friedan served as a crucial link between gen-
erations of advocates for womens advancements.69 His argument, how-
ever, requires that Friedans position in the history of womens liberation
remains central. After the early 1970s, Horowitz writes, Friedan never
again provided leadership of the womens movement from a base in a major
national organization.70 A focus on her later years adds nothing to his
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 63

central argument. Consequently, the forty years after the publication of The
Feminine Mystique are covered in a nal, single chapter.
It is essential for Horowitz to characterize Friedans decision to leave
Berkeley as positive and conscious. If Friedan left the university because
she felt that she had no choice, this supports her feminist interpretation of
the events, namely that she was suffering from the feminine mystique.
An inability to make a positive choice about Berkeley indicates that her
feminist consciousness had not developed in the 1940s, but was the result
of an intellectual process and analytic breakthrough that took place almost
twenty years later, in the early 1960s. Of course, the question of when
Friedan developed her feminist consciousness is precisely what is at stake in
Horowitzs account. If she was suffering from the feminist mystique in
the 1940s, she can hardly serve as a link between the New Left and the
womens movement. According to Horowitz, Friedans feminist con-
sciousness was fully developed when she began working for the labor
press. What caused her to leave Berkeley and set up home in the suburbs
was not the feminine mystique, but a lack of radicalism at Berkeley and a
subsequent fear of Senator McCarthys witch-hunts. This argument, how-
ever, ignores what many feminists active in the 1960s womens movement
(including Friedan herself) have claimed, namely that the American Left of
the 1940s and 1950s did not take womens issues seriously, if they
addressed them at all.71
To establish a link between the New Left and the womens movement,
Horowitz decodes The Feminine Mystique. In the process, he must
rewrite Friedans life story, as it provides the starting point for her feminist
social analysis. Unlike Friedan, Horowitz suggests that the development of
her feminist consciousness and of her socialist beliefs were simultaneous.
The argument allows him to reject both the feminist analysis in
The Feminine Mystique and Friedans de-mystication of her suburban
lifestyle and feelings. Yet Horowitzs reluctance to acknowledge Friedans
feelings causes an interpretative gap in his narrative; he cannot explain
why Friedan never acknowledged the New Left inuences on her femin-
ism even later in life. This gap in the argument reveals that his biography is
not neutral or objective but conveys a highly politicized version of
feminism and the history of the womens movement in addition to telling
Friedans life.
Truth in realist biography depends on the presumed objectivity and
neutrality of the biographer. As would be expected, such objectivity is
established by avoiding to the greatest degree possible any visible political
64 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

or other bias, that is, by positioning the biography supposedly outside

all political discourses. For this reason realist biography must appear
neutral also in its analysis of its subjects politics. Horowitz establishes
his biographys professed objectivity claims in terms consistent with how
truth-claims are formed in socio-historical biography.72 Friedans life is
interpreted mainly through the prism of larger social and political events.
Because other versions of the life, notably by Friedan herself, contradict
the biography, an important part of Horowitzs argument therefore
involves throwing doubt on the autobiographical elements in, above all,
The Feminine Mystique. Such doubt is established when Horowitz
suggests that Friedans account is based on personal feelings.73
He thereby makes a clear distinction between autobiographical and bio-
graphical truth.74
When Horowitz interprets The Feminine Mystique, and consequently
the autobiographical elements therein, as a coded phrase, his argument
resembles Roy Pascals view of womens autobiography as lacking the
necessary harmony between the subjects outward experiences and her
inner growth.75 In Horowitzs version of her life, there is a discrepancy
between Friedans inward, authentic socialist beliefs and the outward
pressure that McCarthyism asserted on her political writing (including its
autobiographical elements). Horowitzs dismissal of Friedans account
relies on a denition of autobiography as a personal, subjectiveand
therefore less truthfulconstruction of a life. According to such a
denition, a similar focus on the personal in biography would result in
apoliticized, and therefore less true, feminist biography. From the
perspective of modern biography, Horowitzs version of the life story
thereby appears as the more neutral and objective of the two versions.
According to Michael J. Shapiro, political analysis, including that in
biography, generally sees itself as [objective and] nonideological (or even
antiideological).76 Nevertheless, Shapiro remains skeptical towards such
objectivity.77 What is described as coherent and intelligible in biography
is not an intelligible world, he argues. Instead, coherence in biography is
the result of ideologically informed intelligible-producing practices,
which allow the historian or biographer to argue as true his or her
particular interpretation of a life.78 If one accepts Shapiros claim that
biography is always ideologically informed, the question becomes what
ideological perspective informs Horowitzs biography.79 When Horowitz
positions Friedan biographically within a set of evolving institutions on the
political Left, the political implications of his biography are made visible.
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 65

Friedans 1940s radicalism, Horowitz argues, eventually metamorphosed

into 1960s feminism. His line of reasoning resembles that of new social
historians, specically their insistence on the rationality of social move-
ments. As the New Left came under threat from Senator McCarthy, its
participants dispersed only to re-emerge in a different guise.80
Writing the biography, Horowitz contests more than Friedans account
of her life. He also questions a particular history of the American womens
movement. His biography of Friedan implies that the American womens
movement was not, in Judith Shulevitzs words, a grass-roots suburban
movement, a native owering of middle-class awareness, which Friedans
study proposes.81 Rather, Horowitz contends that the movement was a
product of 1940s radicalism, heavily inuenced by Stalinist Marxism.
Horowitzs line of reasoning, Shulevitz observes, suggests that the
changes achieved by the womens movement must be subject to the
revision that everything else tainted by the Cold War has now under-
gone.82 What is at stake in the biography, in other words, is not just
the origins of feminism, but its future. Despite her conclusions, Shulevitz
does not believe that Horowitzs motive is so-called red-baiting.83
Indeed, Horowitz expresses worry that his biography might be revealing
elements of Friedans past that conservatives could use to discredit . . . the
entire womens movement.84 More likely, I argue, his biographical mes-
sage originates in the Marxist socialist belief that a focus on a shared
identity, such as nationality or gender, diverts attention from the funda-
mental conict in (capitalist) society, namely the conict between the
classes.
Through his Marxist historical usurpation of Friedans liberal fem-
inist life story, Horowitz can present a particular history of the womens
movement. In the process he also presents a notion of subjectivity which
differs from Friedans. Although both authors adhere to modern notions
of the individual as rational and coherent, the autobiographical elements
in Friedans theory introduce a gender perspective that Horowitz
excludes in his version of her life. The exclusion has political implica-
tions; Friedans gender perspective allows her to argue that men and
women experience the social differently. Benita Roths description of
womens role in movements such as the New Left resembles Friedans
social analysis in The Feminine Mystique.85 Social scientists, Roth argues,
often misunderstand womens participation in social movements. They
do not see, she explains, the gender bias of the social theories they
employ.
66 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

According to Roth, new social history scholars in the 1950s and 1960s
tended to view movement participation as rational expressions of politics
by other than institutional means.86 Even in the 1990s, she continues,
American sociologists often did not realize that social movement parti-
cipation is different for women precisely because of gender role expecta-
tions.87 For this reason, she offers her own analysis of womens role in
political movements in the 1940s and 1950s: Movement housewifery
cleaning up after meetings, cooking for the meeting, attending to what-
ever domestic needs the social movement community hadwas part of
what led women activists in the left movement to organize as feminists in
the 1960s and 1970s.88 Before the 1960s, Roth continues, women in
American social and political movements were expected to ll certain
functions, which differed from mens. Normally, movement women con-
tinued to be conned to what Roth refers to as a proper space (the
private), as well as a proper role (housewife). In other words, these
women were still trying to fulll the feminine mystique.
Horowitzs biography does not consider whether sexual discrimination
took place within the New Left. As a result, the subject in Horowitzs
supposedly gender-neutral biography appears to be a man rather than a
woman, as his biographical subject experiences no constraints related to
her femaleness. Indirectly, comparisons between Horowitzs biography
and the autobiographical elements in The Feminine Mystique serve as
reminders that Friedans 1960s social analysis differs from New Left
socialist interpretations precisely because she departs from strictly socialist
doctrines. As Shulevitz argues,

it is precisely because Friedan abandoned the vocabulary of Marxism for that

of bourgeois psychology that she was able to dismantle the reigning dis-
course about women, a middlebrow blend of bowdlerized Freudianism and
behaviorism, and sell her audience on a more expansive vision of female
possibility.89

In other words, Friedans psychological perspective motivates her social

historical analysis and politicizes her personal experiences. This empha-
sis on womens particularity is the main difference between her liberal
feminist criticism and her earlier socialist beliefs, as described by Horowitz.
Horowitz interprets The Feminine Mystique as an ideological failure for
offering, in Shulevitzs words, psychological insights rather than insti-
tutional solutions.90 For all that, the absence in his biography of similar
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 67

psychological insights paradoxically points to the important role such

insights play in a liberal feminist social analysis; without them Horowitz
seems unable to account for Friedans puzzling behavior. In his bio-
graphy, there is no personal to explain the political. A focus on the
personal would, of course, undermine Horowitzs arguments and
consequently the position he takes in the 1990s battle over feminism.
Although his Marxist usurpation of Friedans life story allows him to
reinterpret the origin of the 1960s American womens movement, a
side effect of his reinterpretation is a contradictory realist biographical
subject. Despite assigning Friedan a central role in the womens move-
ment, she is portrayed as a reluctant socialist feminist heroine, who
inexplicably contests this position.
In a wider perspective, the struggle over Friedans life story is a
struggle over feminism and its historical and political origins. By suggest-
ing that Friedan remained negatively affected by McCarthyism through-
out her life, Horowitz turns her into a closeted pioneering socialist or
Marxist feminist, who never believed in the liberal feminist doctrine she
eventually set forth. In a more general sense, his interpretation of
Friedans politics questions the historical links between eighteenth-cen-
tury liberalism and feminism. From a modern feminist perspective,
Horowitzs biography of Friedan is an example of the need for a gender
perspective in the historical appropriation of womens lives. Comparisons
between the biography and the autobiographical elements in The
Feminist Mystique exemplify how different a womans life is likely to
appear when it is interpreted from either a (liberal) feminist, or a non-
feminist, perspective. In Friedans liberal feminist version of her life, the
self is assigned unambiguous political agency. In Horowitzs account,
Friedans agency is portrayed as considerably more problematic, or, in his
own words, puzzling.
Horowitzs reinterpretation of The Feminine Mystique contradicts the
1970s modern feminist view of autobiography as an authentic and
immediate account of a womans life, by openly questioning the truth-
fulness and objectivity of the autobiographical elements in The Feminine
Mystique. Yet his contestation also serves as a reminder that Friedans
versions of her life similarly form part of a political argument. From a
perspective that links biographical method to politics, Horowitzs biogra-
phical silencing of Friedan suggests that realist biography is incompatible
with the feminist idea of an exemplary womans life. As we shall see,
Friedans other biographer, Judith Hennessee, suggests otherwise.
68 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

A WOMAN OF PROFOUND CONTRADICTIONS

The late 1990s saw the publication of one other biography of Betty
Friedan. Judith Hennessee introduces her 1998 biography Betty Friedan:
Her Life by describing her subject as a towering gure, honored and
feared, and the woman who had changed our lives, mainly through
The Feminine Mystique.91 In her introduction, Friedan is presented as one
of the founders of the womens movement, but Hennessee also refers to
Friedan as a woman of profound contradictions.92 Friedan, she writes,
was ostracized in the early 1970s from the very movement she helped
establish, largely because of these contradictions:

She was a woman who yearned for a happy marriage and family life, yet
urged others to fulll themselves outside the family. A conventional woman
who shook malefemale relationships to the core. A reformer who started a
revolution. A revolutionary who wanted to be part of the Establishment. An
elitist who fought for working women; a class snob who fought for equality;
a humanitarian who treated individuals, particularly women, badly. She was
a feminist who preferred men, became girlish and irtatious in their com-
pany, and deferred to themand did not even like most women. In the nal
analysis, the great overarching cause of her life was not feminism but social
justice.93

The contradictory pairings that Hennessee lists offer clues to her biogra-
phical method; a psychological biographical approach gains plausibility
from a subject that otherwise appears inexplicable or contradictory.94
As established in Chapter 2, truth in psychological biography depends
on the realist biographers supposedly omniscient, psychological insights.
Unlike Horowitz, Hennessee focuses on Friedans relationships, primarily
with other women, which reveals a behavioral pattern that she
then explains psychologically. According to Hennessee, it was Friedans
second class temperament and insecurities that not only inuenced her
feminist thinking, but hampered her attempts at remaining and keeping
power within the modern womens movement.95 Based primarily on
interviews, Hennessees biography focuses on personal relationships
and conicts, rather than minute, factual descriptions of events.
Often, Hennessee does not offer any nal word on the incidents she
mentions. For example, she quotes both Bettys and Carl Friedans ver-
sions of their separation without favoring one over the other.96
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 69

The impression is of an impartial text, where all the individuals involved

are given a say in the interpretation of events. As will become clear,
however, Hennessees biography is a highly politicized account. More
specically, it portrays Friedan as an anti-hero of the womens move-
ment, rather than the (liberal) feminist role model that emerges in
The Feminine Mystique.
There are several reasons why one might choose to focus on the so-
called private or personal aspects of an individuals life. According to
Mary Evans, a preoccupation with the personal in auto/biographies
of traditionally marginalized subjects is often the direct result of their
peripheral position.97 Unable to identify with conventionally structured
role models, these marginalized groups have no choice but to tell
all.98 Friedan presents such an alternative structural role model in
The Feminine Mystique. Although the main focus of the study lies else-
where, on society as a whole, her life is presented precisely as an
example of gradual female empowerment for other women to learn
from, be inspired by and follow. But at the time of Hennessees bio-
graphy, Friedan was already a publicly known feminist and political
activist, and was commonly recognized as one of the founders of the
modern womens movement. Saving Friedan from historical obscurity is
reasonably not Hennessees objective, then. Nor does Hennessee con-
rm the autobiographical, self-actualizing elements in Friedans study.
Instead, her preoccupation with Friedans personal life establishes an
alternative behavioral pattern, informed by Friedans supposedly uncon-
scious needs and desires. The psychological pattern provides the foun-
dation for Hennessees claims about her subjects lack of political
commitment and it explains the Berkeley incident in yet another
fashion.
Friedans refusal of the scholarship and her decision to leave university
is discussed at length by Horowitz, but in Hennessees biography it only
forms part of a short chapter titled Meltdown. The chapter ends when
Betty Goldstein meets Carl Friedman (who later changed his name to
Friedan). Typically, much of what is described and analyzed in the chapter
are Friedans personal and professional relationships with her family, with
other women and with men. Hennessee downplays Friedans political
commitments at college by referring to her as a cashmere Marxist.99
She also offers an interpretation of the political climate at Berkeley that
differs from both Horowitzs and Friedans respective accounts. According
70 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

to Hennessee, the campus was indeed radical, yet this did not make any
difference to Friedan because

she was not an ideologue and would have balked at the rigidities and
orthodoxies [within the Communist Party], which changed instantly at a
signal from Moscow, and at the intolerance of questions and ideas. She was
an activist who pushed and prodded at inequities, whatever they were, and
the only party line she followed was her own.100

Hennessee interprets Betty Friedans politics as instinctive, motivated by

unconscious needs and desires and, consequently, following only her
own party line.101 The statement implies that Friedans political activism
cannot be explained in terms of conventional party politics. Instead, her
motivations must be traced backwards to the insecurities of Friedans youth.
In line with Horowitz, Hennessee contests Friedans explanation for
rejecting the Berkeley fellowship. She acknowledges that women gradu-
ates might have been reluctant to pursue an education that was hollow at
the core, but suggests that Friedans reason for leaving university was
another.102 More precisely, she argues that the decision originated in
Friedans relationship with her father. According to Hennessee, Harry
Senior had been Bettys champion . . . but he had also pushed her to move
beyond the limitations of her sex even before she had had a chance to
sample its pleasures. She was twenty-two and she needed to know she was
desirable.103 Hennessees interpretation is psychologically plausible;
winning a fellowship clearly did not make her desirable in the eyes of her
then boyfriend. Her interpretation corresponds with Friedans own expla-
nation for her actions at the time; the feminine mystique made her leave
university. In Hennessees version of the events, however, Friedan never
sees through the mystique. She never reaches full awareness of the
culture she shares with other women. Instead, Hennessee views
Friedans behavior in later life, too, as unconsciously motivated by a
desire for male approval. In this manner, she distances the biography from
the autobiographical elements in The Feminine Mystique. Through her
omniscient psychological perspective, Hennessee pathologizes
Friedans study as well as her politics. She denes Friedan as sexually and
emotionally insecure, and views signicant events in her life as a result of
those very insecurities. Repeated references to personal insecurities con-
struct the biographys narrative framework. The references to Friedans
insecurities both support and are supported by the words of a co-worker at
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 71

Federated Press, who is quoted as saying: She [Friedan] was not lonely.
She was insecure. She had to prove herself with men. It was very important
for her.104 The narrative framework enables Hennessee to describe
Friedans many love affairs after university as expressions of unconscious,
personal needs without any wider feminist signicance.
Hennessees focus on Friedans personal life supposedly offers new
insights into the psyche of the woman who changed our lives. Evans
has observed that to tell all in a biography is associated with a sense of
progress, in which the apparently more open discussion of sexuality is in
some sense better and enlightened.105 She cautions, however, that this
approach constructs its own emphases and biases which are, in their way,
as misleading as those of the past.106 After telling all about her sub-
jects personal life, Hennessee then judges all of Friedans actions
according to the disclosures. Yet when behavior is interpreted from a
single perspective, the interpreter risks committing what David Ellis calls a
fundamental attribution error, which he denes as

a systematic tendency to underestimate the extent to which the behaviour

of others is affected by situational forces and to overestimate the extent to
which it expresses enduring personal characteristics. Put more simply: that
a specic act is repeated does not make it characteristic. How many glasses of
wine does someone have to knock over before they can be designed as
careless? Each episode might have a context which makes it unique.107

Hennessees strict psychological interpretation of incidents in Friedans past

means that she runs the risk of making precisely such an error. Of course,
the interpretation of every situation according to the same pattern also
transforms events into a narrative, turns them into a biographical plot.
Through her plotting, Hennessee effectively depoliticizes Friedans
feminist politics by suggesting that Friedans actions consistently reect a
lack of feminist awareness. Comparisons with the autobiographical ele-
ments in Friedans political writing highlight Hennessees particular
understanding of feminist engagement and female agency. Friedans
account of how she developed feminist awareness differs sharply from
Hennessees view of Friedan as permanently psychologically damaged by
her past. In line with Horowitz, Hennessee rejects the liberal feminist
context that Friedan provides for her life story in favor of an alternative
framework, which not only pathologizes but depoliticizes the life. When
the biography is read next to Friedans own politicized accounts of her life,
72 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

however, attention is drawn to the interpretative gap in Hennessees

version. Her focus on the personal involves mentioning all of
Friedans relationships, including functional and long-lasting friend-
ships.108 These functional but personal relationships contrast markedly
with the relationships that Friedan failed to form with members of other
feminist groups. The contrast between the two kinds of relationships
suggests that Friedans animosity towards certain women might have
had less to do with her difcult personality and more with actual
ideological disagreements. Additionally, the contrast draws attention to
Hennessees biographical approach; she does not evaluate Betty Friedans
political engagement by her writing, or by her involvement in various
feminist causes. Instead, she determines Friedans feminist commitment
strictly by her behavior in relationships.
Hennessees account of Betty Friedans life ends with a reconciliation of
sorts between Friedan and two of her adversaries, Bella Abzug and Gloria
Steinem, two other key gures in the American womens movement.
The ending suggests that this particular conict has been central in the
preceding narrative. It also ties in with the introduction to the biography,
where Hennessee reads Friedans life as a metonymy for a whole era: In
time, rivals challenged herfeminism was never monolithicand the
movement changed. A new generation of leaders emerged, and Betty
began to fade. But none of them could replace her; no one had her
charisma or her strength.109 In this part of the text, differences between
feminist ideological positions gradually begin to read like a description of
power struggles between individuals and not as struggles within a devel-
oping and increasingly divided feminist movement.110 Indeed, when
Hennessee brings the conict to a personal level, as a battle between
big egos rather than ideologies, an alternative feminist hero appears.
It could be argued that the real feminist hero in Hennessees biography
is not Friedan, but Gloria Steinem.
Determining which lives to tell involves deciding on the use of the
life story, Carolyn G. Heilbrun writes in her inuential study Writing a
Womans Life.111 In her study, she argues for new ways of writing the
lives of women, as biographers, autobiographers, or, in anticipation of
living new lives, as the women themselves.112 For Heilbrun, biography is
more, or something else, than just historical chronicling; it is a matter of
power, both narrative and political. She observes that biographers have
largely ignored women as subjects, and . . . critics of biography have writ-
ten as though men were the only possible subjects.113 The biographer,
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 73

while telling the life of an individual, has traditionally focused on what

Laura Marcus describes as the historical human being and his public
achievements, worthy in a higher sense of living on in biography as a
work of art.114 This exceptional human being has almost always been a
man. A woman as the biographical subject is therefore automatically a little
different from other women, Heilbrun claims. As exceptions to the rule,
these women appear somewhat abnormal, monstrous in their biogra-
phies.115 Heilbruns proposed solution is a rewriting of available plots to
accommodate womens lives.
Hennessee bases her description of the quarrel between Steinem and
Friedan on contemporary media accounts.116 In the process, she conrms
existing and stereotypical notions of exceptional women. According to
the mainstream media, Friedans public attacks on Steinems person were
triggered by an envy of Steinems good looks and popularity.117
Hennessees description of Friedan as emotionally insecure both supports
and is supported by her account of events. When Hennessee describes
Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan as polar opposites, she makes an explicit
connection between personality traits and politics, as demonstrated in
this passage, which deserves being quoted in full:

Betty was brusque, open; Gloria was diplomatic, opaque. Betty was untidy,
sprawling; Gloria was neat and contained. Betty gloried in ghts; she derived
her power from them. Gloria shrank from confrontations; they made her ill.
She was a peacemaker, patching together impossible compromises between
irreconcilable groups; her power came from bringing people
together . . . She was the bandage; Betty was the blunt instrument . . . In
their pursuit of power and inuence, Betty reached out and took what she
wanted; Gloria was passive and waited to be asked, seeming not to care.
Bettys leadership style was arbitrary and imperious, in the male mode.
Women who expected emotional sustenance from a feminist resented her
for not providing it. If she had been a man, her tactics would have been
glossed over: she would have been forgiven because of her brilliant mind.
Glorias leadership was supportive and cooperative, but she was not a leader
in the sense that Betty was: she did not try to run anything formally.118

In the biography, Friedan is aggressive, bossy and dislikes women, while

Steinem possesses stereotypically feminine characteristics; she is diplo-
matic, passive and supportive, a peacemaker who brings people
together. Hennessee recognizes the difculty of dening Friedan accord-
ing to the available (masculine) hero models, of how if she had been a
74 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

man, her tactics would have been glossed over, but she does not
acknowledge the extent to which her own description turns Friedan into
a monster, or the anti-hero of the womens movement.119 In
Hennessees biography, women cannot be assertive and aggressive with-
out changing into grotesque, masculine versions of a woman. Similarly,
the description of Steinem as passive, cooperative and supportive, or, in
Hennessees words, a woman possessing all the irritating qualities of a
saint, loses its validity if she is given too active or aggressive a role in the
conict with Friedan.120
The criticism of Friedans attitude towards other women suggests
that Hennessee sees female solidarity as fundamental to feminism.
In the biography, she repeatedly points out that female solidarity
is one of Gloria Steinems most characteristic personality traits121.
Hennessees denition of feminism might also explain why she shapes
her own criticism of Friedan in such a way that it is not recognized as
an ideological critique. Ideological criticism of another woman would
be disloyal, according to her own argument. Consequently, she does
not renounce Friedan on ideological terms, but blames her behavior.
The contrast between Friedan and Steinem highlights more than the
two womens different characters. It also relies on a specic notion of
female subjectivity. Friedans brusque manners and dislike of women are
described as psychologically motivated, the effects of a wounded uncon-
scious. In contrast, and in accordance with the biographys narrative
framework, Steinems supportive and peacemaking abilities are indicative
of a conscious, authentic and therefore more liberated sense of
(female) self. In Hennessees biography, the cultivation of certain, con-
ventionally feminine personality traits corresponds with a womans
developing self-knowledge.
When Hennessee denes Friedans actions in psychological terms, she
effectively disqualies her subjects feminist self-awareness. For exam-
ple, she describes Friedans anti-homosexual stance as an act of disloyalty
towards other women. According to Hennessee, this disloyalty originates
in Friedans unconscious fear of being labeled lesbian and therefore het-
erosexually unavailable.122 If the anti-homosexual stance is interpreted
in the context of Friedans political writing, however, another possible
explanation emerges. In Life So Far, Friedan claims that her negative
attitude towards lesbians in the 1970s was caused by a concern that sexual
politics would overshadow that on which, in her opinion, the movement
ought to focus: equal opportunity in jobs, education, training, the right
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 75

[for women] to control [their] own bodies and the issue of childcare.123
These are demands that she rst articulated already in The Feminine
Mystique.124
An alternative explanation for Friedans anti-homosexual stance high-
lights the ideological aspects of Hennessees biography. For Friedan, femin-
ism was strictly a matter of social and economic equality. For Hennessee, it
is primarily a question of sexual politics. Yet Hennessees denition of
authentic femaleness as a matter of specic character traits comes uncom-
fortably close to reproducing the rhetoric of the feminine mystique. It is
precisely so-called essentialist denitions of womanhood that Friedan
demysties and denes as cultural in her study.125 Read in the context
of The Feminine Mystique, Gloria Steinems feminine character appears
constructed (inauthentic) and therefore potentially harmful to other
women. This could explain Friedans aversion both to Steinems person-
ality and to her politics. From Friedans perspective, the battle with
Steinem is decidedly political. From Hennessees perspective, it is strictly
personal.
When Horowitz hesitates to dene his study of Friedan as a biography
in any usual sense of the word, it implies that he is aware of the expecta-
tions that contemporary readers have of biography as a psychological
study.126 As pointed out by Parke, so profoundly did the founder of
psychoanalysis inuence twentieth-century notions of who we are, how we
develop, our degrees of self-awareness, and the need for psychoanalytic
insight to become conscious of these processes that, after Freud, no
responsible biographer can justify knowing nothing about psychoanalytic
interpretive methods.127 To argue the truth in realist biography from a
psychological perspective is so commonplace that readers of Horowitzs
biography have reacted to its absence.128 Of course, psychological biogra-
phy, or psychobiography, is not an objective approach, as claimed by,
for instance, Leon Edel.129 Like all biography it depends on specic,
ideologically informed ideas about the subject, the self and the author.
Judging by her approach, Hennessees psychological biography is perhaps
best understood as a radical feminist critique of Friedans liberal feminist
politics.
In psychobiography, truth is established by the biographers suppo-
sedly omniscient psychological perspective, which is expected to result in a
more authentic and coherent life story than the subjects own. This is
the basic framework for the psychological biography genre, expressed in its
own scientic terms. Hennessees usurpation of her subjects life story
76 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

results in an analysis of Friedans actions. In the biography she offers

psychologically informed reasons for Friedans behavior, especially the
latters troublesome relationship with her father. Hennessee also questions
the supposedly self-actualizing, autobiographical elements in The Feminine
Mystique. In the process, she depoliticizes Friedans engagement in the
womens movement. More specically, Hennessee criticizes what she con-
siders to be Friedans most problematic character trait: her lack of solidarity
with other women.
Female solidarity is an important aspect of sexual politics, that is, a
feminist politics that emphasizes the sexual differences between men
and women. Among radical feminists of the 1970s, sexual politics
played a central role, with heterosexuality coming under particular
scrutiny.130 Hennessees biography of Friedan belongs to that radical
feminist tradition. Radical feminist organizations rst appeared in New
York in 1969, where members advocated the separation between the
sexes as a necessary means to womens liberation.131 The 1960s sexual
revolution and heterosexual institutions, such as marriage and family,
were viewed as belonging to a patriarchal structure that oppressed
women and womens specic culture.132 By identifying with each
other as women, women would nd the political strength to change
this structure.
From a radical feminist point of view, Friedans refusal to acknowledge
the lesbian presence in the womens movement is a betrayal of feminisms
goals. The underlying idea behind this line of reasoning is that women share
certain experiences, which are unique, perhaps even essential, to womens
existence. As a rst important step in the identication of these experiences,
radical feminists in the 1970s pioneered the practice of consciousness-rais-
ing.133 Consciousness-raising can be understood as both a personal and a
collective form of psychoanalysis.134 The assumption behind the practice
was that once women became aware of their oppressed state, patriarchy
would lose its psychological power. Eventually, the mental transformation
would also generate changes in womens attitudes and lifestyles.135
According to the same argument, women who did not express loyalty
towards other women, in their capacity as women, had not achieved full
consciousness of their subordinated condition, or were living in a state of
inauthenticity. A womans experiences must be conrmed by other
womens similar experiences to achieve feminist signicance. From this
perspective, Hennessees description of her subject as isolated, ostracized,
from the womens movement undermines the authenticity of Friedans
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 77

experiences. As a result, Friedans presentation of her life as a journey

towards self-actualization and her status as a feminist role model also
come into question.
The normative aspects of Hennessees view of female subjectivity are
brought to attention indirectly by third-wave feminists Jennifer Baum-
gardner and Amy Richards. They describe an inclination among radical
feminists to focus on a womans personal life as a means to discredit her
political opinions:

Almost immediately, this phrase [the personal is political] was misinter-

preted to mean that what an individual woman does in her personal life (like
watching porn, wearing garter belts, dyeing her hair, having an affair, earn-
ing money, shaving her legs) undermines her feminist credibility and can be
levied against her, like a ne.136

The tendency to determine a womans feminist credibility based on her

personal life dominates the narrative framework of Hennessees biogra-
phy. But Hennessee does not deny Friedans involvement with (and long-
term inuence on) the womens movement. On the contrary, she con-
rms certain aspects of Friedans own version of her life. Her approach to
Friedans life rests on the argument that autobiography offers a rst and
coherent, if still incomplete, account of the subject.137 Instead, it is
primarily in Friedans capacity as an exemplary feminist, or feminist role
model, that Hennessee disqualies her.
Comparisons between Hennessees biography and the autobiogra-
phical elements in The Feminine Mystique reveal the political conse-
quences of Friedans disqualication as an exemplary feminist.
The interpretative gap in the biographys narrative framework draws
attention to Hennessees position in the ontological and ideological
struggles that dene 1990s feminism. Her disqualication of Friedans
own life story is equally a disqualication of Friedans liberal feminism
and its strict focus on womens social and political inequality. Hennessees
approach to Friedans life implies that the changes advocated by liberal
feminism are not sufciently radical. They must be accompanied by a less
aggressive (masculine) form of political leadership, that is, a more
diplomatic, inclusive and peacemaking (feminine) approach to policy
making and organization of society. Feminist politics, Hennessees bio-
graphy implies, must be extended to the personal, or private, aspects of
how people organize their lives. The expected result is the reorganization,
78 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

and in some cases dissolution, of the institutions (such as marriage) that

Friedan and other liberal feminists see as vital to society.
Read in the context of radical feminism, Hennessees biography of
Friedan is not the politically neutral or objective account implied
by its author. Realist psychological biography allows Hennessee to
present a particular denition of female subjectivity as objective.
In this manner she can establish a necessary distance between her
version of the life and Friedans liberal feminist life story. As in
Horowitzs case, the truth-claims in Hennessees biography depend
on the usurpation of Friedans life story as well as her politics. From
a liberal feminist perspective, however, Hennessees account rests on a
problematic, because essentialist-like, even sexist, notion of female
subjectivity from which women must be liberated. Making this argu-
ment is not the same as suggesting that liberal feminism is incompatible
with realist biography, or its basic ontology. Like radical and socialist
feminism, liberal feminism is based on the same Enlightenment ideas
that inform realist biography as a whole. Although modern feminists
disagree on the denition of the female subjects particularity, their
arguments for womens freedom are based on the same idea of uni-
versal rights. Friedans, Hennessees and Horowitzs accounts are all
inuenced by a decidedly modern tradition of ideas. What separates
them is their ideological outlooks.
Ideological differences between author and subject are similarly
discernible in Christine Wallaces biography of Germaine Greer.
Wallaces biography, too, is informed by modern denitions of sub-
jectivity and authorship, yet methodologically her biography departs
from both Horowitzs and Hennessees respective biographies by its
combination of a socio-historical perspective and a psychological
approach. Wallace also faces a different challenge: that is, the absence
of explicitly autobiographical elements in most of her subjects poli-
tical writing. In addition, Greer is commonly recognized as a popular
if controversial culture personality in the UK and Australia, and the
popular aspect of Greers biographical recognition sometimes col-
lides with her (earlier) role as a second-wave feminist. How Wallace
handles this collision and the absence of explicit autobiographical
elements in Greers writing offers important clues to the ideological
aspects of her biographical approach and to her criticism of Greers
feminist reputation.
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 79

THE AUTONOMOUS WOMAN

Like Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer became a public gure by writing a
bestseller. Yet unlike Friedans The Feminine Mystique, Germaine Greers
bestselling study The Female Eunuch (1970) does not include any explicit
references to the authors life, either in anecdotal form or in the shape of a
longer, cohesive autobiography.138 Regardless, critics have often
approached all Greers writing as more or less autobiographical. For
example, Mary Evans writes that there is

considerable evidence to suggest that [Greers] entire oeuvre has been auto-
biographical. Indeed, as is the case of Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer
fully meets our expectations of an autobiographical writer, in which the
inevitable use of personal experience is extended well beyond the normal
expectations . . . Greers main themes . . . are clearly themes close to the
authors own situation.139

Evans understanding of Greers texts as autobiographical suggests that

all Greers political writing is a form of self-actualization. In this respect,
Greer indirectly functions as a living example of her own feminist doctrine.
As I have illustrated earlier in this chapter, however, autobiographical
elements also risk undermining the authority of a feminist text. When
Friedans biographers dene their subjects political writing as autobio-
graphical, they are arguing that her texts are, at least partly, manifesta-
tions of unconscious or socially determined needs and desires.
In Greers case, any analogy made between the personal and the
political in her life is complicated by the fact that she has performed a
volte-face on a number of important feminist topics.140 Denitions of
Greers politics are further confounded by statements where she denes
herself as a Marxist, Trotskyite and anarchist, rather than a feminist.141
In the 2000s, Greers political commitment has been to nature conserva-
tion rather than womens rights.142 Finally, when Greer does refer to
events in her personal life, the details and the political meaning that
she assigns to them tend to vary.143 By the 1990s, Greers biographical
recognition was based not only on her role as a second-wave feminist, but
also on her roles as a media personality and a television pundit.144
The question that follows is how Greers biographer, Christine Wallace,
handles these aspects of her subjects life.
80 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

Since her feminist study The Female Eunuch rst appeared, Greer has
often been referred to in the media as the very embodiment of her
feminist writing.145 Although Greer has changed her feminist position
numerous times since the 1970s, Wallaces biography is an explicit
response to Greers rst feminist study. The Female Eunuch is an investiga-
tion into how Western society inuences womens sense of self. Similar
to Friedan, Greer envisioned womens liberation as the emancipation of a
fundamentally autonomous and rational (female) subject. Womens nat-
ural and political autonomy in contemporary society, she argued, was
denied or distorted through cultural stereotypes and oppressive models
of normality.146 These stereotypes had warped womens understanding of
their sexuality. Greer illustrated her argument by frequent references to
works of literature. She also quoted newspaper articles and social, psycho-
logical and biological studies.
In The Female Eunuch, Greers solution to womens oppression is
sexual revolution.147 In her view, womens sexuality was denied or
stereotyped as passive and women themselves misrepresented as female
eunuchs, that is, without libido.148 In a series of short chapters, Greer
described myths and clichs relating to both men and women, which she
believed misrepresented the notion of (heterosexual) love. She also criti-
cized social institutions, in particular the nuclear family. Unlike Friedan,
who never questioned the idea of marriage and family as valuable institu-
tions in themselves, Greer argued that the nuclear family was fundamen-
tally unhealthy for women and children.149 Instead, sexuality was
described as a source of vitality and the road to womens freedom and
agency.150 Women must engage in consciousness-raising, especially in
matters pertaining to their sexuality. They should not, Greer continued,
begin by changing the world, but by re-assessing themselves.151 Sex
must become a means of communication between men and women, which
meant that women had to take responsibility for their sexual desires.
The alternative to game-playing, Greer concluded, was that every
woman must now seek for herself, autonomy.152
Even though Greer referred to The Female Eunuch as part of the
second feminist wave, she distanced herself from the politics of the
American womens movement.153 Second-wave feminists, such as Betty
Friedan, she wrote, had narrowed the denition of womens sexuality by
linking it exclusively to childbirth and womens traditional homemaking
roles. As a result, their revolt had become asexual.154 Meanwhile, she
continued, radical feminists persisted in identifying men as the enemy;
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 81

they did not acknowledge that men, too, were the victims of a system that
forced both sexes to adjust to the prevailing stereotypes.155
Greers predominantly libertarian political vision in The Female Eunuch
includes an almost Romantic emphasis on the individual womans latent
abilities and emotional self-awareness. On the other hand, and despite
ideological differences, both Greer and Friedan clearly believe that
womens emancipation can only be achieved through a process of demys-
tication and in cooperation with men. Ultimately, Greer saw celibacy,
lesbianism and masturbation as equally inefcient political strategies.156
A man is more than a dildo, she concluded, and insisted that womens
liberation could not be achieved by a denial of heterosexual contact.157
The original British publication of The Female Eunuch turned the book
into a bestseller.158 It was followed by an even greater commercial success
in the United States.159 The books popularity made Greer, in biographer
Christine Wallaces words, synonymous with womens liberation across
the Western world.160

REVAMPED FEMME FATALE

In the foreword to her 1997 biography, Germaine Greer: The Untamed
Shrew, Christine Wallace expresses a wish to tell Greers life and re-
evaluate the critical groundwork by second-wave feminists. Wallaces
re-evaluation, she explains, involves recovering the valuable and dismiss-
ing the dross among the early contributions to feminist criticism.161
As would be expected, therefore, her biography focuses at length on
Greers most famous book, The Female Eunuch. Wallace refers to it as
feminisms smash-hit bestseller and a book that shook women into a
new way of seeing their situation.162 In the biography, Wallace con-
centrates on the relationship between her subjects early life and her
famous rst study, since neither a biography nor a work of review and
criticism alone could succeed in doing justice to the subject as well as the
two approaches together.163 Wallace also deals with what she calls the
profound disjuncture in the reception of The Female Eunuch; the book
was immensely popular among general readers, but was received nega-
tively by many feminists.164
In line with Mary Evans, Wallace reads all of Greers political writing as
autobiographical. Specically, she interprets Greers feminist studies as
examples of three separate stages in her personal (sexual) development.
The Female Eunuch is described as the philosophical justication of Greers
82 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

youthful sexual freewheeling.165 Wallace then goes on to interpret

Greers later study, Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Fertility (1984), as
the critical and theoretical expression of Greers longing for a child.166
Finally, she views The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991),
which Greer wrote in her fties, as the result of middle age on her subjects
sexual persona.167 Wallace compares the three studies and draws attention
to differences among them: in her third book, Sex and Destiny, Greer
departs from The Female Eunuchs earlier call for womens sexual emanci-
pation in favor of an argument that stresses the importance of motherhood
and the benets of female celibacy. By the time Greer wrote Sex and
Destiny, her views on womens sexuality seemed to have changed drama-
tically, yet she never acknowledges the change in the later study.168 This
produced howls of dismay from feminists and charges of hypocrisy from
all sides, according to Wallace.169
When Wallace mentions feminist reactions to Greers silence, she draws
attention to the absence of previously existing rational discourses, such
as autobiography, by which Greers behavior and opinions have been
explained or justied. Wallaces biography, then, is the establishment of
such a discourse. Wallace makes sense of Greers life by combining a
socio-historical biographical approach with a psychological perspective.
Through this combination of perspectives, which simultaneously com-
bines the personal with the political, she presents what she claims is
the truth about Greer and her politics.
Wallace takes special pains to explain The Female Eunuchs negative
feminist reception by tracing Greers political opinions back to the 1950s,
focusing especially on the anarchist and sexual libertarianism of an
Australian group of intellectuals known as the Push. It is within this
intellectual setting, she argues, rather than the second-wave womens
movement, that the politics of The Female Eunuch must be understood.
Like Hennessee, Wallace is a biographer whose truth-claims gain cred-
ibility from a subject who otherwise appears contradictory or irrational.
According to Wallace, Greers involvement with the Push and later male-
dominated groups is a reection of unconscious needs, originating in
Greers complicated relationship with her father.
To Wallace, The Female Eunuch is indicative of Greers lack of aware-
ness of womens subordinated condition in society. Rather than a feminist
tract, Wallace argues, the bestselling study expresses a libertarianism to
which Greer is unconsciously attracted. To make her point clear,
Wallace makes what she perceives as an important distinction between
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 83

the seductive style of The Female Eunuch and its problematic content.
She acknowledges that the book contains insights that are sharp, potent
and motivating and calls Greers writing bawdy, witty, provocative and
magnicently accessible, but she claims that The Female Eunuchs inu-
ence on the womens movement was in reverse relation to the books
popular impact.170 Particular attention is given to Greers attitude to the
womens movement. Wallaces criticism of The Female Eunuch includes
what she calls gratuitous trashing of [feminist] activists and their prac-
tices.171 According to Wallace, the study locates the problem of womens
emancipation within women themselves, without positioning the chal-
lenge [for women] within a wider framework.172 Despite its celebration
of womens sexuality, Wallace continues, The Female Eunuch preaches
hegemonic heterosexuality, and she refers to Greers sexual revolution
theory as heterosexual chauvinism by quoting Anna Coote and Beatrix
Campbell:173

At its most glamorous and amboyant, heterosexual chauvinism appeared

like a revamped femme fatale, according to Coote and Campbell. It was
the kind of feminism men liked best. It slapped their knees for being sexual
slobs and chastised women for being sexual slovens. Above all, it promised
the superfuck.174

In Wallaces view, Coote and Campbell rightly interpret Greers faith

in the socially disruptive powers of heterosexuality as exaggerated and
protective of the very conventions that feminism is meant to
challenge.175
Wallaces reading of The Female Eunuch establishes a pattern of beha-
vior by which she explains Greers life choices as well as her politics.
According to this pattern, the male heterosexual chauvinism in
The Female Eunuch originates in Greers complicated feelings towards
her father, a man who continued to wound and mystify her even after
his death.176 According to this argument, the search for fatherly love is
what motivates Greers almost perverse unwillingness to confront male
abuse of power.177 Wallace describes this tendency as a form of maso-
chism.178 It explains, she writes, why Greer gravitated towards male-
dominated intellectual groups like the Push. Wallace describes her sub-
jects attraction to the Push as a reinforcement of the very elements that
have hurt her the most. Just as Reg [her father] had loved her then kept
her at arms length, so it was in the Push.179 As a result, Greer sought
84 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

male attention through outrageous behavior or provocative statements.180

An almost equally strong artistic bent, Wallace continues, later caused
her subject to seek the limelight of celebrity.181
Wallace similarly refers to the Push to explain Greers sexual revolution
theory. The Push, she argues, provided Greer with a philosophical alibi for
her sexual experimentation at Sydney University. Losing her religious
beliefs caused her to reject the Churchs sexual strictures.182 In contrast,
the dominant members in the Push were men who believed that sexual
repression had a central place in any repressive system and that freedom in
love is the condition of other freedoms.183 Through references to the
Push, Wallace can also explain Greers strange amalgam of progressive
and conservative positions.184 The Sydney libertarians, she writes, cov-
ered the entire political spectrum.185
When Wallace writes about Greers activities in the UK, she makes
sense of Greers life according to the same psychological pattern that
she uses elsewhere in the biography. In London, Greer became involved
with the British counterculture. According to Wallace, the main goal of
the male-dominated counterculture movement was social disruption, not
female emancipation. The counterculture movement nevertheless tted
Greers emotional needs and further conrmed her lifestyle choices. Greer
also became co-editor for the European pornographic paper Suck, which
claimed to break the male heterosexual mold of pornographic publish-
ing by taking into account the interests of women and homosexuals.186
Nevertheless, Wallace claims that Greer never took into account how
Sucks spread of sexual objectication was supposed to advance the
interests of anyone.187 Once again, Wallace concludes, controversy was
more important than womens rights. Nevertheless, she does not dismiss
Greers politics altogether.
Wallaces plotting of the life emerges most clearly towards the bio-
graphys end. In the biographys nal chapter she refers to Greer as a
female maverick.188 According to Wallace, the term was rst assigned by
Muriel Bradbrook to a number of women in the late eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.189 These women, Wallace explains, lived revolu-
tionary existences without theorizing . . . and their example could be more
potent than exhortation.190 She continues:

Here is the only possible place to make sense of Greer as a feminista

feminist in the long tradition of maverick women . . . Just as Lady Stanhope
was despotic, the Ladies of Llangollen cross-dressed and Barbara Bodichon
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 85

cried bosh and banished devastators of the day, so is it that a maverick

like Greers idiosyncrasies are indulged, her contradictions forgiven and the
vitriolic side of her personality overlooked.191

By applying the term to her subject, Wallace suggests that both Germaine
Greer and The Female Eunuch are isolated phenomena, unrepresentative
of womens liberation.192 Greers popularity, she then goes on to argue,
was disproportionate to her signicance for feminism and originated
mainly in her manipulation of the media.193 The accountability-free
zone of celebrity tted Greers extreme individualism and her
obvious contradictions.194 The term maverick allows Wallace to cele-
brate the individuality and energy expressed in and through The Female
Eunuch, while dismissing the studys feminist relevance. In other words,
Wallace does not deny Greers libertarian politics, but the biographys
socio-historical perspective allows her to differentiate between modern
feminism and Push libertarianism.195 As a result, she can dismiss Greer
as a feminist role model.
By introducing an additional interpretative perspective, Wallace never-
theless complicates her psychological insights into Greers personality.
The overlap of interpretations causes inconsistencies in the biographical
plot, which point to the political uses that Wallace makes of realist bio-
graphy. The biography presents several examples of interpretative incon-
sistencies. For example, when Wallace explains the popularity of
The Female Eunuch, she refers to the limited impact most second-wave
feminists had on American womens lives. At the level of activism . . . the
movement was still relatively small, she points out, and many ordinary
women lacked a sense of commonality with the women in the move-
ments vanguard.196 Others yet, she continues, found feminist polemics
too remote to move them.197 A few pages later in the biography, how-
ever, she accuses Greer of disloyalty for expressing similar opinions in The
Female Eunuch. The similarities between Wallaces description of the
American womens movement and Greers account of the same movement
are striking. For instance, both authors comment dismissively on the small
number of activist women with whom all women were meant to iden-
tify.198 Nevertheless, Wallace still refers to Greers description as gratu-
itous trashing.199
Similar interpretative inconsistencies can be found elsewhere in the bio-
graphy. At one point, Wallace addresses the subject of Germaine Greers rape
experience, which occurred when Greer was still an undergraduate in
86 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

Melbourne, Australia. Wallaces analysis of 1950s Australian society recog-

nizes that the precondition for women to begin forming opinions and
analyses from their own perspective, was only beginning to fall into
place.200 She acknowledges that the 1950s was a time when a womans
sexual history was as much on trial as the alleged rapist.201 Despite these
insights, she chastises Greer for not reporting the rape at the time and for
relying on men [her male student friends] to police their own, which
amounted to banning the rapist from their social circle.202 Wallace also
expresses disapproval of what she refers to as Greers passivity in the face
of intuitively sensed danger, thereby implying that the attack was only made
possible because of Greers already developed masochism.203
An additional inconsistency in the biography concerns Greers relation-
ship with the media, which Wallace initially interprets in the context of the
American mass media and its intensive if also myopic perspective on the
womens movement. The media, she writes, created feminist leaders by
focusing mainly on individual women, but it was also quick to criticize and
campaign against these same women. Its extremely important, Kate
Millett is quoted as saying, for the media to be able to control the culture
heroes they create.204 Still, in her criticism of Greers media presence
Wallace never takes into account the likely inuence that the media has
had on Greers political messages and public persona. Instead, Greers
control over her public image is presented as a given and never questioned.
In the context of her previous analysis of the media, Wallaces conclusions
appear contradictory.205
The interpretative inconsistencies in the biography stem from the fact
that two types of explanatory framework are at work simultaneously.
Womens experiences in the 1950s and 1960s are explained in socio-
historical terms, yet Greers behavior and political opinions are interpreted
from a strictly psychological perspective. The inconsistencies in the narra-
tive suggest that social history and psychology are two distinct and totaliz-
ing interpretative systems, or what Jean-Franois Lyotard calls grand
narratives, which cannot be employed simultaneously without throwing
doubt on each other.206 On the other hand, the interpretative overlaps
point to the possibility that a double perspective on Greer might add
something new to our understanding of her person and politics.
For instance, such a perspective might explain how someone may uncon-
sciously assimilate some of societys sexist attitudes and still produce a valid
and thought-provoking feminist critique. It might also explain eventual
contradictions within such a critique. Indeed, the prevalence of realist
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 87

biographies that combine the two perspectives is probably greater than the
examples provided in this chapter suggest. Regardless, Wallace never
explores such a dual interpretative approach. Instead, her conclusions are
characterized by interpretative inconsistencies, which draw attention to
the ideological basis for her biography. What that basis is becomes clear
towards the end of the biography, when Wallace presents Greer as both a
warning and a lesson to future generations of feminists:

Even Greers dark sideher ambivalence about women, her quickness to

criticize other feminists, her unacknowledged reversals of her own pre-
viously unequivocal positionscontains valuable lessons for the third
wave . . . Avoid trashing other women; be inclusive; advance on multiple
fronts; and write and remember your history.207

The suggestions for how to be a good, third-wave feminist are indicative

of Wallaces political sympathies. Rather than conrming Germaine
Greers signicance in the history of modern feminism, she omits her
from, or at least diminishes her importance in, this history by distancing
the biography from Greers previously established recognition as second-
wave feminist. Like Hennessee, Wallace motivates this distance by refer-
ring to her subjects (sexual and non-sexual) preference for men over
women and her lack of female solidarity.
Wallaces line of reasoning is made especially clear in her chapter on
the American promotion tour for The Female Eunuch. Here, she focuses
on the infamous New York Town Hall debate in 1971, which helped to
establish Greers status in the USA as both a celebrity and a feminist.208
The panel at the debate consisted of Jill Johnson, Diana Trilling, Jacqui
Ceballos and Germaine Greer, as well as novelist Norman Mailer.
According to Ceballos, who was co-organizer of the debate, it was set
up specically with a confrontation between Greer and Mailer in
mind.209 In Wallaces version, the event instead came to illustrate
Greers hostility towards other women and her general deference toward
sexist male behavior. According to the biography, the debate conrmed
the radical feminists suspicions of Greer as collaborator.210 Rather
than confronting Norman Mailer, Greer refrained from her planned
criticism, supposedly out of pity. During the debate, Greer spoke of
men as unconsciously tyrannical.211 Men were degraded and confused
by this tyranny almost as much as the people they tyrannize over.212
88 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

Her comments, Wallace claims, revealed to the audience her dodgy

and persistent capacity for empathy with the enemy.213
Wallaces references to men as the enemy and pornography as exploi-
tative suggest a radical denition of feminism and an identication of
feminist politics with sexual politics. By contrasting Greer with other
feminists in the American womens movement, she claries the supposedly
unconscious and libertarian aspects of Greers political opinions.
Wallaces belief in sexual politics as a central aspect of the womens move-
ment reinforces these truth-claims. Sexuality, Wallace writes, was the
storm center in the movements internal tensions.214 To be or not to
be heterosexual or lesbian, and the consequences of that decision,
became an overriding focus, she argues.215 Wallaces denition of fem-
inist politics enables her to dismiss her subjects celebration of heterosexu-
ality as politically anachronistic, and to view it as a sign of Greers
reluctance to investigate the psychic wounds she dare[d] not contem-
plate in private, unrepentant.216
When Wallace thus separates Greer from the womens movement, she
bases her arguments on a particular, radical version of feminism. Yet,
alternative accounts of the second-wave movement question her conclu-
sions. In The Sisterhood, Marcia Cohens 1984 group biography of the
American womens movement, the feminist disagreement over sexual
politics is not described as a matter of sexual orientation. The real question
was, Cohen agues, whether sexual politics should form part of feminist
politics at all.217 Although radical feminists equated heterosexuality with
mens oppression of women, other feminists worried that sexual politics
would alienate the majority of American women from the movement.218
Liberal feminists, such as Betty Friedan, also expressed concern over the
anti-pornography stance of many radical feminists. Friedan claimed that it
was dangerous to introduce censorship in the guise of suppressing porno-
graphy, since it aligned the womens movement with the right wing of the
conservative agenda.219
In the context of feminist disagreements over sexual politics,
The Female Eunuch does not appear isolated or at odds with its time.
Nor does Greers study have to be understood as a call for heterosexual
hegemony. When interpreted in the context of liberal or libertarian femin-
ism, Greers clamor for womens sexual revolution can be interpreted as a
universal call for womens right to express themselves sexually.
Ideologically, the study thereby ts into a tradition of modern feminism
that dismisses the signicance of sexual politics.220 The Female Eunuch
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 89

seemingly replaces one sexual norm with another, but it can also be
understood as a reaction to the radical feminist insistence on the political
appropriateness of certain sexual practices before others.221 The positive
reader reactions to Greers study suggest that in the 1970s, sexual politics
was a legitimately contested issue for many women. Ontologically, Greers
notion of female subjectivity further establishes The Female Eunuch in the
general tradition of modern feminism. Like Friedan, her study of womens
condition is a demystication of the social and psychological practices
that supposedly limit womens self-awareness and self-actualization.
Women should be self-sufcient, she writes in The Female Eunuch.222
Like other modern feminists, Greer envisions womens liberation as the
emancipation of a fundamentally autonomous and rational (female)
subject.
For all this, the modern feminist notion of a rational and autonomous
subject is not easily applicable when it comes to Germaine Greers own
life. As in realist biography, Greers exemplary feminist subject is essen-
tially static (once she has reached perfection) and cohesive. By pointing
to the many changes in Greers political and personal life, Wallace is able to
disqualify Greer as a feminist and a role model and, simultaneously, dene
The Female Eunuch as part of the dross of second-wave feminist writing.
In this task, Wallace is aided by the fact that Greer has never presented her
life in any consistent or cohesive fashion. Instead, the challenge of
presenting a coherent life story is taken up by Wallace. Her omniscient
psychological biography gives meaning to a life that, in a modern feminist
context, might otherwise appear irrational and inauthentic. From a
modern feminist perspective, the absence of an autobiography of some
form indicates that Greer lacks self-knowledge and, consequently, fem-
inist awareness. This conclusion seems further conrmed by Greers bio-
graphical recognition, in which her many public roles and shifting
viewpoints are often presented as at odds with each other.
The feminist signicance of Greers and Friedans political writing
has been dismissed in psychological terms, but the psychological bio-
graphical approach has not gone uncontested among feminists.
To historian Carolyn Steedman, the personal is not always political.
Indeed, she views the idea as a constraint, which assumes a biogra-
phical plot where the uneventfulness of historical womens early lives
will always produce and structure what happens later within a public
arena.223 According to Steedman, the single perspective on the female
individual originates in feminist literary theory and its creation of an
90 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

isolated and individual female gure as a historical type.224 This

narrative, she continues, is reinforced by a modern psychology of
women that universalizes particular domestic struggles.225 Steedman
draws special attention to narratives that focus on womens struggle
with their fathers, which is seen to mirror and foreshadow a later, social
struggle with patriarchy. Womens dependency and failure to break
free from [patriarchy] is understood as a transhistorical factor, she
points out.226 It allows a life story to be constructed in terms of
relationships with others and the vicissitudes of those relationships,
but the myth of the isolated female subject adds little to our under-
standing of a woman whose politics has emerged from and developed
in the public arena.227 When Steedmans criticism of the isolated and
individual female gure as a historical type is applied to Hennessees
and Wallaces respective biographies, attention is drawn to the way they
portray their subjects precisely as isolated and individual women
under the unconscious inuence of their fathers. In place of psychol-
ogy, Steedman prefers a socio-historical approach, which explores the
inuence of patriarchal social structures on a womans life.228 In other
words, she does not reject all realist biography but, perhaps inadver-
tently, her suggestions still point to a biographical approach beyond the
realist genre.
Indirectly, Steedmans comments on the isolated female subject seem
to support Liz Stanleys claim that realist biography will always reduce the
complexity of the human subject to one omnipotent view.229 Similar
criticism is expressed in slightly different terms by Elizabeth A. Kaiden,
in her review of Friedans biographies. Dont try to t a size 10 into a size
4, Kaiden warns future biographers, although it remains unclear whether
by size four she refers to realist biography or modern feminism.230
Kaidens review causes the reader to ask whether the life and politics of
someone like Germaine Greer could be portrayed more sympathetically
outside the academic and social institutions of modern feminism. Indeed,
Wallaces discussion of the media suggests that the phenomenon
Germaine Greer might benet from being interpreted in the context
of, for example, celebrity feminism, to use Jennifer Wickes term.231
In the celebrity zone, Wicke explains, feminism is negotiated within and
dissimulated through a medium that functions according to its own laws
and structures.232 In other words, it does not conform to modern notions
of progress, rationality and coherence. From such a celebrity perspec-
tive, Greers contradictory and controversial life and politics may
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 91

indeed be viewed as rational expressions of an (albeit highly ambiguous)

form of feminism.
The biographers discussed in this chapter have chosen to approach their
subjects from perspectives other than celebrity feminism. They are
taking part in the 1990s ideological battle over feminism through objec-
tive realist biographies, thereby adhering to ideas about subjectivity that
are consistent with Enlightenment notions about the self-realizing and
self-knowing subject. These Enlightenment notions roughly corre-
spond with the modern feminist positions established in the biographies.
As this chapter makes clear, the three biographers respective perspectives
have an ideological dimension, but there are also rhetorical advantages to
the realist form for a biographer who wishes to challenge his or her
subjects politics. According to Stanley, the genres power lies to a great
degree in its seduction of the reader:

The [realist] narrative form is highly seductive, for all the time it engages a
go on, what happened next? response. Narrative form embeds certain
conventions, marking points, that readers expect and look for, and the who,
what, when, where and why of a narrative are among them as (typically if not
invariably) a linear chronological structure.233

Realist biographys popularity is suggestive of the desire that most readers

appear to have for well-drawn characters and the satisfaction they seem to
receive from a coherent story and complete narrative closure.234 Most
likely, the combination of certain truth-producing practices, which
give the biography a scientic and objective appearance, and the
what happened next? effect, encourages readers to overlook the gaps
and inconsistencies in the texts and to view the biographies as objective
accounts, supposedly told without bias.235
What the comparisons in this chapter reveal is that the objective
perspective in each of the three biographies is, of course, not a position
outside ideology but reects a highly ideological and politically informed
viewpoint. By writing about subjects whose political perspective is distinct
from their own, the three biographers illustrate what many modern femin-
ists see as potential drawbacks to a realist approach to writing womens lives,
namely, the biographers ability to silence or distort a womans political
agency, her viewpoints and experiences, under the guise of objectivity.
The feminist criticism of supposedly gender-neutral biography (such as
Horowitzs) and Steedmans critique of psychological feminist biography
92 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

(such as Hennessees and Wallaces) both belong to this category of

criticism. In the next chapter, I will look more closely at two biographies
whose subject, Gloria Steinem, is presented as in some way exemplary
rather than psychologically broken or otherwise constrained. In a
modern feminist context, the exemplary subject translates into a sup-
posedly self-actualizing and self-knowing female subject, who is a
free agent of action and meaning. Such a subject places particular
demands on modern biographers, who must establish their truth-claims
in ways that respect the integrity of their subject and, when possible,
her own life story. To solve this dilemma, Steinems biographers
approach auto/biography as both the reconstruction and the con-
struction of a life. In the process, they end up relying on and, simulta-
neously, departing from realist biographys supposedly straightforward
referentiality and objectivity claims.

NOTES
1. Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds its Past: Placing Women in History, in
Feminisms: A Reader, ed. Maggie Humm (Hemel Hempstead,
Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), 327.
2. Camille Paglia, Back to the Barricades, New York Times Book Review, May 9,
1999, 19.
3. Seyla Benhabib, From Identity Politics to Social Feminism: A Plea for the
Nineties, in Radical Democracy: Identity, Citizenship and the State, ed.
David Trend (New York: Routledge, 1996), 29.
4. Camille Paglia, Crying Wolf, Salon.com, February 7, 2001, http://www.
salon.com/2001/02/07/inaug/. Other feminists, such as Susan Faludi,
have referred to the feminist identity crisis as a myth. This myth proposes the
death of feminism, that is, the loss of feminisms meaning after all its political
demands have supposedly been fullled. Faludi views this myth as part of a
feminist backlash, created by the male establishment to undermine the
future of organized feminism. The backlashs main message is that [w]
omen are unhappy precisely because they are free. Women are enslaved by
their own liberation (Faludis italics). Susan Faludi, Backlash: The
Undeclared War against Women (London: Vintage, 1992), 2.
5. According to Patricia Bradley, the second wave of the womens movement
[was] ranging from 1963, the year of the publication of The Feminine
Mystique, to 1975, when the initial energy of the movement was over, at
least as far as mass media was concerned. Patricia Bradley, Mass Media and
the Shaping of American Feminism, 19631975 (Jackson, MS: University
Press of Mississippi, 2003), xi.
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 93

6. Ibid., 158.
7. Rosen, The World Split Open, 216217.
8. For example, Bradley writes that in taking to the public stage to market
The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan not only contributed to the suc-
cess of the book but became famous herself (29) and the year Friedan
published The Feminine Mystique, Gloria Steinem . . . was already well on
her way to celebrity. Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American
Feminism, 143.
9. According to Bradley, none of the women discussed in this study were
leaders who could call on a body of organized supporters or levers of
power. Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism,
153. See also Rosen, The World Split Open, 208.
10. Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 160162.
11. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 11.
12. For example, see Martin Seymour Smith, The 100 Most Inuential Books
Ever Written: The History of Thought from Ancient Times to Today
(Secaucus, NJ: Citadel, 1998).
13. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1112.
14. Ibid., 15.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 22.
17. Ibid., 3032.
18. Ibid., 364.
19. Ibid., 364.
20. Ibid., 338.
21. Ibid., 103104.
22. Ibid., 364.
23. Ibid., 382. Friedan argues that the only thing that has changed so far is our
own consciousness . . . What we need is a political movement, thereby dis-
tancing herself from a radical feminist politics that emphasizes conscious-
ness-raising as a signicant political strategy. Friedan, The Feminine
Mystique, 382.
24. Ibid., 374.
25. Ibid., 384385.
26. Ibid., 384385.
27. Ibid., 385, 386.
28. Ibid., 385.
29. For instance, see Friedans obituary in the New York Times. Margalit Fox,
Betty Friedan, Who Ignited Cause in Feminine Mystique, Dies at 85,
NYTimes.com, February 5, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/
05/national/05friedan.html?ex=1296795600&en=
30472e5004a66ea3&ei=5090.
94 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

30. Betty Friedan, Life So Far: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
31. In her autobiography, Friedan states that I never intended to write a memoir of
my so-called life . . . But my hand was forced, really, when my family, friends and
colleagues, past and present, told me a few years ago that they were being
contacted for interviews for books other people were writing about my life. Well,
really (Friedans italics). Friedan, Life So Far, 13. These words allow for an
interpretation of Friedans 2000 autobiography as a form of self-defense,
where she strives to re-establish both her politics and the authority over her
life story through a full-length, coherent and chronological narrative. On
biography as self-defense, see also Nussbaum, The Autobiographical Subject,
179. See also Larsson, Sanning och konsekvens, 116.
32. Edel, Writing Lives, 174.
33. Ibid., 175.
34. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 6970. Friedan refers briey to this
moment also in her essay collection. Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life:
Writings on the Womens Movement (1976; repr. New York: Harvard
University Press, 1998), 5.
35. Horowitzs source is an earlier biography aimed at young readers. See
Justine Blau, Betty Friedan (New York: Chelsea House, 1990). Judith
Hennessee quotes Friedan from a newspaper interview. See Paul Wilkes,
Mother Superior to Womens Lib, New York Times Magazine, November
29, 1970, 140.
36. Friedan, It Changed My Life, 5. According to Friedan, the feminine mys-
tique permits, even encourages, women to ignore the question of their
identity. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 71. On her gradual feminist
awareness, she writes that above all, what drove me to consciousness was
the fact that . . . I too embraced and lived that feminine mystique.
Determined that I would nd that feminine fulllment which had eluded
my mother, I rst gave up a psychology fellowship and then even a news-
paper reporting job. Friedan, It Changed My Life, 5.
37. Friedan, Life So Far, 5960.
38. Ibid., 62. Friedan explains her reasoning further: I didnt want to be like
my mother. Nothing my father ever did, nothing he bought her, nothing we
did ever seemed to satisfy her. When she married my father, shed have to
give up her job editing the womans page of the newspaper in Peoria.
Friedan, It Changed My Life, 4.
39. In her autobiography, Friedan stresses the limited future to which girls had
to look forward: Nobody had ever really asked me, What do you want to
be when you grow up, little girl? The boys were asked that. As for the girls,
Youre a pretty little girl, youll be a mommy like your mommy. But I
wasnt a pretty little girl, and the one thing in the world I didnt want to be
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 95

was a mommy like my mommy . . . But what other kind of woman was there
to be? Most of my women professors at Smith were spinsters or mannish, as
were the one or two women doctors and lawyers in Peoria. Friedan, Life So
Far, 47.
40. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 156157.
41. Horowitz, Betty Friedan, 5.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., 249.
45. Ibid., 101.
46. Ibid., 97.
47. Ibid., 88.
48. Ibid., 89.
49. Ibid., 8990.
50. Ibid., 19.
51. Ibid., 95.
52. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 158.
53. Ericsson, Inledning, 5.
54. Ibid., 6.
55. Horowitz, Betty Friedan, 247.
56. Ibid., 1415.
57. Ibid., 14.
58. Weinberg, Telling the Untold Story, 30.
59. Horowitz, Betty Friedan, 246.
60. Horowitz, Betty Friedan, 244. See also Lori E. Rotskoff, who writes that
[Horowitz] often speculates about the hypothetical book [Friedan] was
clearly capable ofthe book she might have written . . . had she not aban-
doned her earlier radicalism . . . [Horowitz] reads The Feminine Mystique
primarily as a kind of loss. Lori E. Rotskoff, Home-Grown Radical or
Home-Bound Housewife? Rethinking the Origins of 1960s Feminism through
the Life and Work of Betty Friedan, Reviews in American History 28, no. 1
(2000): 126.
61. For examples of Horowitzs interpretation of Friedans articles from the
1940s and the 1950s, see Horowitz, Betty Friedan, 1 and 102.
62. About her publications in the 1970s, Horowitz claims that Friedans arti-
cles were a complicated mixture of what she wanted to say, what she was
willing to say in order to get published, and what those who controlled the
media allowed her to say. Horowitz, Betty Friedan, 234.
63. Friedan, Life So Far, 62.
64. Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative
(1984; repr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 5.
96 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

65. Ibid., 12.

66. Ibid., 10.
67. Ibid., 22.
68. Ibid.
69. Horowitz, Betty Friedan, 249.
70. Ibid., 233.
71. In 1974, Friedan writes: After the war, I had become very political, very
involved, consciously radical. Not about women, for heavens sake! . . . [Y]ou
certainly didnt think about being a woman, politically. It was only recently
that we had begun to think about ourselves as women. But that wasnt
politicalit was the opposite of politics. Friedan, It Changed My Life, 8.
72. See Chapter 2.
73. Horowitz, Betty Friedan, 247.
74. In line with Steve Weinberg, Horowitz argues that the task of the historian
is not only to be sympathetic but also to develop a story that makes
connections that someone who lived the life might miss or see differently.
Horowitz, Betty Friedan, 247.
75. Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography, 6163.
76. Shapiro, The Politics of Representation, 6.
77. Michael J. Shapiro argues the inevitably ideological nature of political analysis by
claiming that, although ideological production is not the goal or intention
informing the eld of social and political analysis, it is a consequence of the
practices that shape a eld, that is, of the prevailing boundary commitments that
separate one domain of knowledge/practice and its objects of attention from
another. Shapiro, The Politics of Representation, 7.
78. Ibid., xiii.
79. Ibid., 65.
80. In his biography of Friedan, Horowitz argues that a signicant result of
McCarthyism was that left-wing feminists had to go underground in the
1950s. Left-wing feminists later emerged as second-wave feminists.
Horowitz, Betty Friedan, 11.
81. Judith Shulevitz, A Mothers Day Mash Note, of Sorts, to Betty Friedan,
Slate.com, May 9, 2000, http://www.slate.com/id/1005267.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid.
84. Horowitz, Betty Friedan, 10.
85. Benita Roth, What Are Social Movements and What Is Gendered about
Womens Participation in Social Movements? A Sociological Perspective,
Women and Social Movements in The United States 16002000, http://
womhist.alexanderstreet.com/socm/intro.htm.
86. Ibid.
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 97

87. Ibid. See also Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America
19671975 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 135
137.
88. Roth, What Are Social Movements.
89. Judith Shulevitz, Outside Agitator, NYTimes.com, May 9, 1999, http://
www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/09/reviews/990509.09shulevt.html.
90. Shulevitz, Outside Agitator.
91. Hennessee, Betty Friedan, xvxvi.
92. Ibid., xvi.
93. Ibid., xvixvii.
94. Richard Ellman on how psychoanalysis has shaped biography: Freuds
predominant legacy, the conviction that a secret life is going on within us
that is only partly under our control, focuses biographical inquiry on the
private, unconscious, motivational drives, particularly those imprinted in
childhood, understood to shape public, conscious life. Richard Ellmann,
Freud and Literary Biography, The American Scholar 53, no. 4 (Autumn
1983/1984): 465, qt. in Parke, Biography, 25.
95. Hennessee, Betty Friedan, xvii.
96. Ibid., 113.
97. Mary Evans, Missing Persons: The Impossibility of Auto/biography (London:
Routledge, 1999), 23.
98. Ibid.
99. Hennessee, Betty Friedan, 40. Friedan describes her political commit-
ment at the time in similar terms: It was, indeed, chic for our generation
to be radical long before they dubbed it radical chic. Friedan, Life So
Far, 57.
100. Hennessee, Betty Friedan, 36.
101. Ibid.
102. Hennessee argues that Friedans male counterparts at Ivy League schools
[were treated differently.] Unlike [Friedan], they were regarded as future
leaders, the next generation that would run the country. It was that expecta-
tion, that tacit support system, that had launched them and kept them aoat,
she believed. Hennessee, Betty Friedan, 37.
103. Ibid., 35.
104. Ibid., 40.
105. Evans, Missing Persons, 139.
106. Ibid., 139.
107. David Ellis, Literary Lives: Biography and the Search for Understanding
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 30. Ellis quotes William
McKinley Runyon, Life Histories and Psychobiography: Explanations in
Theory and Method (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 58.
98 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

108. Hennessee writes about Friedans meeting with Indira Gandhi that they
got on beautifully. Hennessee, Betty Friedan, 95. She also describes
Friedans more enduring relationships: Throughout the years, people fell
in and out of favor with Betty, but the family of choice endured . . . [O]ne of
the group said: She has a strong sense of communal life and friendships that
have a history. . . . Ibid., 150.
109. Ibid., xv.
110. Hennessee describes both Friedan and Abzug as women of single-
minded purpose who convinced themselves that they and the cause are
one (ibid., 164). She acknowledges ideological differences between
Friedan and Abzug/Steinem, but only in passing: beyond their jock-
eying for position, there were ideological differences between them.
Bella and Gloria wanted the caucus to be a voice for humanist
values . . . Betty thought attention to such issues as Vietnam and welfare
would interfere with the main goal, which was electing women . . . She
was an equality feminist (ibid., 167168). On the same page, how-
ever, Hennessee then questions Friedans politics by quoting Nikki
Beare: Betty had her own agenda, and nobody knew what it was.
Hennessee, Betty Friedan, 168.
111. Heilbrun, Writing a Womans Life, 18.
112. Ibid.
113. Ibid., 21.
114. Marcus, Auto/biographical Discourses, 248.
115. Ibid. See also Casper, Constructing American Lives, 111.
116. Yet Hennessee also believes that the media had trivialized and distorted the
movement, turned power struggles into catghts and attached sexual
innuendos to serious issues. Hennessee, Betty Friedan, 159.
117. Ibid., 152153.
118. Ibid., 153154.
119. Ibid., 154.
120. Ibid.
121. Ibid., 153154, 287.
122. According to Hennessee, Carl taunted Betty with being a lesbian, an
unspeakably insulting word, then, perhaps the worst thing anyone
could call a woman (ibid., 109). She writes further that [Betty]
continued to attack [lesbians] long after the rest of the movement
had embraced them. The use of the word lesbian (as Carl had called
Betty) had always been the rst line of attack against feminists, and
Betty was far from the only woman in the movement to fear the label.
She saw secret plots, a faceless enemy (ibid., 131132).
123. Friedan, Life So Far, 232.
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 99

124. Ibid., 338378.

125. In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan asks: Does the image by
which modern American women live also leavesomething out . . . ? This
imagecreated by the womens magazines, by advertisements, televi-
sion, movies, novels, columns and books by experts on marriage and the
family, child psychology, sexual adjustment and by the popularizers of
sociology and psychoanalysisshapes womens lives today and mirror
their dreams. It may give a clue to the problem that has no name.
Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 34.
126. Horowitz, Betty Friedan, 5.
127. Parke, Biography, 26.
128. For example, see Shulevitz, Outside Agitator.
129. Edel, Writing Lives, 15.
130. Ellen Willis, No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (Middleton, CT:
Wesleyan University Press, 1992), 122.
131. Ibid., 124, 132.
132. For example, see Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for
Feminist Revolution (1970; repr. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2003).
133. Willis, No More Nice Girls, 118.
134. Here, psychoanalysis stands for a general, rather than a particular,
psychoanalytical approach. Freudian psychoanalysis, especially, has been
criticized by advocates of feminist consciousness-raising. Yet, Freudian
psychoanalysis has also been the subject of feminist revisionism: see, for
example, Karen Horney, Feminine Psychology (New York: W. W. Norton,
1973) and Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (1990; repr. New York: Routledge, 1999).
135. The belief in the therapeutic effects of listening to others life stories (espe-
cially through auto/biography) is not uniquely feminist. Casper writes that
psychological ideas have helped change the ways people read biographies,
not just the ways authors write them. He identies a more general culture
of autobiography, in which hearing the self-told stories by others . . . offer
examples in how to tell ones own life. Casper, Constructing American
Lives, 326.
136. Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, Manifesta: Young Women,
Feminism and the Future (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 19.
137. Weinberg, Telling the Untold Story, 19.
138. Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971).
139. Evans, Missing Persons 113.
140. See, for instance, Laura Miller, who writes that members of the media, who
once found Greers long legs, bawdy braggadocio and paeans to group sex
100 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

irresistible . . . are crestfallen to learn that she has recanted the doctrine of
free love and now condemns all men as brutal, lazy sperm factories incapable
of offering women emotional or sexual satisfaction. Laura Miller, Brilliant
Careers: Germaine Greer, Salon.com, June 22, 1999, accessed May 13,
2003, http://www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/06/22/greer/.
141. See Turner and Hector, Greer on Revolution Germaine on Love.
142. See Germaine Greer, White Beech: The Rainforest Years (2013; repr.
London: Bloomsbury, 2015).
143. Examples of Greers contradictory statements include those she has made
about her mother. Since the 1970s Greer has argued that she was physically
abused by her mother. Yet in 1996, Greer atly denied that [her mothers
behavior] constituted abuse at all. Wallace, Germaine Greer, 286.
144. When Wallaces biography was rst published, Greer lived mainly in the UK.
In 2001, she moved back to Australia, where she has since worked to
conserve and re-establish the rainforest on a piece of land in Queensland.
See Greer, White Beech, 2.
145. For example, Life magazine referred to Greer as the saucy feminist that
even men like after the publication of The Feminist Mystique. N.a., Saucy
Feminist that Even Men Like, Life, May 7, 1971, 3034. The epithet
became a catchphrase that is still associated with Greer. See, for instance,
Louise France, Who are you calling a feminist? Interview: Periel
Aschenbrand, The Observer, Observer Woman Section, April 9, 2006, 28;
and Laura Miller, Brilliant Careers: Germaine Greer.
146. See Greer, The Female Eunuch, 17.
147. Ibid., 365. Greer further claimed that women cannot be liberated from
their impotence by the gift of a gun, although they are as capable of ring
them as men are (ibid., 356).
148. In The Female Eunuch Greer argued that womens sexuality is both denied
and misrepresented by being identied as passivity (ibid., 17). She further
stated that we must reject femininity as meaning without libido, and there-
fore incomplete, subhuman, a cultural reduction of human possibilities, and
rely upon the indenite term female, which retains the possibility of female
libido (ibid., 79).
149. Ibid., 358.
150. Ibid., 77.
151. Ibid., 16.
152. Ibid., 327.
153. Ibid., 13.
154. Ibid., 333. In an article shortly after Friedans death, Greer once again
distanced her views on sexualitys role in the oppression of women. Unlike
Friedan, Greer did not see women as oversexualized in the 1970s, but rather
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 101

as sexually repressed: What Betty saw as sexuality, I saw as the denial and
repression of female sexuality. The Female Eunuch was conceived in reaction
to The Feminine Mystique. Germaine Greer, The Betty I Knew, The
Guardian, February 7, 2006, https://www.theguardian.com/world/
2006/feb/07/gender.bookscomment.
155. Greer, The Female Eunuch, 335. To radical feminists, Greer writes, men are
the enemy in much the same way that some crazed boy in uniform was the
enemy of another like him in most respects except the uniform. One possible
tactic is to try to get the uniforms off (ibid.).
156. In The Female Eunuch, Greer states that much lesbianism . . . may be under-
stood as revolt against the limitations of the female role of passivity, hypoc-
risy and indirect action, as well as rejection of the brutality and
mechanicalness of male sexual passion (ibid., 330). However, Greer also
points out that the lecherous curiosity and violent insult that homosexuals
attract from mainstream culture causes too many women to conceal their
sexual orientation (ibid., 331).
157. Ibid., 346.
158. See Margaret Talbot: In 1970, The Female Eunuch made Germaine Greer
famous, and it made feminism famous, too. Every self-respecting woman on
the Left owned a copy or still owns a copy somewhere around the house,
dog-eared and coffee-stained with use, Lisa Jardine recently recalled in the
London Observer. For women born in the immediate postwar years, there
was before Greer and after Greer. Margaret Talbot, The Female
Misogynist, The New Republic, May 31, 1999, 34. Talbot quotes Lisa
Jardine, Growing Up with Greer, The Observer, March 7, 1999, http://
www.guardian.co.uk/books/1999/mar/07/society.
159. According to Wallace, The American hardback rights reportedly sold for
$30,000 and the paperback rights for the then-phenomenal sum of
$135,000. Wallace, Germaine Greer, 177.
160. Ibid., 160.
161. Ibid., x.
162. Ibid., 160, 302.
163. Ibid., ix.
164. Ibid., ix.
165. Ibid., 38.
166. Ibid., 229. Germaine Greer, Sex & Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility
(New York: Harper & Row, 1984).
167. Ibid., 262. Germaine Greer, The Change: Women, Ageing and the
Menopause (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1991).
168. Reviewers have compared Greers third book, Sex and Destiny (1984), with
The Female Eunuch (1970) and drawn attention to what they saw as a
102 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

dramatic and troubling shift in Greers perception of womens sexuality. For

example, see Carol Iannone, who writes that: Sex and Destiny contains so
many startling shifts in thought that one might expect they would be
accompanied by deep soul-searching and lengthy explanations. In fact,
they are barely acknowledged. Carol Iannone, Feminism Ad
Absurdum, Commentary Magazine (August 1984), https://www.com
mentarymagazine.com/articles/sex-and-destiny-by-germaine-greer/. See
also Rhoda Koenig, The Cradle Will Rock, New York Magazine, April
23, 1984, 9899.
169. Wallace, Germaine Greer, 213.
170. Ibid., 162, 157, 160.
171. Ibid., 163.
172. Ibid.
173. Ibid., 153, 163.
174. Ibid., 163. Wallace quotes Anna Coote and Beatrix Campbell, Sweet
Freedom, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 12.
175. According to Wallace, criticism of the 1960s (non-feminist) sexual liberation
movement was an important step in the development of womens conscious-
ness-raising. Wallace, Germaine Greer, 164.
176. Ibid., 15.
177. Ibid., 122.
178. Ibid.
179. Ibid., 79. Emotional denial, Wallace argues, was a key element of Push
culture and something that Greer cultivated in her own life (ibid., 77).
180. In Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (1989), Greer describes her search for
information about her dead father, who lied to his family about his past.
Greer does not make any overt feminist statements in the biography, nor
does she include many autobiographical details, but the obvious admiration
she expresses for a distant and uncaring father supports Wallaces interpretation
of Greer as needing to seek the approval or attention of the men around her.
Germaine Greer, Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (New York: Ballantine, 1989).
181. Wallace, Germaine Greer, 91.
182. Ibid., 34.
183. Ibid., 67. Wallace quotes John Anderson, Art and Morality, in Art and
Morality: John Anderson on Literature and Aesthetics, ed. Graham Cullum
and Kimon Lycos (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1982), 90.
184. Ibid., 107.
185. Ibid.
186. Ibid., 148.
187. Ibid.
188. Ibid., 296.
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 103

189. See Muriel Bradbrook, The James Bryce Memorial Lecture delivered in the
Wolfson Hall of Somerset College, Oxford on 6 March 1975 by Professor M. C.
Bradbrook, Litt. D. Cantab, Mistress of Girton College (Oxford: Holywell
Press, 1975), discussed in Wallace, Germaine Greer, 295.
190. Ibid., 295.
191. Ibid., 296297.
192. Ibid., 164.
193. Ibid., 284.
194. Ibid., 291, 283, 286.
195. The socio-historical perspective may also have been introduced to cover a
lack of material pertaining specically to Greers later and personal life,
a lack that Wallace acknowledges already in the introduction to the biogra-
phy: Biographies which followespecially those written, as she would
prefer, after her deathwill obviously provide more detail on her years in
Britain (ibid., xi).
196. Ibid., 157.
197. Ibid.
198. Ibid., 163.
199. Ibid.
200. Ibid., 79.
201. Ibid., 44.
202. Ibid.
203. Ibid., 43.
204. Ibid., 195.
205. The result is a biography to which Wallaces own criticism of Greer could
apply: a biography where philosophical ights of fancy [are] at odds with
statements . . . made elsewhere, sometimes even within the same work; in
other words, an inconsistent realist biography (ibid., 191).
206. Jean-Franois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report of Knowledge,
trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (1979; repr. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1984), 15.
207. Wallace, Germaine Greer, 284.
208. Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism 138139.
209. Town Bloody Hall, dir. Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker, April 3, 1979
(New York: Pennebaker Hegedus Films, USA), DVD.
210. Wallace, Germaine Greer, 188.
211. Ibid., 189.
212. Ibid.
213. Ibid., 188, 201.
214. Ibid., 197.
215. Ibid.
104 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

216. Ibid., 302.

217. Cohen, The Sisterhood, 249.
218. Ibid.
219. Friedan, It Changed My Life, 203211.
220. Greers insistence on sexual freedom also anticipates so-called third-wave
feminists, who encouraged women to explore sexuality in whatever ways
they felt comfortable. See, for example, Naomi Wolf, Promiscuities: The
Secret Struggle for Womanhood (New York: Ballantine, 1997).
221. In a 1993 foreword to the book, Greer insists that The Female Eunuch is
about womens right to sexual expression [but also] the right to reject
penetration by the male member, the right to safe sex, the right to chastity.
Greer, The Female Eunuch, 10.
222. Ibid., 21.
223. Steedman, La Theorie qui nen est pas une, 39, 43.
224. Ibid., 38.
225. Ibid., 44.
226. Ibid.
227. Ibid. According to some critics, a strict feminist psychological approach
further disregards the possible legal and political effects of patriarchal society
on womens lives. The ability to explore ones identity can be seen as a
privilege, which offers few practical solutions to end womens poverty or
protect women against domestic violence. For example, see Naomi Rockler-
Gladen, Third Wave Feminism: Personal Empowerment Dominates This
Personal Philosophy, feminism.suite101.com, May 3, 2007, http://femin
ism.suite101.com/article.cfm/third_wave_feminism.
228. Steedman, La Theorie qui nen est pas une, 34.
229. Stanley refers to realist biography as the purity of characterization
approach. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 11.
230. Elizabeth A. Kaiden, Dont Force a Size 10 into a 4, Straits Times, July
20, 1999, 6. Kaiden continues: Dont look at one and hope to understand
thousands. Dont ask anyone to stand in for everyone. Dont give the story a
moral it never had (ibid.).
231. Jennifer Wicke, Celebrity Material: Materialist Feminism and the Culture
of Celebrity, in Feminism, the Public and the Private, ed. Joan B. Landes
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 385408. Jennifer Wicke empha-
sizes the dizzy indeterminacy of celebrity feminism, yet categorizes it
broadly as celebrity pronouncements made by and about women with
high visibility in various media (ibid., 389, 386). The celebrity zone, she
argues, is a powerful political site that does not produce role models or
exemplary feminists (ibid., 390). Instead, Wicke argues, it is a space for
registering and refracting the current material conditions under which fem-
inism is partly practiced (ibid.). Nor should the celebrity zone be dismissed
 NEGOTIATING THE TRADITIONFEMINIST REALIST BIOGRAPHY 105

as empty imagery, she continues, since there are no authentic images to

compare with supposedly false ones (ibid., 397). As such, the zone pro-
mises new perspectives on Greer, whose life seems to gain meaning
largely in and through popular mass media, such as reports about her
kidnapping by a female student in April 2003 and her participation in
the reality-television show Celebrity Big Brother in 2005.
232. Ibid., 390.
233. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 120121.
234. Brooks, Reading for the Plot, 34.
235. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 8.
 CHAPTER 4

Breaking New GroundFeminist

Exemplary Biography

Biography promises feminists a chance to present female role models by

telling the lives of exemplary or otherwise exceptional women.1 The
presumption behind this reasoning is that the narrative of a successful
womans life provides female readers with insights about how to transcend
womens subordinated condition in patriarchal society, insights that may
inspire and motivate women to make changes in their own lives. From a
modern feminist perspective, inspirational womens success stories
involve overcoming specic social and psychological conditions that are
said to result in womens subordination. In the two biographies that I turn
to in this chapter, the American feminist Gloria Steinem is presented as in
some way emancipated and therefore exemplary. Carolyn G. Heilbruns
biography of Steinem, The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria
Steinem, was rst published in 1995, followed two years later by Sydney
Ladensohn Sterns Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics, and Mystique. As
would be expected, the relationship between author and subject in these
biographies differs from the more openly antagonistic relationship in the
biographies of Greer and Friedan. Steinems biographies thereby provide a
new perspective on the link between biography and ideology, and exem-
plify ways in which modern feminists in the 1990s were beginning to
rethink realist biography.
A basis for womens liberation in modern feminism is the individual
womans self-knowledge and subsequent self-actualization. Modern
feminism views consciousness-raising as a crucial step towards a womans

The Author(s) 2016 107

M. Lidstrm Brock, Writing Feminist Lives, Breaking Feminist Waves,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47178-5_4
108 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

development of an authentic sense of self. In Gloria Steinems poli-

tical writing the autobiographical elements illustrate a womans road
towards self-realization and agency. In presenting Steinem as a female
role model, her biographers are therefore faced with the dilemma of
establishing their biographical truth-claims without disrespecting or
usurping their subjects life story and violating her personal integrity.
How the two biographers have responded to this dilemma, I will argue,
reveals their attitude towards Steinems expressed politics, including her
views on female subjectivity.
What Steinems two biographers share is a notion of female emancipa-
tion articulated in narrative terms. Rita Felski remarks that both feminist
literature and feminist politics organize discursive meaning around the
projected liberation of an individual or collective female subject.2
Expressed differently, both feminist literature and feminist politics rely
on inspirational liberation stories, or what Felski calls female emancipa-
tion narratives, to get their message across.3 (Female) subjectivity and
truth in modern feminist narratives take distinct forms depending on
the authors political sympathies. When Steinems two biographers present
their subject as exemplary, they are making their respective claims in
terms that correspond with already established feminist emancipation
narratives. Read as emancipation stories, the biographies ideological
dimensions emerge more clearly. Of course, the biographers description
of female emancipation in story terms means that they are simultaneously
expressing a degree of skepticism of auto/biographical referentiality.
The result is a vacillation between a view of auto/biography as both the
faithful reconstruction, and the imaginary construction, of a life.
Because the autobiographical elements in Steinems political writing can
similarly be read as story, her two biographers inevitably end up both
sympathizing with and distancing their biographies from this story.
This ambiguous attitude towards Steinems emancipation narrative results
in gaps in the biographies narrative frameworksgaps, I will show here,
that offer clues to how the two biographers are positioned in the 1990s
struggles over feminism.

EMANCIPATION NARRATIVES AND FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM

Emancipation narratives play a central role in modern feminist criticism.
By the time modern feminism was extended to the cultural domain, the
politicization of womens (life) stories was already under way, mainly
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 109

through various methods of consciousness-raising. Soon, critics made

organized efforts to establish a distinctively feminist form of literary
study.4 American feminist literary criticism in the 1970s is commonly
considered the daughter of the Womens movement, and the search
for female role models inuenced the direction taken by feminist literary
critics from the very beginning, as they stressed the signicance of a gender
perspective in literary interpretations.5 Kate Milletts pioneering study
Sexual Politics is commonly seen as the rst example of feminist literary
criticism in the Anglo-American tradition.6 Through her readings of
male authors, such as D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller, Millett argued
that the portrayal of female characters in the works of these authors was
deeply sexist. The female images in the writing she examined were com-
pared to the reality of womens lives and found to be unsatisfactory.
According to the study, the objective and authoritative male author
both exemplied and mirrored the universal sexual dominance of men
over women. Milletts reading of male authors represents an early feminist
attempt to show how womens true, or authentic, stories are absent
from literature.7 Unlike proponents of New Criticism, she read (mens)
literature in a cultural and social context. Her approach to literature came
to dominate subsequent feminist literary criticism in the USA.8
By the mid-1970s, feminist interest had shifted from images of women
in male ction to womens own writing and what was increasingly under-
stood as a separate, female literary tradition.9 New reading methods were
suggested in an attempt to unearth womens own and true stories.
In The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
identied a separate, female tradition in nineteenth-century womens c-
tion. Women authors, they argued, had to comply with prevalent, patri-
archal notions of womanhood. The two critics identied a number of
shared and recurring metaphors, images and fantasies in the texts, which
caused them to speak of a common, female impulse to struggle free from
social and literary connement.10 The alternative story that emerges,
concluded Gilbert and Gubar, is characterized by suppressed anger
and anxiety. It is a madwomans story.11
In Elaine Showalters critical works from the late 1970s, the idea that
authentic female experience was distorted or silenced in literature
returned, but was accompanied by a more positive vision of womens
ability to tell their stories. Showalter used select examples of womens
literature from 1840 to the then present to demonstrate that womens
literature had undergone a three-stage historical development. The rst of
110 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

Showalters stages was the feminine stage, a long-lasting phase of imita-

tion and internalization by women writers of a dominant (male) tradition.
The second, feminist, stage of womens writing emerged in the 1920s
and was characterized by narratives of protest and feminist advocacy.
Finally, the third and female stage was distinguished by female emanci-
pation and womens self-discovery.12 It was at this nal stage that
feminist authors and critics had now arrived, Showalter concluded in
1979.13
Showalter approached writing as a direct product of the authors con-
sciousness.14 As womens social and cultural conditions changed, she
wrote, so would the nature of female authors plots. Alternatively, new
plots would inspire women to change their conditions.15 Regardless of
how this two-way argument is presented, it suggests that one of the most
visible signs of womens liberation is the emergence of new plots in
womens writing. Showalter read new plots as attempts by women to
write themselves out of the male-dominated plot structures to commu-
nicate womens subjective truth. The idea of subjective truth assumes
both an individual and a collectively shared female identity, reconstructed
in and through womens writing. At the same time, Showalter stressed the
constructed aspects of womens writing. Because women are writing in a
male-dominated sphere, their stories are typically double-voiced, she
argued. The authentic female story often appears only indirectly, hidden
within the male plot.16
Rita Felski observes that the 1970s saw the emergence of new types of
narratives by women.17 Many of these narratives traced separation as the
essential precondition for the path to self-actualization and freedom.
The feminist emancipation narrative is essentially an optimistic genre.
It bears witness to womens self-identication as an oppressed group,
and hence [functions] as a potential challenge to existing social values.18
In this manner, female emancipation narratives transcend what Nancy
K. Miller calls two of the most pervasive plots previously available to
women. The rst is the euphoric, or marriage, plot in which the heroine
moves in her negotiation with the world of men and money from
nothing to all.19 In the second plot, which Miller refers to as dys-
phoric, the heroine dies in the ower of her youth.20 Felski identies two
dominant emancipation narratives in womens writing that move beyond
previously available plots for women. She refers to the rst narrative as the
narrative of female self-discovery and to the second as the feminist
Bildungsroman.21 Of particular interest here is Felskis identication of
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 111

the two narratives political ramications. When Gloria Steinems biogra-

phers dene their subject as a female role model, they justify their claim by
plotting Steinems life according to existing feminist emancipation narra-
tives. By comparing the biographies with the emancipation narrative
models identied by Felski, it is possible to draw sustainable conclusions
about the ideological foundations of the two biographers respective
accounts.
The rst of Felskis emancipation narratives, the narrative of female self-
discovery, deals with the protagonists development of self-conscious-
ness.22 The story typically begins where womens traditional stories break
off, namely with marriage.23 Unable to reconcile herself with her pre-
formed destiny, the female protagonists increasing sense of alienation
and lack gives way to what Felski calls a conscious afrmation of gen-
dered identity.24 The development can be dramatic; it often takes the
form of a sudden illumination or awakening.25 Felski explains that the
awakening is not so much a learning process as an unlearning, by which
the protagonist recovers what has always been present but suppressed.26
In the narrative of self-discovery, autonomy is understood as womens
most pressing need. As a result, heterosexual relationships rarely contri-
bute to the protagonists education. On the contrary, (hetero)sexual
relationships are often seen to sabotage the female protagonists sense of
self, or identity formation. Instead, the protagonist looks for conrmation
in alternative relationships, such as friendships with other women.27 These
friendships act as mirrors in which the protagonist can conrm her self-
discovery by nding her own female identity reected.28
Female community and nature are two returning motifs in the narrative
of self-discovery. As Felski describes it, the female community provides an
alternative form of intimacy, grounded in gender identication.29 In the
same vein, nature is often understood as a feminine principle that offers
the protagonist access to a mythical female identity with roots in an
edenic past.30 Another way of putting it is that the narrative of self-
discovery includes criticism of a masculine and industrialized modern
society, which is perceived as a violation of the bond between humans
and nature. The social critique signals the politics imbedded in the narra-
tive of self-discovery. The dichotomizing of true and false identities
articulates the narratives resistance to certain dominant ideological sche-
mata, while gender constitutes the main marker of subjectivity.31
As such, the politics informing the narrative of female self-discovery is
best described as radical feminism.32 For radical feminists, womens self-
112 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

knowledge forms the basis for political negotiations between the female
subject and society.33 The goal is not so much a complete rejection of
modern society as its radical reorganization.
In Felskis second type of emancipation narrative, the feminist
Bildungsroman, the protagonists internal growth and self-discovery is
followed by a moving out into the world.34 The feminist
Bildungsroman, too, typically begins after marriage, when the female
protagonist has learned to see through and dismiss the romance myth.
The protagonists transformation is psychological, Felski explains, but the
outside world further shapes and denes her sense of subjectivity, or
coherent selfhood.35 Similarly to the heroine in the narrative of female
self-discovery, the protagonist in the feminist Bildungsroman begins a
journey that eventually takes her to a female community.36 Here, the
community serves mainly as a mediating structure between the prota-
gonist and the oppressive forces of modern society. According to Felski,
the female community in the feminist Bildungsroman is often described as
a place where nonexploitative relationships grounded in common goals
and interests can develop.37 These relationships strengthen the protago-
nists group solidarity, which in turn inspires activism and resistance. In
the female Bildungsroman, the protagonists entry into the public domain
is gradual, but irreversible. To Felski, the female protagonists move into
society is an entry into historical time, into a state dened by contin-
gency and change. In contrast, life in the home is often seen as a static,
dreamlike atemporality of an existence.38 Changes in historical time are
typically painful and difcult. The pain originates, Felski explains, in the
often tragic meeting between the protagonists feminist ideals and
society.39 Despite these difculties, the feminist Bildungsroman relies on
an optimistic view of progressive emancipation.40 The protagonists
individual self-development forms part of a panoramic representation of
the broader social world.41
To Felski, the emphasis on participatory politics in the feminist
Bildungsroman corresponds with liberal feminists emphasis on
womens engagement with the public sphere. Unlike radical feminists,
liberal feminists do not question the narrative model of history as
progress.42 Rather, their politics serve to broaden and redene the
model to make room for women. The feminist Bildungsroman charts
womens entry into the spaces of modernity from which they have
been excluded.43 Reading Sterns and Heilbruns respective biogra-
phies of Steinem, I look for elements in the plots that correspond
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 113

with either of Felskis emancipation narratives. In a similar manner,

I read the autobiographical elements in Steinems political writing as a
narrative of liberation.

A BUNNYS TALE
With the possible exception of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem is the best
known contemporary feminist in the USA. Unlike Friedan and Greer,
Steinems fame did not originate in the publication of a seminal feminist
text. Instead, it emerged gradually from her freelance writing, mostly on
non-feminist topics in magazines such as Esquire and New York.44 With
the 1963 article A Bunnys Tale, an undercover expos of the work
conditions of so-called Playboy Bunnies, Steinem had her breakthrough as
a writer.45 The political focus in Steinems writing coincided with her
engagement in the struggle to improve conditions for Mexican grape
pickers in California.46 In 1969, Steinem experienced what she has
referred to as her feminist awakening.47 Soon after, the media began
referring to her as a spokesperson for, or leader of, the womens move-
ment. Three years later, Steinem co-founded the feminist magazine Ms. in
which she came to publish many of her subsequent articles.48
In the style of New Journalism, which was practiced by colleagues such
as Tom Wolfe, many of Steinems early articles were written in the rst
person. After her feminist awakening, Steinem maintained the personal
perspective in her writing. Occasionally, she also included personal anec-
dotes, which served to exemplify or emphasize the articles political con-
tent.49 Several of these anecdotes were repeated and expanded in
Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem, which appeared in 1992.
The book was marketed as a feminist self-help book but includes several
autobiographical references. In this book, Steinem outlines her most
detailed vision of womens emancipation to date. True to its subtitle,
Revolution from Within deals with the importance of self-esteem. For
women to achieve emancipation, Steinem writes, they must become con-
scious of the social and cultural practices and institutions that limit their
true potential as human beings.
The political argument made in Revolution from Within is that a
persons sense of self-worth is of central importance not just to the
individual, but to society as a whole. Patriarchal societies produce obedi-
ence by withholding core self-esteem, yet self-esteem is the basis of any
real democracy.50 Central to the book is the idea that a feminist
114 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

revolution must begin with the liberation of the authentic self. In the
book Steinem follows a set pattern; she introduces a common social
practice and demonstrates its corrosive effects on the self. This is fol-
lowed by suggestions for how to avoid the particular practice or amend its
negative consequences. Steinem begins her study by discussing the effects
of childhood on a persons sense of self-worth and continues with a
dismissal of the formal education system. Attempts are also made to clarify
what she sees as a commonly blurred distinction between romance and
love. At the end of the book, Steinem suggests spiritual practices apart
from those advocated by established churches. All three factors are
described as having an impact on a persons sense of self.
But Revolution from Within can also be read as an autobiographical
account of Steinems life.51 Stories about her life and those of others form
a substantial part of each chapter in the book. Some of these stories
function as examples, aimed to convince the reader that society system-
atically undermines womens (and many mens) self-esteem. Other stories,
especially those that deal with her personal experiences, have an inspira-
tional role in the text. They exemplify resistance to social conventions and
offer suggestions for how to achieve a sense of self-worth. As would be
expected in a book about the gaining of self-esteem, Steinem depicts many
of her early experiences in negative terms. She nevertheless makes a dis-
tinction between her own relatively happy, if unconventional, upbringing
and the childhood of people who grew up in nancially more stable and
supposedly more normal homes.
When Steinem questions the normality of more afuent and conven-
tional home environments and their ability to foster childrens core self-
esteem, she simultaneously offers a radical feminist critique of the nuclear
family as a social institution. Children in so-called normal homes, Steinem
argues, are frequently exposed to a rationed situational approval in return
for obeying, tting in, serving the parents or groups purpose, and doing
tasks that are always assigned instead of chosen.52 As a consequence, she
claims, these children tend to develop a false self to earn approval and
feel included.53 Ultimately, this behavior undermines both their sense of
self-worth and their self-understanding. A similar lesson is provided in
the chapter Romance versus Love. Here, Steinem writes about her love
affair with the real estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman. In the chapter
she argues that women fall for powerful men in the hope of achieving
some power of their own. In this respect, she claims to be different.
The men in her life, Steinem continues, have typically been outsiders
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 115

whose work she has admired and encouraged.54 The exception was
Zuckerman, who was not an outsider and with whose political opinions
Steinem strongly disagreed. To explain her involvement with him she
refers to herself as mentally and physically exhausted at the time of the
affair. The relationship developed, she explains, because she felt alienated
from her true or authentic sense of self.55
Read together, the autobiographical elements in Revolution from
Within come to resemble a narrative of female self-discovery. The narra-
tive can be summarized thus: Steinems autobiography takes the form of a
personal journey towards self-worth and a greater sense of freedom. Her
rst sense of entrapment comes from the life she shared with her mentally
ill mother.56 Steinem eventually gains her independence by going to
college, but she remains unaware of womens oppression. Her develop-
ment of a feminist consciousness in the late 1960s is triggered by the
sudden realization that she shares an abortion experience with countless
other women. After a disastrous relationship with an unsuitable man
(Zuckerman), she is nally in a position to re-interpret and re-evaluate
her past. She is looking forward to an alternative and more positive future,
in which female friendships are central to her well-being.57
Steinems biographical recognition centers on her feminism but
suggests multiple and conicting political afliations with various fem-
inist groups. She calls herself a radical feminist, while some of her
critics refer to her as a liberal feminist.58 Others, such as Castro, call
Steinem an egalitarian feminist. Castro also uses this term to
describe Friedan, thereby ignoring important ideological differences
between the two women.59 As modern feminists, Steinem and
Friedan both stress the importance of womens consciousness-raising,
but Steinem proposes a more radical reorganization of society than
Friedan. Unlike Friedan, she is highly critical of social institutions such
as marriage and the formal education system (which Friedan merely
wishes would take female students more seriously). Steinems belief in
the transformative power of self-esteem is suggestive of a radical fem-
inist critique of modern society as deeply alienating.60 Her notion of
self-esteem is based on the idea of a somehow forgotten and
authentic self that needs to reconnect with nature.61 Where
Steinems ideas differ from radical feminism is in her insistence that
this alienation affects both men and women.
The identication of Steinems political sympathies is complicated by the
fact that she has been criticized by both liberal and radical feminists.
116 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

Criticism has usually been directed towards the medias denition of her as a
feminist spokesperson.62 Ever since Steinems early media appearances in
the 1960s, the general interest in her public achievements, private life and
physical appearance has been high. Throughout the 1960s, Steinem became
an increasingly familiar face in New Yorks magazine and publishing circles.
She also caught the attention of the popular media, which typically focused
on her looks and her male partners.63 By the 1970s, Steinem was receiving
more media attention than any other American feminist at the time.64
Usually, the reports focused as much on her person as her cause. In the
mass media Steinem was often referred to in terms such as the thinking
mans Jean Shrimpton and the worlds most beautiful byline.65
Occasionally, both the media and other feminists interpreted
Steinems celebrity lifestyle as a sign of personally motivated ambition
and desires, thereby throwing doubt on her political commitment.66
In the early 1970s, the radical feminist group the Redstockings
accused Steinem of trivializing feminism.67 They also criticized the
magazine Ms. for simplifying important feminist issues.68 On her part,
Steinem has accused the media of ignoring or obscuring her feminist
message. In particular, she has questioned their preoccupation with
her looks by referring to it as a sexist practice.69 On the other hand,
the medias fascination with Steinems person provided her with the
public platform from which she could spread her message.70 In other
words, the very phenomenon that she criticized enabled her to reach
an unprecedented number of men and women.71
Perhaps because of intense media attention, Steinem has sought to
control her public image to a greater extent than either Greer or
Friedan.72 Many of the stories in Revolution from Within had previously
appeared in articles and interviews. Several were rst published as articles
in Ms. The magazine, Bradley argues, provided Steinem with a unique
opportunity to present a consistent life story that corresponded with her
political message.73 In the early 1990s, Steinem also asked Carolyn
G. Heilbrun, then English professor Emerita at Columbia University in
New York, to write her life story.74 Unlike Friedans and Greers biogra-
phers, the two biographers discussed in this chapter have strived to incor-
porate rather than usurp their subjects life story into their respective
biographies, but they have also addressed the more ambivalent images of
Steinem that have emerged in the mass media. The following section will
outline how Sydney Ladensohn Stern has sought to reconcile these aims in
her biography of Steinem.
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 117

THE EMBODIMENT OF AN EFFECTIVE STORY

When Sterns biography Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics, and
Mystique was rst published in 1997, Stern was an investigative journalist
with no publicly known previous feminist afliations, who nevertheless
expresses her interest in Steinem in both analytical and feminist terms.
Seeking to relate the narrative of Glorias life, depict the person formed
by those experiences, Stern hopes to, to the extent possible . . . examine
the nature of Gloria Steinems contribution as a historical gure.75 She
describes Steinem as extraordinarily inspiring, thereby implying that her
approach will be sympathetic.76
Sterns biographical approach to Steinem is psychological, in Edels
sense of the term. She refers to her subject as a person with outsized
abilities, but also points to what she calls Steinems enormous needs.77
As indicated in Chapter 3, a psychological approach gains in credibility
when the subject is described as contradictory.78 Another way of put-
ting it is to say that Sterns truth-claims depend on the distance that she
can maintain between the biography and Steinems own, supposedly less
insightful, version of her life. Stern establishes such a distance by referring
to the autobiographical elements in Steinems writing as ideological and
psychological constructions. The objective and neutral perspective
that Stern establishes through her psychological approach is typical of
realist biography, but it equally resembles the narrators perspective in
the feminist Bildungsroman. Emancipation is a gradual process in the
feminist Bildungsroman plot. At the outset, the female protagonist lives
in a state of navet and innocence, a state maintained through an ironic
distance between the narrator and the protagonist.79 Translated to bio-
graphy, it is the biographers objective perspective that establishes the
necessary distance from the subjects own life story. As the protagonist in
the feminist Bildungsroman gains experience and self-awareness, the
ideological discrepancy between narrator and protagonist gradually
diminishes. At the end of the story, the two perspectives have ideally
converged.80
When Stern refers to Steinems own life story as history according to
Gloria, she clearly distances the autobiographical elements in Steinems
writing from the biographys supposedly objective and therefore more
accurate version of her life.81 The psychological perspective allows
Stern to make a distinction between how she [Steinem] really is and
how she perceives her life.82 Put differently, Stern emphasizes the
118 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

authenticity of Steinems feminism and, simultaneously, denes the

story that Steinem tells about herself as a reection of unconscious needs
and desires. As would be expected, this argument depends on an inter-
pretation of her subjects childhood that differs noticeably from Steinems
own account.
For Stern, the potential disadvantages of growing up in a dysfunc-
tional household far outstrip any advantages. Especially, she stresses what
she perceives as psychological wounds inicted on Steinem as a child.
According to the biographer, Steinem wished for the male prerogatives
of acting, doing, achieving, but the unfavorable circumstances of her
childhood, notably her mentally ill mother, disrupted the unproblematic
realization of those dreams.83 The mothers mental illness forced Steinem
to seek security, identity [and] affection outside the home, but the
kindness of strangers had to be constantly earned.84 Steinems uncon-
scious emotional needs, Stern claims, made her susceptible to the demands
of both the womens movement and patriarchal society. To satisfy the
demands of all groups, Steinem had to create a particular story about
herself. It was in college, Stern continues, that Steinem rst discovered
her talent for storytelling. This talent allowed her to turn some of the
negative experience and embarrassing conditions of her life into assets.85
In other words, her storytelling aimed to fulll various ideological and
unconscious emotional desires.
Stern describes Steinems storytelling as both a social and political skill,
an unconscious primary survival tactic developed to avoid the stigma of
growing up in a dysfunctional household.86 That is, she understands the
autobiographical elements in Steinems political writing as what Showalter
calls double-voiced. The double perspective that such writing seems
to require of a reader allows Stern to argue the exemplarity of Steinems
storytelling ability while dismissing the story content. Her description of a
young Steinem as outwardly conforming while secretly rebelling in this
manner, establishes a pattern on which the rest of the biography relies.87
Stern observes that Steinems life story became increasingly political when
she became involved in the womens movement. The ideology of femin-
ism, she states, addressed perfectly Glorias own emotional and psycho-
logical makeup.88 The nal result was a seamless narrative, dominated
by the need to explain all her life choices within a particular ideological
framework.89 To Stern, the seamlessness of the narrative is explained by
the role Steinem came to play in the womens movement. Steinem became
invaluable to the movement as a personality, who could be counted on
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 119

to raise both funds and the medias interest in feminism.90 It was as (un)
ofcial role model that Steinem made her most visible and arguably
most important contribution to the movement. Steinem had gone out to
deliver a message on behalf of a cause, but somewhere along the way she
had become the message.91 Steinem became the movements (un)ofcial
face.92 She was, in Sterns words, the womens movements woman.93
As Felski explains it, the protagonists identity formation in the feminist
Bildungsroman is dialectical, the result of a complex interplay between
psychological and social forces.94 In Sterns presentation of Steinem,
identity formation depends on a similar interplay. When Stern claims
that Steinems story took on a more purposeful (conscious) meaning
as her commitment to feminism grew, it implies that her story was becom-
ing more genuine, or authentic. At the same time it suggests that
Steinems life story was still distorted, not just by her unconscious needs
and desires, but by outside feminist pressure, as well. Stern emphasizes the
irony of her subjects position in the womens movement. The funda-
mental point of the womens movement, she observes, was to move
beyond the sphere of being and into the sphere of doing, as men did.
Other famous feminists were [described by] what they did, Stern
explains. Gloria was what she was, that is, the quintessential liberated
brainy beauty.95
Making a distinction between her subjects feminist activism and her life
story enables Stern to continue to argue that Steinems commitment to
the womens movement has always been genuine. Throughout the
biography, she views Steinems grass-roots work and endless public cam-
paigning for various feminist causes as proof of her feminist commitment.
Yet no matter how hard Steinem worked, Stern points out, her identity as
a role model and symbol always seemed to eclipse her deeds.96 Even
though Steinem often wished to escape her position as a role model, Stern
continues, the womens movement pressured her to maintain the role
playing.97 For Showalter, womens authentic female experiences are
always mediated by linguistic, social and literary structures: there can be
no writing or criticism totally outside of the dominant structure.98
Showalter identies the dominant structure with the economic and
political pressures of male-dominated society.99 Stern widens this deni-
tion by including the pressure that all political groups, including feminist
groups, exert on individuals.
When Stern interprets her subjects life in the context of the 1970s
womens movement, she adds a socio-historical perspective to her
120 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

psychological interpretation of Steinem. In this manner the biography

gains further credibility as an objective historical account. Stern
identies the media as an additional inuencing force on Steinems own
life story. The storys fairytale quality attracted the media and was often
reproduced by journalists. Occasionally, however, the media saw
through Steinems story. Journalists who questioned Steinems self-
portrayal accidentally identied what Stern considers to be authentic
aspects of Steinems personality. In an article for Esquire published in
1971 Leonard Levitt described Steinem as an enigmatic femme
fatale.100 Levitt had a point, Stern writes. Steinem was ambitious. She
did use men. She did reinvent herself. Of course, Levitts article simulta-
neously illustrated the need for Steinems well-behaved image.101
Ambition and opportunism may be necessary to gain a position in the
public sphere, but they are seen as unwomanly and puzzling, even threa-
tening, by the male establishment. For this reason, Stern claims, Steinem
reacted strongly when reporters occasionally questioned her gentle, non-
threatening faade. What saved Steinems position as a feminist spokes-
person was precisely her storytelling ability, which originated in her
unconscious desire to please. To most journalists, Steinem seemed like
an archetypal heroineprettier, smarter, wittier, and thinner than the
average woman.102 Steinem also appeared to conrm other prevalent
stereotypes of the ideal woman: she rarely raised her voice; she was
photogenic; she had excellent verbal skills and she instinctively made
herself interesting.103 As a result, Stern concludes, she was given more
on-air time than other feminists.
The description of Steinems relationship with the media exemplies
and explains what Stern sees as the contradictory behavior that necessa-
rily characterizes feminists who enter the public sphere.104 In the biogra-
phy, the contrast between Steinems genuine feminist commitment and
the seamlessness of her life story exemplies the compromises Stern
believes that all women must make when they venture into society.
Although Steinem continued to work hard for the movement, she was
always aware of her importance as a role model. Stern quotes Jane
OReilly, who claims that this role sometimes made Steinem nervous
and anguished and upset. She felt tremendous responsibility for what she
said.105 As a result, Steinem always felt compelled to make all the details
t her image.106
Sterns account of Steinems position in the womens movement relies
on an interpretation of the latters life story as an ideological (and
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 121

psychologically motivated) construction. In the biography, the womens

movement occupies a position similar to the female community in the
feminist Bildungsroman. Through the feminist community, the female
protagonist gains a sense of solidarity and purpose, but the communitys
main function in the story is to mediate between individual women and
the larger society. According to the feminist Bildungsroman, it is in the
encounter with society that the protagonists feminist ideals are put to the
real test. The distance that Stern establishes towards Steinems life story
undermines the latters status as female role model, but only if one accepts
Steinems own denition of exemplarity. If, on the other hand, one
believes that female emancipation can only be achieved through womens
entry into society, Steinems exceptionally long career as a media-created
leader of the womens movement is both exemplary and exceptional.
As in the feminist Bildungsroman, Sterns version of Steinems life thereby
demonstrates the clash between individual ideals and oppressive social
forces.107 The discrepancy between Steinems behavior and her life story
comes to function as an example of how problematic and fraught with
difculties this clash often is.108
However, to stress the many difculties Steinem has encountered in her
navigation of public life is not enough transform her into a female (much
less feminist) role model. To maintain Steinems role model status, Stern
must also present an alternative account of Steinems life. Once again, the
female Bildungsroman provides clues to her biographical method.
By shifting the interpretative framework for Steinems experiences from
what Felski calls deceptive mythology (Steinems own life story) to
historical time (realist biography), Stern can offer readers an alternative
account of Steinems role in the history of modern feminism.109 In this
version, Steinems exemplarity is dened not by her life choices but by her
skills. Towards the end of the biography, Stern emphasizes Steinems
verbal skills and talent for visual communication. Moreover, she points
out that Steinem wielded great power in her role as a feminist leader,
although her feminist message was largely under the control of both the
media and the womens movement. Here, then, Sterns sympathy with
Steinem appears at its most unambiguous. Because of Steinems leadership
skills, Stern can argue that Steinem still occupies an important place in the
history of feminism.
To add weight to her argument, Stern refers to Howard Gardners
denition of leadership.110 Drawing on Gardners theories, Stern
denes the key to leadership as the creation and embodiment of
122 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

an effective story.111 Steinems own life story, Stern observes, reso-

nated with some of the cultures most powerful narratives.112 It was
her ability to turn personal dramas (her own and others) into
effective feminist morality tales that made her the most successful
leader of the womens movement.113 Gardner denes leadership as the
ability of successful leaders to communicate certain stories, but it is
signicant that he makes no mention whether the stories have to be
authentic. When Stern applies Gardners theory to Steinems life, she
can conrm Steinems status as a successful feminist leader precisely
because her political beliefs are communicated in the form of a life
story (or morality tale). Equally important, however, is that
Gardners notion of leadership leaves Stern free to reinterpret her
subjects life in an alternative political context. In realist biography,
Steinems life story (or autobiography) is by denition less truthful
than the biographers supposedly omniscient and objective
account, meaning that Sterns account gains in credibility. Yet, as will
be shown, this realist approach also results in a contradictory and
otherwise inconsistent biography.
Throughout the biography, Stern separates Steinems feminist acti-
vismincluding her storytellingfrom Steinems life story. There
was nothing inauthentic about Glorias feminism, Stern makes clear.
At certain moments in the biography, however, she muddles this else-
where upheld distinction between Steinems leadership skills and her
own life story by insisting that what Steinem wasand what she was
known as were identical, and they were who she wanted to be.114
In moments such as these, Stern suggests that Steinems feminism
(what she was) is indeed reected in her life story, as told by
Steinem herself and by the media (what she was known as).
In other words, Stern here expresses sympathy with Steinems politics
by suddenly interpreting her story as the truthful reconstruction of
her life. Such sympathy is entirely in accordance with the feminist
Bildungsroman. In this narrative, the female protagonists move into
a wider community is accompanied by her development toward
coherent selfhood, or self-awareness.115 Felski describes this develop-
ment as a dialectical and irreversible process, which culminates in the
protagonists accumulative and retrospective understanding of the
events in her life. That is, at the end of the story, the female prota-
gonist nally ends up as a free agent of action and meaning-making.
This resolution bridges the previously existing ironic distance
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 123

between the narrator and the protagonist. The convergence between

the two perspectives furthermore serves to legitimize the authors
interpretative framework.116
When Felskis Bildungsroman model is applied to a womans biogra-
phy, the exemplary subjects retrospective understanding of herself must
be understood as the truthful and accurate reconstruction of her life.
This reasoning explains Sterns vacillating denition of Steinems own
story as both a (fairytale) construction and the (exemplary) reconstruc-
tion of her life. In Sterns biography, however, the ironic distance
between the biographer and the biographical subject is never fully
bridged. In the biographys nal chapter, Stern laments that Gloria
seems unable to believe that she is good enough as a human being,
thereby suggesting that when the biography was published, Steinem was
still not fully aware of her precarious situation as a woman in male-
dominated society.117 Even in her sixties, Stern continues, Steinem
remained unable to convey an authentic version of her life in favor of
an idealized and ideological story. Because there is no convergence of
stories to legitimize (according to the feminist Bildungsroman) Sterns
denition of her subject as a female role model, she must rely on the logic
of realist biography to justify her account. Making the argument that
Steinem was incapable of presenting her own history in a straightforward,
unapologetic that-was-then, this-is-now manner, Stern implies that only
shethe biographercan present such a straightforward story.118
Similarities between the feminist Bildungsroman and Sterns biography
underline the connection that modern feminists make between a womans
emancipation and her ability to articulate the true meaning and
purpose of her life. In this context, Sterns disqualication of Steinems
life story undermines the authenticity of Steinems feminism. On the
other hand, Stern also expresses sympathy with Steinem by describing her
feminist activism as both conscious and purposeful. Of course, a too
sympathetic view of Steinems commitments would threaten Sterns
psychological interpretation of her subject as unconsciously attracted
to feminism. Ultimately, Sterns vacillation between believing and disbe-
lieving Steinems story throws doubt on the objectivity and legiti-
macy of her interpretative framework and draws attention to the
biography as an ideological construction.
The similarities between the feminist Bildungsroman and the plot in
Sterns biography are clues to the liberal feminism that informs Sterns
approach. Unfavorable comparisons in the biography between Steinem
124 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

and liberal feminist Betty Friedan conrm Sterns feminist sympathies.

The coupling of Steinem and Friedan has acquired a symbolic meaning
in contemporary culture, where the two womens public quarrels have
come to represent a disagreement between distinct modern feminist posi-
tions, as much as a ght between two individuals.119 Nonetheless, Stern
gives little recognition to Steinem as a political participant in an ideologi-
cal battle. Instead, she paraphrases Ronnie Feit, who describes Gloria
Steinem as a good consensus builder.120 In marked contrast to
Friedans biographer Judith Hennessee, Stern maintains that Steinem
was never, in Feits words, in the same league as Betty Friedan, whom
Feit describes as a big thinker with a clearer sense of political ground-
edness.121 Feit is further quoted in the biography as saying that Steinem
seemed insecure about how much she was willing to stand up and say
what she really stood for.122 The quotations suggest that Steinems
politics lacked a clearly dened ideological framework and support
Sterns interpretation of Steinems expressed politics as unconsciously
motivated.
When Stern pathologizes Steinems feminism in this manner, she
diverts attention from the emancipation narrative that emerges from the
autobiographical elements in Steinems political writing. The diverting
strategy is especially noticeable when the biography is compared directly
with Revolution from Within. In her book, Steinem denes the road to
female emancipation mainly as a matter of consciousness-raising and the
development of self-esteem, and advocates the radical reorganization of
existing social structures. Stern, on her part, does not recognize either
opinion as signicant for feminists. Instead, she refers to Revolution from
Within as a recovery-movement book with little feminist relevance.123
Indeed, she goes as far as proposing that the content of Revolution from
Within might be harmful for female readers by quoting Deirdre English,
who believes that Steinems emphasis on self-help and personal recovery
would push women back to blaming themselves instead of society.124
Recognizing that English does not question Steinems own commitment
to social change, Stern points out that English did worry about the others
Gloria would inuence.125
The result of Sterns realist biographical approach is a liberal feminist
usurpation of Steinems radical feminist life story. In the usurpation pro-
cess, Stern turns Steinem into the hero of a narrative that departs ideolo-
gically from the narrative told in and through Revolution from Within.
As modern feminists, Stern and Steinem both stress the importance of
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 125

individual womens feminist consciousness-raising. To Stern, however,

emancipation involves the female subjects complicated but necessary
entry into modern society, while Steinems theories on subjectivity form
part of a radical critique of society and its supposedly alienating effects on
the individual. In this sense, Sterns approach to her subject resembles
Daniel Horowitzs usurpation of Friedans liberal feminist life story.
Friedan and Steinem are both presented as reluctant heroes in their own
biographies, heroes that are strangely unwilling to acknowledge their
assigned political positions. Somewhat ironically, Stern criticizes the
womens movement for their appropriation of Steinem, but she never
acknowledges her own usurpation of Steinems life story. As such, her
approach resembles Norman Mailers and Arthur Millers ght over the
(literary) remains of Marilyn Monroe, where the two authors deny Marilyn
agency by silencing the nal conrmation of her own existence (in
Monroes case, her suicide).126 In a similar manner, Sterns biographical
approach silences Steinem by ignoring the radical feminist interpreta-
tion of her own life. Of course, Stern differs from Mailer and Miller in her
modern feminist denition of the biographical subject. If anything, Sterns
ambivalent attitude towards her subjects life story is suggestive of the
importance modern feminism gives to the individual womans integrity
and status as a free agent.
Modern feminisms emphasis on female agency helps to explain Sterns
vacillating attitude to Steinem. Steinem, she writes, not only articulates
the conicts of women trying to nd their way through times of enormous
social and cultural change, she embodies them.127 The risk Stern runs
when she presents Steinem in such contradictory terms is that the reader
ends up dismissing Steinem as inauthentic and hypocritical rather than
exemplary. It might be to curtail such impressions that Stern, in addi-
tion to questioning Steinems seamless life story, simultaneously stresses
her authenticity as a feminist activist and occasionally extends this praise to
the autobiographical elements in her political writing. Although the
female protagonists road towards independence is often described as
tragic in the female Bildungsroman, the story still relies on an optimistic
view of womens progressive emancipation. Indeed, it could be argued
that Sterns vacillating denition of Steinems life story as both a construc-
tion and a reconstruction is absolutely necessary from a modern feminist
perspective. Her presentation of Steinem as an example of female emanci-
pation must otherwise be interpreted as a failure precisely because
Steinem lacks a voice of her own in the text.
126 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

In a radical feminist context, especially, consciousness-raising plays a

dominant role in the female emancipation process, but Steinems lack of
voice is problematic also from a liberal feminist perspective. The realist
biographical rhetoric encourages readers to accept interpretative gaps in
the biographys narrative framework. For this reason, the genre is particu-
larly well suited for Sterns construction of Steinem. Sterns objective
author position vis--vis her subject becomes problematic only if the
autobiographical elements in Steinems feminist writing are given political
signicance. Yet only a direct comparison between the two accounts
makes the differences between the two authors respective political per-
spectives fully visible. Of course, Sterns vacillating attitude to Steinems
autobiography is in itself enough to question her biographical method.
Ultimately, Sterns approach to Steinem raises the question of who has the
authority over a womans life story. This is a question that Stern never
addresses in her biography, any more than Friedans and Greers biogra-
phers do.
What Stern does is to emphasize the central role that storytelling plays
in the modern feminist emancipation project. Her identication of
Steinem as a female role model relies a great deal on the latters supposedly
excellent storytelling abilities. Her separation of Steinems life from her
life story departs from the feminist view of womens autobiography as
an unmediated account of a life and implies instead that women need
inspirational storieshowever imaginary or untrueto envision freer,
better ways to live their lives. Stern never questions her authoritative
position in the biography, however, and she gives little validity to alter-
native versions of Steinems life. In this respect, Sterns biography differs
radically from Carolyn G. Heilbruns life of Steinem. Unlike Stern,
Heilbrun denes the realist biographers privileged position as a particular
feminist dilemma and consequently seeks to structurally dispense with her
authority over her subjects life story. Her method for doing so is to
accept Steinems version of her own life story on its own terms.

TALK ABOUT A DREAM TEAM!

In the early 1990s, Steinem approached Carolyn G. Heilbrun and asked
the latter to write her biography. At the time, Heilbrun was English
professor Emerita at Columbia University in New York.128 Her feminist
credentials were well established, mainly through the publication of several
feminist literary studies. The pairing of Heilbrun and Steinem in a
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 127

biographical project seemed so ideal from a political point of view that it

caused one of the biographys reviewers to proclaim: Talk about a dream
team!129 In the introduction to the biography, The Education of a
Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem, Heilbrun justies the project by
stressing how important it is that women remember Steinem, whom she
sees as representative of her generation.130 She refers to Steinems life as a
vital part of contemporary womens history and therefore particularly
worth remembering. Heilbruns attempt to write Steinem into history is
accompanied by an effort to present her as a female role model. She is the
epitome of female beauty and the quintessence of female revolution.131
In Writing a Womans Life, her inuential study of womens life writ-
ing, Heilbrun presents an early and inuential feminist criticism of bio-
graphy, which throws light on her later biographical practice.132
According to the study, there are four ways to write a womans life: a
woman can write autobiography; she can tell her life in what she chooses
to call ction; another person can write it; or a woman can write it in
advance of living it, unconsciously.133 In her biography of Steinem, I
would like to argue, Heilbrun presents a fth way of writing a womans
life. She approaches Steinem as a woman who has written her life, not
unconsciously, but consciously, and in advance.
Like Showalter, Heilbrun believes that womens lives have had a parti-
cularly vulnerable relation to the cultures notion of plausibility.134
Historically, women have been deprived of their stories, either because
women have not told the truth or because their stories have not been
told at all. It was only in the 1970s, Heilbrun writes, that women realized
that certain narratives had been controlling their lives. By the 1970s, more
and more women were struggling between being unambiguously a
woman (that is, dening themselves in relation to a man) and their
palpable desire . . . to be something else.135 Yet, women who wished to
expand the perception of what they could be found that they were
entering a discussion that, in the academy and the media, did not
exist. 136Writing a Womans Life and the biography of Steinem can be
understood as attempts to initiate such a discussion. In both works,
Heilbrun explores a genre that she believes has been neglected by femin-
ists. Biographies of women, if they have been written at all, she argues,
have been written under the constraints of acceptable discussion.137
When the subject has been a woman who did not conform to the stereo-
types, she has been presented as atypical and consequently not a good
example to other women. The genre, Heilbrun continues, has made
128 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

certain facts [about women] unthinkable.138 Nevertheless, precisely

because biography denes the range of plausible interpretations it is
also powerful.
To Heilbrun, biography is a possible means by which feminists can
present women readers with new, more authentic stories of
womens lives. But she also quotes Roland Barthes, who calls biogra-
phy a novel that dare not speak its name.139 That is, she denes
biography as a construction, rather than the supposedly straightfor-
ward reconstruction, of a life. In particular, she warns women of the
danger in the writing of every biography as she believes that it will
always result in a counterfeit integration of the subject.140 Her
skepticism of biographical claims of objectivity sets Heilbrun apart
from the biographers discussed so far in this book. Her identication
of what she sees as biographys authentication dilemma suggests
the need for a departure from the realist biographical form, a depar-
ture that Heilbrun describes in strictly methodological terms.
In line with Showalter, Heilbrun dismisses theoretically explicit
attempts at writing womens lives.141 Theoretical attempts, she
believes, risk adding another, unnecessary framework of interpretation
to womens authentic stories. Womens stories are already threa-
tened by social processes and the patriarchal theorizing in mainstream
academic culture. Instead, Heilbrun advocates a biographical
approach that originates in the subjects own version of her life.
The result is a supposedly non-ideological biography, based on sub-
jective truth. Although she views all life stories as counterfeit, she
also believes that some stories are more authentic, or true, and
therefore more necessary than others. If readers always choose among
counterfeit accounts, perhaps in choosing the lives we lead, we do
the same, she suggests in Writing a Womans Life: what matters is
that lives do not serve as models; only stories do that.142 But it is a
hard thing, she acknowledges, to make up [new] stories to live
by.143 In my subsequent reading of her biography I hope to make
clear that Heilbrun views Steinems own life story as one of those rare
and new emancipatory stories.
In the biographys rst chapter, Heilbrun draws attention to the
constructed aspects of biography. Steinems childhood poses a num-
ber of questions for Heilbrun, which she previously articulated in
Writing a Womans Life:
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 129

There still exists little organized sense of what a womans biogra-

phy . . . should look like. Where should it begin? With her birth, and the
disappointment, or reason for no disappointment, that she was not a boy?
Do we then slide her into the Freudian family romance, the Oedipal con-
guration; if not, how do we view the childhood?144

With these questions, Heilbrun introduces the idea that childhood will be
told differently depending on the biographers particular interpretative per-
spective, which undermines the very notion of objective biography. It is a
mistrust of all objective truth-claims that causes Heilbrun to base her
biographical claims on the notion of subjective truth. To understand what
she means by this term, one must look at what she has to say about Steinem.
Heilbruns method for establishing Steinems exceptionality is to stress the
authenticity of Steinems own account of her life. The method resembles
the process of consciousness-raising in groups.145 In consciousness-raising
groups, the authenticity of a womans story is established by its resemblance
to previously told stories. At the same time, the new account further conrms
already existing accounts. Applied to biography, this line of reasoning means it
is the level of correspondence between Steinems and Heilbruns respective
versions of the life that serves to authenticate both versions.
Before comparing the two accounts, Heilbruns version of Steinems
life must be looked at more closely. Heilbrun presents Steinem as an
exceptional woman who has not only imagined but also lived an
authentic life. A crucial aspect of Steinems emancipation, Heilbrun
explains, has been the development of an authentic sense of self. As
the biographys titleThe Education of a Womansuggests, Heilbrun
views this development as an education of sorts.146 What Steinem
learned more than anything was to trust [her] own and other womens
experiences over social myths.147 Heilbrun then traces the development
of Steinems feminist consciousness by pointing to the emergence of a
supposedly new and unique life story, a story that differs dramatically from
existing social myths.
In the biography, Heilbrun presents several examples of Steinems
exceptionality and exemplarity. In the rst chapter she focuses on
young Glorias relationship with her mentally unstable mother and, to a
lesser extent, her often absent father. In the Steinem family, Heilbrun
argues, the roles of mother and daughter were reversed. Because of her
mothers mental illness, Steinem became her mothers mother and took
130 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

over the responsibility of the household.148 By asking how this arrange-

ment produced a successful personality like Steinem, Heilbrun rst
introduces to the reader the idea of her subject as a female role model.
The second question in the chapter suggests a similar denition of
Steinem. The question deals with what Heilbrun calls the mother
daughter plot.149 Heilbrun denes the plot as a trap that convinces
young girls to believe they can never live up to their mothers desire for
an ideal daughter, an ideal that is merely a reection of the mothers own
ideal self.150 How, asks Heilbrun, did Gloria Steinem avoid getting
caught in this trap? Read together, the two questions suggest that
Steinem is a woman who has successfully escaped the effects of traditional
social institutions and their accompanying myths. Referring as they do
to familiar plots, Heilbruns questions are further indications that
Heilbrun views Steinems life primarily as a story.
According to Heilbrun, Steinems life choices originated in her
unorthodox upbringing. This upbringing contained the seeds of the
exceptional woman that Steinem later became.151 In the biography,
Steinems childhood is characterized by a pronounced absence of tradi-
tional family structures and relationships, which proves to be central to her
future position as female role model. Of signicance here is that
Heilbruns description of Steinems family and its impact on her life
corresponds with Steinems own description of her childhood in
Revolution from Within. Like Steinem, Heilbrun expresses a highly critical
view of the so-called nuclear family:

In the 1980s much began to be heard of dysfunctional families, families

entrapped by alcoholism or sexual abuse or battering. But what, in fact, is a
functional family? . . . A functional family . . . is one in which the children
are believed and feel, as children, wanted. By this denition, Gloria
Steinems familyhowever distant from the ideal of the nuclear family
incessantly promulgated by movies, advertisers, and the politically conserva-
tiveseems to have served her well . . . What we can do, but probably will
not do, is learn that the nuclear family, functioning in the proper way,
may well be designed to cause the maximum amount of misery to the most
people, not the less so because each generation, never doubting the model,
thinks it can do better.152

In both accounts, Steinem is presented as a healthy argument against the

idealization of the nuclear family. Both authors trace the origins of nuclear
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 131

family idealization back to the media and the politically conservative

segments in society.153 Central to their criticism is the assumption that
the nuclear family structure prevents both men and women from devel-
oping authentic selves. Because of her experiences as a young girl,
Steinem supposedly managed to avoid falling into this trap.
In her account of Steinems time at college, Heilbrun exemplies her
subjects exceptionality further by presenting Steinems life choices as viable
alternatives to more conventional behavior. The result is a narrative that
departs from more common female plots, in particular the so-called marriage
plot. At Smith College, Steinem became engaged to Blair Chotzinoff, a man
she had met in her senior year, but she broke off the engagement to travel to
India on a scholarship. Heilbrun interprets the breakup in the context of Smith
College culture, which she describes as one that put the male and his natural
requirements at the center of this world.154 Smith, she claims, brought up its
female students to meet their future husband, [who was] attending the
right mens college, or at least equip them to be the wife of such a man
when and if they met him.155 When Steinem refused Chotzinoff, she also
refused the life for which Smith prepared its students:

The whole starry-eyed, storybook romance with Blair embodies the perfect
account of true love in the 1950s, and even thereafter for many people.
He was well connected, attractive, and willing to play the role movies had
made familiar, that of the resourceful pursuer. It is in this context that
Steinems rejection of so glamorous a courtship must be seen; for almost
any other college woman of that time, it was the ideal, the hoped-for
eventuality. Steinem was close to unique in rejecting it, even if she did so
without understanding the profound impulse toward rejectionnot of Blair
but of the future that he so gallantly represented.156

At the time, Steinem did not view her refusal of marriage as a feminist act,
but rather as a strictly personal choice. Yet Heilbrun interprets the action
as pre-feminist, in the same way that she interprets Steinems early career
as a freelance journalist.157 Her interpretation of the rejection suggests
that Steinem was already living the life that she was later able to articulate
in Revolution from Within.
The refusal of Chotzinoffs marriage proposal becomes the rst in a
series of choices and actions that make up a pattern by which Heilbrun
explains Steinems life. Steinems rejection of societys expectations is
described as intuitive, but originating in an authentic (if unexamined)
132 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

understanding of womens marginal status in society. For example,

Heilbrun describes Chotzinoff as the rst in a series of men with whom
Steinem was involved, who were all likable and loving.158 According
to Heilbrun, Steinems relationships with men were always relationships
between equals and did not conict with her feminist beliefs.159 In line
with psychological realist biography, Heilbrun establishes an interpretative
pattern by which she explains her subjects supposedly contradictory
behavior. Here, the approach serves to emphasize the constancy and
rationality of Steinems life choices. Heilbrun traces the development of
Steinems feminist consciousness and interprets this development as the
emergence of a personal story, which in Steinems case took the unusual
form of a female emancipation narrative.
To Heilbrun, the appearance of Revolution from Within constitutes the
most comprehensive articulation of Steinems self-realization. The many
similarities between the biography and Steinems own life story suggest
that Heilbrun reads Revolution from Within as an authentic expression
of a woman who possesses full awareness of her own and other womens
condition in patriarchal society. For this reason, any similarity between the
autobiographical elements in Revolution from Within and Heilbruns
biography serves to authenticate the latter. That is, the authenticity
of Heilbruns truth-claims depends on their level of correspondence with
the subjective truth that Steinem (supposedly) expresses in Revolution
from Within. At the same time, the biographers presentation of Steinem
as a female role model authenticates the emancipatory vision in
Revolution from Within.
The authentication process is circular, but successful as long as
Heilbrun can t all of Steinems life choices into the framework of her
emancipation narrative. When the affair with Mort Zuckerman threatens
the political nature of Steinems choices, Heilbrun, much like Steinem,
incorporates the relationship into the emancipation narrative by referring
to it as an immature romance.160 In both the biography and Revolution
from Within, the romance functions as a contrast to Steinems more
politically correct relationships. Both Heilbrun and Steinem acknowledge
that the affair meant much at the time, yet insist that it could only take
place because of Steinems fragile mental state.161 The relationship
becomes a warning example of what happens when women fail to
uphold their authentic sense of self.
Unlike many women, Heilbrun nds, Steinem has managed to uphold
an authentic sense of self throughout most of her life. Childhood, she
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 133

argues in the biography, reveal[s] a pattern only discernible when the life
is considered as a whole.162 In Steinems life, Heilbrun identies such a
pattern, a completeness, a steadfastness of purpose, a willingness to
undertake risks and to work for chosen goals and a rmness in maintaining
her principles.163 This steadfastness is what makes Steinem both
exemplary and exceptional.164 Heilbruns seed metaphor, used to
describe Steinems development, can be applied to her own plotting of
Steinems life as well.165 It foreshadows the biographys conclusion, which
deals with Steinems redenition of family as a chosen group consisting
of former lovers and friends, male and female. This ending resembles
Felskis narrative of self-discovery, where the female protagonist turns
her back on traditional family life in favor of life in a female community.
The similarities between Felskis emancipation narrative and Heilbruns
biography suggest that Steinems life story, as told by Heilbrun and by
herself, is unusual and therefore at constant risk of being obscured by
conventional narratives and female stereotypes. In the biography,
Heilbrun draws particular attention to the discrepancies between
Steinems life story and, supposedly, false media accounts of Steinem. In
the chapters that precede Steinems feminist awakening, Heilbrun high-
lights her subjects media savvy. Yet, she also observes that criticism from
other feminists increased as Steinem rose to fame as a feminist. The
internal criticism focused on Steinems short skirts, her long nails and
her frequent public appearances as the spokesperson for feminism.
According to Heilbrun, even feminists mistook the medias portrayal of
Steinem for the real. Partly, Heilbrun blames this criticism on the
media, which trivialized Steinems feminist message by focusing on her
good looks. Partly, she views the allegations as examples of trashing, a
word used to describe womens unfair criticism of other women.166
Heilbrun denes trashing as a personally motivated form of bullying,
a product of personal envy and disappointment.167 Many women who had
contributed greatly to the womens movement felt unappreciated and
invisible. These womens justiable anger, she argues, found an outlet in
the mainstream medias persistent yet supercial focus on Steinem as the
only spokesperson for the movement. She was the most publicized,
Heilbrun explains, and therefore the most ardently hated.168 When
Heilbrun dismisses the feminist criticism of Steinem as personally moti-
vated, she avoids discussing Steinems public appearances from a political
perspective. Instead, she denes Steinems appearance as an expression of
her emancipated position. According to Heilbrun, womens emancipation
134 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

will ultimately result in a state of androgyny, where both men and

women will be able to choose freely among attributes formerly dened
as masculine or feminine.169 In this context, Steinems calm demea-
nor, long hair and short skirts are merely expressions of her free will and
agency. Elsewhere in the biography, Heilbrun aligns with the feminist
criticism of the medias sexist treatment of women, but she does not
analyze Steinems short skirts and good looks in this political context.170
The result is a gap in the biographys interpretative framework, which
undermines the emancipatory aspects of Steinems own life story. Indeed,
the very suggestion that Steinem was in any way conforming to female
stereotypes would throw doubt on her storys authenticity and her
integrity as a free agent.
Heilbrun never criticizes Steinems choices, but her constant justica-
tion of those life choices occasionally complicates her criticism of the
media. Faced with nude photographs of Steinem in a bathtub, Heilbrun
acknowledges that the photos, which were published in People magazine,
risked contributing to the objectication of women in general and the
trivialization of feminists in particular. She acknowledges that Steinem
suffered from a degree of navet when it came to the pictures and an
inability to learn from previous experiences.171 Yet, she ultimately
defends the photographs by pointing out that the People photographer
was a woman. Modesty before women, she explains, has never been a
Steinem attribute.172 But this argument does not explain why Steinem,
who claims to shun the medias attention and resent their focus on her
appearance, suddenly decided to pose nude in a bathtub, with the knowl-
edge that the photographs would be published nationwide in a popular
magazine. In light of these photographs, Heilbruns insistence that the
mainstream media is entirely to blame for the trivialization of Steinems
feminism loses some of its persuasive power.
Indirectly, the photographs suggest that there might actually be some
truth to the medias denition of Steinem as both politically and per-
sonally ambitious, which Steinem and Heilbrun both deny. Similarly, the
claim that Steinem sacriced her political integrity for the sake of sister-
hood, that is, to please a fellow woman journalist, reduces Steinems
understanding of sisterhood to individual relationships, at the expense of
women as a group. But elsewhere in the biography, one of Steinems
contributions to the feminist movement is said to be her exceptional talent
for making women see themselves collectively and not as isolated indivi-
duals.173 The result is a discrepancy in the biographys narrative
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 135

framework. This discrepancy is a sign of the difculties Heilbrun faces as

she strives to conrm Steinems own, seamless, story in the biography.
Heilbruns consistent defense of Steinems life choices results in a
vacillating denition of auto/biography as both the reconstruction and
the construction of a life. In the chapter entitled Awakening she deals
with Steinems rise to fame as a feminist spokesperson and describes her
subjects involvement with the emerging womens movement in the USA.
As the title suggests, the chapter focuses on Steinems discovery of femin-
ism. Heilbrun quotes Steinem, who refers to her feminist awakening
during an abortion speak-out in New York in 1969 as a great blinding
lightbulb that suddenly illuminated a previously dark room.174 Felski
observes that narratives of self-discovery typically describe feminist con-
versions in expressions and metaphors that refer to sudden, illuminating
events (such as Steinems lightbulb epiphany).175 Yet, Steinems beha-
vior immediately after the abortion speak-out complicates her own
account of the experience. Having gone through an illegal abortion in
London before traveling to India on a scholarship, Steinem claims to have
identied strongly with the feminist message at the abortion speak-out.176
Two weeks later, however, she became involved in the MailerBreslin
primary election campaign. The campaign promoted newspaper columnist
Jimmy Breslin in his running for the Democratic nomination for mayor of
New York. Heilbrun describes the Breslin campaign as an extremely sex-
ist and a mostly male affair, and calls Steinems involvement astonish-
ing, especially in light of her recent feminist awakening.177
The contrast between Steinems behavior and her own narrative of
self-discovery complicates Heilbruns description of Steinem as always
fully conscious of male-dominated societys oppression of women. As a
result, the authenticity of the autobiographical elements in Steinems
political writing and her status as a female role model come into question.
At this point in the biography, Heilbruns solution is to argue the con-
structed nature of Steinems own life story by referring to that story as a
sincere, if not entirely successful, attempt by Steinem to describe her
experiences. She likewise suggests that the nal story stemmed from
Steinems lack of alternative explanatory models:

Steinem was accurate and sincere in identifying her conversion story: we all,
in transforming our lives into narrative, seek for the beginning that will get
our story properly under way. But even while we (mostly men) cherish the
(always masculine) story of how a man . . . one day walked out the door and
136 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

never came back, leaving his family to fend as best as they could, the lives of
women rarely contain such sudden moments of departure . . . The male
fantasy of abandoning an old life for a freer, more ranging experience, is,
apparently, close to ubiquitous . . . Womens stories have been learned from
male accounts. But for women, in fact, lifes changes are not so sudden, nor
so instantly freeing. Their commitments and relationshipseven those that
ought not, perhaps, to have been entered upon in the rst placecontinue
as women, likelier or not, continue to honor them.178

Here, Heilbrun reveals an ambivalent attitude towards Steinems own life

story. The ambivalence is caused by the politics behind her biographical
approach. Unable to question the authenticity of Steinems life choices,
instead Heilbrun must question the authenticity of Steinems story. The
logic behind this line of reasoning relies on Showalters denition of womens
stories as double-voiced. According to this denition, a supposedly male
narrative has suddenly come to dominate Steinems account. By referring to
the lightbulb metaphor as a male fantasy, Heilbrun draws attention away
from the fact that the metaphor originates in Steinems own account of the
events.
The result is a biography that simultaneously questions and conrms the
authenticity of Steinems own life story. In the process of vacillating
between two perspectives, Heilbrun threatens to undermine the subjective
truth on which she bases her biographical truth-claims. When this happens,
her solution is to state objective and general truths about womens nature
(for instance, the claim that women tend to honor their commitments more
than men) to justify Steinems actions. Because these truth-claims are not
supported by Steinems own story, no circular argument is established. Nor
are the claims supported by arguments or proof of an empirical nature,
because Heilbrun is not writing realist biography.
Instead, other explanations indirectly present themselves in the place of
Heilbruns truth-claims, which throw doubt on the consistency and
authenticity of Steinems behavior. Her sexual relationship with Norman
Mailer (one of the instigators behind Breslins mayoral run) at the time of the
campaign, for example, opens up the possibility that Steinems reasons for
staying on might have been more personally than politically motivated.
Heilbruns focus on Steinems many love affairs indirectly encourages such a
reading, but Mailer does not t the pattern of politically acceptable male
partners. Heilbrun mentions the affair, but does not take advantage of its
explanatory potential. One reason might be that Heilbrun nds a separation
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 137

between Steinems personal life and her political commitments undesirable,

because it does not correspond with the emancipation narrative in her and
Steinems accounts. Furthermore, such a separation would suggest that
Steinem recognized the sexist discourse in Breslins campaign and chose to
stay on with it regardless. If that was the case, then Steinem was making a
distinction between the personal and the political that contradicts the very
basis of feminist consciousness-raising. As Steinem herself is an advocate of
feminist consciousness-raising, her decision would therefore have to be
considered inauthentic. Alternatively, Steinems association with the cam-
paign was a decision made by a woman whose motives remained ambivalent
or unknown at the time, even to herself. Yet, the possibility of unconscious
inuences on Steinems behavior undermines the idea of feminist conscious-
ness-raising as a sudden and life-changing awakening. Additionally, they
imply that consciousness-raising is not enough to change womens condi-
tion for the better, since a raised consciousness apparently did not stop
Steinem from acting against her own and other womens best interest. As
expected, Heilbrun does not bring up any of these possible alternative
interpretations. The result is a gap in the biographys narrative framework,
which draws attention to the politics that inform Heilbruns account.
The correspondence between Felskis narrative of female self-discov-
ery and Steinems life story is suggestive of the radical feminism that
informs Heilbruns biography. Heilbruns denition of female subjec-
tivity offers an additional clue to the biographys ideological frame-
work. Her use of the seed metaphor to describe Steinems personal
development suggests that she sees subjectivity as the essential
core of a person, which must be allowed to grow and develop in
an autonomous and coherent manner. Ontologically, her perspective
on the female subject thereby corresponds with that of other modern
feminists. Radical feminists differ from liberal and socialist feminists,
however, by arguing that womens unconscious internalization of
female stereotypes is the most disturbing indication of the deep-
seated inuence of patriarchal ideology.179 To radical feminists, the
individual womans consciousness-raising forms a particularly impor-
tant part of her emancipation. Emancipation through consciousness-
raising is an idea that is equally central in Heilbruns biography of
Steinem. Indeed, her sympathy with Steinems own life story and
her presentation of Steinem as a female role model depend on a view
of Steinem as fully conscious of her own and other womens condition
under patriarchy.
138 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

When Heilbrun identies Steinem as fully emancipated, she shifts the

truth burden from the objective biographer to the level of correspon-
dence between the biography and the subjects own life story. Biography,
Heilbrun writes, must be understood as a two-person dialogue, in this
case between herself and Gloria Steinem.180 As already stated, the effect is
a circular authentication process that conrms the exceptionality of
both Steinems and Heilbruns respective subjects. For the conrmation
to take effect, Steinems emancipation must be assumed at the outset.
That Heilbrun makes such an assumption is supported by the fact that she
reads all of Steinems actions and life choices as expressions of an authen-
tic and developing sense of self. Unlike most other women, Heilbrun
argues, Steinems life demonstrates, as already stated, a steadfastness of
purpose and rmness in maintaining her principles.181
In Writing a Womans Life, Heilbrun acknowledges that the ability to
live according to ones feminist beliefs is a rare occurrence, because it
involves the ability to imagine a positive alternative to more common female
plots. She refers to this talent as genius, a term that she explains by
paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre. Genius is not a gift but the way one invents
in desperate situations.182 To consider genius one must, Heilbrun con-
tinues, retrace in detail the history of a self-liberation.183 Heilbrun per-
forms such a retracing in her account of Steinems life, beginning with the
life choices Steinem made as a young woman. Once Steinems self-actua-
lization has been established, all her actions can and must be positioned in
opposition to what Heilbrun sees as the patriarchal oppression of women by
sexist social conventions. In other words, any inconsistency in Steinems
behavior will throw doubt both on the authenticity of her own life story
and on Heilbruns biographical truth-claims.
Comparisons with Sartres existential biography help to elucidate
both Heilbruns biographical method and the politics behind her biogra-
phical approach. Through her biography of Steinem, Heilbrun can be said
to explore the nature of (womens) freedom. Like Sartre, she moves from
an event, action, or choice directly to its meaning, without the need to
seek corroboration by amassing evidence.184 Yet the move does not
mean, as Christina Howells points out regarding Sartres approach, that
the biographers conclusions go untested. On the contrary, in existential
biography the conclusions are tested according to their productivity as
interpretative tools.185 The biographer must always interpret an action or
event, Howells explains, as revealing of a particular choice or project, its
integration and role within the project thus uncovered is then
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 139

determined.186 In Heilbruns case, her hypotheses regarding the mean-

ing of Steinems life choices are tested against and veried by the degree
to which they conrm Steinems own, and supposedly fully conscious,
project, namely her embodiment of a female emancipatory life story.
What this means is that Steinems life choices and behavior are understood
as something more (or something else) than a matter of psychology. They
imply, as choices and actions do in Sartres biography of Baudelaire,
situation within and interaction with the world.187
The subjects interaction, however, must not be mistaken for the
tragic meeting between the subject and society, which tends to take
place in the liberal feminist Bildungsroman. According to Howells,
Sartres conception of the importance of social environment is in terms
of the subjects understanding and transformation of it.188 That is, the
social environment affects the biographical subject only to the extent that
[s]he understands it: that is, transforms it into a situation.189 The argu-
ment brings us back to the notion of Steinems genius and Sartres
denition of the term. Men [sic], he writes, have the life they
deserve.190 Sartres notion of freedom also includes the idea of the
individuals total responsibility.191 To be free, he argues, is not to get
what one wants, but to be able to choose freely, that is, to have
autonomy of choice.192
The individual womans autonomy is a central concept in the radical
feminist narrative of self-discovery. From a methodological point of view it
means that the biographer must take the well-known material that
surrounds the subject as givens.193 In Steinems case, that material
includes her own life story, which forms part of her biographical recogni-
tion. Her life story becomes the starting-point rather than the conclu-
sion to Heilbruns biography. In other words, Heilbruns biography of
Steinem does not offer new information or insights into Steinems
life, as much as it traces and thereby conrms an already existing story
about Steinem.194 In her biography of Steinem, Heilbrun discards realist
biographys socio-historical and psychological perspectives in favor of
what Howells calls existential psychoanalysis.195 Such a perspective
allows Heilbrun to interpret Steinems life story as a matter of, to borrow
Sartres words, freedom battling with destiny, and freedom gaining the
upper hand.196
By departing from the realist form, Heilbrun can be said to lift Steinem,
in Felskis terms, out of history (realist biography) into the realm of
myth (subjective truth). The shift from history to myth asks for a type
140 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

of reading that differs from that proposed by realist biography.

The circular authentication process in Heilbruns biography resembles
feminist consciousness-raising, where womens own stories are authenti-
cated in the context of previously told stories by women. Such a biogra-
phical approach demands a sympathetic reader who accepts the circular
authentication process (and is familiar with Steinems political writing).
Alternatively, it requires a reader who denes biography as authentic
through the identication of certain female experiences with which she,
too, can identify. In the latter scenario, both the biography and Steinems
own life story turn into tools by which the reader will, ideally, be able to
raise her own feminist consciousness.
Critical reactions to the biography suggest that readers are at risk of
misunderstanding Heilbruns biographical approach. As would be
expected, this has been the case especially among readers who are politi-
cally unsympathetic towards Steinem and Heilbrun.197 These readers
include liberal and socialist feminists, who do not dene female emancipa-
tion in the same terms as Heilbrun and other radical feminists. From a
liberal and socialist feminist point of view Heilbruns move from history
to myth means that Steinem loses her relevance as a female role model
and, more pertinently, as an example of womens (problematic)
negotiation with male-dominated society. These readers are unlikely to
accept the circular authentication process in the biography. Alternatively,
they might not be able to identify any process at all. A case in point is critic
Penelope Mesic, who criticizes Heilbruns dismissal of the nuclear family
for lacking an explanatory context.198 Her criticism suggests a failure to
identify the similarities between the biography and Steinems life story,
much less to understand their signicance. Instead, Mesic approaches
Heilbruns narrative as realist biography. Heilbruns occasional skepticism
towards Steinems life story does after all appear to support such a reading.
The absence of empirical proof or a psychological vocabulary in the
biography ultimately causes Mesic to dismiss the text as feminist
hagiography.199
Despite such criticism, Heilbruns vacillating attitude towards the
authenticity of her subjects own story can paradoxically be said to
strengthen Steinems role model status. From a radical feminist perspec-
tive, it is the very consistency with which Heilbrun portrays Steinems
choices that is the strongest indicator of her subjects autonomous and
emancipated state, not the story that she (Steinem) tells. The vacillation
is the result of trying to explain the troublesome discrepancy between
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 141

Steinems life story and those choices. In this respect, Heilbruns mytho-
logizing (storytelling) of Steinems life serves an important feminist
function. Her approach not only points to, but in itself exemplies, how
much inspirational storytelling is part of the modern feminist emancipa-
tion project. Read as such, her biography of Steinem encourages female
readers to develop their own emancipation stories, even if the biography
also suggests that such stories are perhaps best told by a sympathetic
(female) biographer, who can better maintain the consistency and
exemplary status of such stories than the subject herself ever could.200
Yet Heilbruns approach to Steinems life also illustrates her elsewhere
expressed suspicion of realist biography as a means to tell the story of an
exemplary womans life. Where her method differs most from the realist
biographers discussed in this book is in the dismissal of the biographers
complete authority. Instead, Heilbrun favors the female subjects right
to her own story, or more accurately, the biographers and the subjects
mutual recognition of a subjective truth, originating in the subjects own
understanding of her situation and possibilities in life. This truth-concept
presumes the existence of certain shared and authentic experiences among
women. Because Heilbruns ambivalent attitude is limited to Steinems own
story and does not question her life choices, she can present Steinems
behavior as rational and consistent, and maintain her view of Steinem as
fully emancipated, despite discrepancies between her and Steinems
accounts of events. Heilbruns understanding of the autobiographical ele-
ments in Revolution from Within thereby resembles Olneys view of the
genre, which depends on the idea of an individual as the origin, subject
and agent of autobiography. Although autobiography is always ction in
some sense, Olney argues, it is the pre-textual self and his or her self-
understanding that motivate the interest that various politically engaged
groups (including feminists) are showing in the genre.201
In 1992before Heilbrun had completed her biographySteinem pub-
lished Revolution from Within. At rst, I was a little piqued, Heilbrun
told the magazine Macleans, but it didnt last long. As I said to her,
Whose life is it anyway?202 Heilbruns answer to this question differs from
those of Stern and the other realist biographers whose work I have discussed
so far. Her suspicion of the realist biographers objective truth-claims
results in a biography that recognizes that there are several, sometimes
conicting, versions of a life. Yet, her modern feminist views on the (female)
subject also cause her to present one version as more authentic than the
others. Heilbruns answer to the question above (Whose life is it anyway?)
142 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

proposes that the exceptional and exemplary female subjects version

must, to the greatest extent possible, be given precedence in feminist
biography. On the other hand, the circular authentication process in her
biography simultaneously points towards poststructuralist biography and its
deep suspicion of all truth-claims. In the next chapter, therefore, I go on to
explore two poststructuralist biographies of Simone de Beauvoir, whose
authors express skepticism of biographical authority and the biographical
subject as pre-textually available.

NOTES
1. Rupp, Women Worthies and Womens History, 409.
2. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 127. Although Steedman argues that the
isolated and individual female gure threatens to undermine the univers-
ality of feminist historians claims, she acknowledges that the gure remains
a compelling character in the modern feminist imagination. Steedman, La
Theorie qui nen est pas une, 38.
3. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 126.
4. Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London:
Methuen, 1985), 23.
5. Castro, American Feminism, 147.
6. Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics, 24.
7. As expected, Millett did not nd any female emancipation stories in the
novels that she studied.
8. Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics, 24.
9. Ibid., 50.
10. Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, xii.
11. Ibid., 53.
12. Elaine Showalter, Toward a Feminist Poetics, in The New Feminist
Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory, ed. Elaine Showalter
(1986; repr. New York: Virago, 1996), 137139.
13. In 2009, Showalter identied a fourth stage in womens writing, by which
she refers to a situation in which the woman writer is free to dene and
express herself as an individual. Elaine Showalter, A Jury of Her Peers:
American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (London:
Virago Press, 2009), 511.
14. Showalter acknowledges the eventual inuence of the biological,
the linguistic and the psychological on womens writing, yet identies the
primary inuence as cultural. She views women as a muted group, the
boundaries of whose culture and reality overlap, but are not wholly con-
tained by the dominant (male) group (Showalters italics). It is the trace of
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 143

this non-contained part of womens culture that she seeks in womens

writing. Showalter, Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness, 259.
15. Showalter believes that one of the great advantages of the women-culture
model is that it shows how the female tradition can be a positive source of
strength and solidarity as well as a negative source of powerlessness; it can
generate its own experiences and symbols which are not simply the obverse of
the male tradition. Showalter, Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness, 265.
16. Ibid., 266.
17. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 122.
18. Ibid., 125.
19. Nancy K. Miller, The Heroines Text: Readings in the French and English
Novel, 17221782 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), xi, qt. in
Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 124.
20. Miller, The Heroines Text, xi, qt. in Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 124.
21. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 126127.
22. See also Carol Pearson and Katherine Rope, who identify a similar plot in
contemporary womens writing. Carol Pearson and Katherine Rope, The
Female Hero in American and British Literature (New York: R. R. Bowker
Company, 1981).
23. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 128.
24. Ibid., 130.
25. Ibid., 131, 143.
26. Ibid., 143.
27. Ibid., 131.
28. Ibid., 131132.
29. Ibid., 132.
30. Ibid., 127.
31. Ibid., 132.
32. Ibid., 127.
33. Ibid., 133.
34. Ibid., 135.
35. Ibid., 135, 140.
36. Ibid., 138139.
37. Ibid., 139.
38. Ibid., 136.
39. Ibid., 135.
40. Ibid., 140.
41. Ibid., 141.
42. Ibid., 127.
43. Ibid., 141.
44. Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 143; Rosen,
The World Split Open, 208209.
144 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

45. Sheelah Kolhatkar, Gloria Steinem, Observer.com, December 18, 2005,

http://observer.com/2005/12/gloria-steinem-2/. See also Bradley, Mass
Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 149.
46. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, 160.
47. Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (New York: Owl,
1995), 21; Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 152.
48. Of the twenty-eight articles in the collection Outrageous Acts and Everyday
Rebellions, twenty were rst published in Ms. magazine.
49. Bradley observes that in Steinems writing, [p]ersonal references are always
in service to a larger point. Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of
American Feminism, 162.
50. Steinem, Revolution from Within, 68, 10.
51. For example, see Sharon Doyle Driedger, The Education of a Woman: The
Life of Gloria Steinem, Macleans Toronto Ed. 109, no. 8 (February 19,
1996): 61.
52. Ibid., 66.
53. Ibid., 67.
54. Ibid., 262.
55. Ibid., 264.
56. Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, 144146.
57. Steinem, Revolution from Within, 287288.
58. See Schnall, Interview with Gloria Steinem.
59. Castro, Feminism, 54.
60. Steinem, Revolution from Within, 6668.
61. Ibid., 290291.
62. Rosen, The World Split Open, 216217.
63. In 1964, Steinems role in [the magazine Glamour] began to shift from
freelancer to subject matter. Glamour magazine was the rst to identify her
as a style icon and featured Steinems look in a six-page spread. Bradley,
Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 150.
64. Ibid., 144.
65. Reporters: Thinking Mans Shrimpton, Time.com, January 3, 1969,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,900508,00.html.
See also Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 150.
66. Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 157.
67. Redstockings also accused Steinem of being a CIA inltrator of the womens
movement. Rosen, The World Split Open, 235236.
68. Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 178179;
Rosen, The World Split Open, 215216.
69. Stern, Gloria Steinem, 425.
70. Bradley suggests that Steinems talent for shaping (possibly to the point
of trivializing) her feminist message according to the tenets of the
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 145

medium that carried it contributed to her public role as a feminist

spokesperson: Steinem came to represent the only ground on which
Americans were ready to consider feminism. Bradley, Mass Media and
the Shaping of American Feminism, 144.
71. In Cohens words, the media, with their hunger for conict and sex appeal,
had indeed created [feminist] stars. Cohen, The Sisterhood, 366.
72. Bradley argues that [Steinems] writing may seem self-revelatory, but in
fact her writing, as in her responses to interviews, has relied on a selected
number of stories from her childhood. Bradley, Mass Media and the
Shaping of American Feminism, 148.
73. Ibid., 517.
74. According to Bradley, somewhat unusually Steinem also appeared in the
book marketing [of the biography], even providing interviews on its behalf
(ibid., 157).
75. Stern, Gloria Steinem, 447.
76. Ibid., 442.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid. Bradley comes to a similar conclusion: Steinems contradictions are
writ larger than life. Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American
Feminism, 442.
79. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 136.
80. Ibid.
81. Stern, Gloria Steinem, 210.
82. Ibid., 424.
83. Ibid., 147.
84. Ibid., 4344.
85. Ibid., 61.
86. Ibid., 134.
87. Ibid., 147.
88. Ibid., 191.
89. Ibid., 233.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid., 227.
92. In My Life on the Road, published almost two decades after Sterns
biography, Steinem offers an example of how her role in the womens
movement was shaped, at least partly, by the movements demands on
her person: [In 1972,] the NWPC [National Womens Political
Caucus] had elected one spokesperson for each partys convention so
the press and other outsiders would know who to go to . . . I had asked
to not be nominated . . . but I was elected in absentia. Gloria Steinem,
My Life on the Road (New York: Random House, 2015), 151.
93. Stern, Gloria Steinem, 223.
146 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

94. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 135.

95. Stern, Gloria Steinem, 222.
96. Ibid., 223.
97. Ibid.
98. Showalter, Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness, 263.
99. Ibid.
100. Leonard Levitt, She, Esquire (October 1971), 215, qt. in Stern, Gloria
Steinem, 230.
101. According to Stern, Steinem refused to concede that she derived any ego
gratication from her role as a leader or that ambition played any part in her
renown. However, the pressure on women to deny ambition was great
and remains so. Selessness is still idealized in women. Stern, Gloria
Steinem, 234.
102. Ibid., 223.
103. Ibid., 224.
104. Ibid., 388.
105. Ibid., 227.
106. Ibid., 303.
107. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 139.
108. Ibid., 127.
109. As Felski explains further, external exploration . . . requires some recog-
nition of the contingency and uncertainty of experience; this form of
knowledge is counterposed to the deceptive mythology of romance . . . an
already written script without space for the articulation of dissent. The
heroines move into society thus functions as an entry into historical
time. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 136.
110. See Howard Gardner and Emma Laskin, Leading Minds: An Anatomy of
Leadership (New York: Basic, 1995).
111. Stern, Gloria Steinem, 228.
112. Ibid.
113. Ibid., 229.
114. Ibid.
115. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 140.
116. Ibid., 137.
117. Stern, Gloria Steinem, 444.
118. Ibid., 301302.
119. In addition to the struggles over issues, Stern writes, the power struggle
among the leaders was obvious (ibid., 240).
120. Ibid., 240.
121. Feit is also quoted as saying that Steinem was defending an ideologically
narrower viewpoint than Friedan. Stern, Gloria Steinem, 240.
122. Ibid., 240241.
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 147

123. According to Stern, Revolution from Within offered standard recovery-

movement advice and generally followed the recovery-movement format
(ibid., 384).
124. Ibid., 402.
125. Ibid., 403.
126. Epstein explains further: For Mailer treats [Monroe] as if she were Millers
property . . . as if meeting and stealing her were situational possibilities deter-
mined by menin this case, by the playwright and the writer, a phrase
[referring] . . . to writers in general, to professional identities associated with
the cultural production and distribution of literary texts, and Mailer is
unable to grant Monroes insanity . . . the status of a viable cultural product.
It is as if her insanity is, to quote a Robert Graves poem, dumb to say.
Epstein, (Post)Modern Lives, 218, 227.
127. Stern, Gloria Steinem, 388.
128. In 1992, Heilbrun left Columbia University, supposedly in protest of what
she perceived as sexual discrimination in the Universitys English depart-
ment, thereby expressing her commitment to womens rights not just in
words, but in actions. Ann Matthews, Rage in a Tenured Position, New
York Times, November 8, 1992, 47.
129. Grace Lichtenstein, Glorious Gloria: Bio Does Justice to Steinem,
Chicago Sun-Times, October 29, 1995, 15.
130. For Heilbrun, then, telling Steinems life is motivated, at least in part,
by a suspicion that second-wave feminists were already on the verge of
being forgotten: Katie Roiphe, writing as one of the younger genera-
tion of feminists in the early 1990s, found those of Steinems genera-
tion to be antiman and antisex. Steinems life indicates that this is
youth ignorant of its predecessors, whose history is just beginning to
be written. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, xx.
131. Ibid., xviii.
132. Biography studies whose authors credit Heilbrun as their inuence include
Paula Backscheider, Reections on Biography (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999); Judy Long, Telling Womens Lives: Subject/Narrator/Reader/
Text (New York: New York University Press, 1999); and Linda Wagner-
Martin, Telling Womens Lives: The New Biography (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1994).
133. Heilbrun, Writing a Womans Life, 11.
134. Ibid., 18.
135. Ibid., 21.
136. Ibid., 29.
137. Ibid., 30.
138. Ibid., 28.
139. Ibid. Heilbrun references Roland Barthes, Rponses, Tel Quel 47 (1971): 89.
148 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

140. Heilbrun, Writing a Womans Life, 50.

141. Womens lives, Heilbrun insists, must be considered in the absence of a
structure of critical or biographical commonplaces. It all needs to be invented,
or discovered, or resaid. She is suspicious of many feminist scholars who, she
believes, tend to get lost in the intellectual ramications of their disciplines and
fail to reach out to the women whose lives must be rewritten (ibid., 20).
142. Ibid., 37.
143. Ibid., 50.
144. Ibid., 27.
145. Heilbrun makes explicit reference to lie writings relationship to con-
sciousness-raising in Writing a Womans Life: Women must turn to one
another for stories; they must shape the stories of their lives and their
hopes and their unacceptable fantasies . . . Consciousness raising is the
original critical instrument that women have developed towards such
understanding, the analysis of social reality, and its critical revision.
Heilbrun, Writing a Womans Life, 4445.
146. Or perhaps Heilbrun means unlearning, to use Steinems term, as
Steinems education involves discarding existing social myths.
147. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, xxiii.
148. Ibid., 32.
149. Ibid., 40.
150. Ibid., 39.
151. Ibid., xvii.
152. Heilbrun, Writing a Womans Life, 3839.
153. Steinem, Revolution from Within, 6667.
154. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, 41.
155. Ibid., 42.
156. Ibid., 62.
157. Heilbrun calls Steinem and the artist Barbara Nessim, with whom Steinem
shared an apartment in the 1960s, feminists before that word was again
current. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, 98.
158. Ibid., 58.
159. Ibid., 112.
160. Ibid., 361; Steinem, Revolution from Within, 261262.
161. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, 362; Steinem, Revolution from
Within, 264.
162. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, xvii.
163. Ibid., 413.
164. Ibid., 403.
165. According to Nadel, metaphor [in biography] simultaneously acts as the
guiding or controlling trope of the subjects life while also embodying or
projecting the biographers conception of that life. Nadel, Biography, 158.
 BREAKING NEW GROUNDFEMINIST EXEMPLARY BIOGRAPHY 149

166. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, 294.

167. Heilbrun relies on Steinems denition of the term trashing when she
explains the term by referring to those women who, because of a basic lack
of self-esteem, cannot achieve the recognition they crave must make sure
that no other woman can have it either. Heilbrun, The Education of a
Woman, 295.
168. Ibid., 309.
169. Heilbrun, Toward a Recognition of Androgyny (New York: Harper, 1973),
x. Heilbruns denition of androgyny does not refer to a biological condi-
tion. Rather, it involves the pursuit of an ideal unlimited personality,
where human traits are not linked to biological sex (ibid., xi).
170. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, 384385.
171. Ibid., 347.
172. Ibid.
173. For example, Heilbrun mentions Steinems recognition of the necessity of
unity with African-American women and lesbians in the [womens] move-
ment (ibid., 192).
174. Ibid., 170.
175. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 143.
176. Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellion, 21.
177. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, 174175.
178. Ibid., 172174.
179. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 129.
180. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, xvii.
181. Ibid., 404.
182. The original statement appears in Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet, comdien et
martyr (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), 645. The statement is translated in
Christina Howells, Sartres Existentialist Biographies, in Mapping Lives:
The Uses of Biography, ed. Peter France and William St. Clair (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004), 274. Yet, women geniuses and their
biographers, Heilbrun continues, have not generally retraced their libera-
tion history. Usually, she argues, womens efforts have not been inter-
preted as inventions in desperate situations in the rst place. Heilbrun,
Writing a Womans Life, 44.
183. Heilbrun, Writing a Womans Life, 44. Here Heilbrun once again para-
phrases Sartre. See Sartre, Saint Genet, 645, transl. in Howells, Sartres
Existentialist Biographies, 274.
184. Howells, Sartres Existentialist Biographies, 270.
185. Ibid.
186. Ibid.
187. Jean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), in Howells, Sartres
Existentialist Biographies, 271.
150 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

188. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Ltre et le nant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), qt. in
Howells, Sartres Existentialist Biographies, 272.
189. Ibid. In this respect, Heilbruns biography of Steinem resembles Kathleen
Barrys denition of feminist-critical biography. In a feminist-critical biogra-
phy the self is knowable through its doings and actions, that is, through
intentionality. Kathleen Barry, The New Historical Synthesis: Womens
Biography, Journal of Womens History 1, no. 3 (Winter 1990): 76. When
intentionality is marked by consciousness, Barry explains further, womens
subjectivity is political (ibid., 85).
190. Sartre, Baudelaire, 18, qt. in Howells, Sartres Existentialist Biographies, 272.
191. Sartre, Ltre et le nant, 563, qt. in Howells, Sartres Existentialist
Biographies, 272.
192. Ibid.
193. Howells, Sartres Existentialist Biographies, 273.
194. Howells expresses this sentiment thus: Life does not so much explain art, as art
reveals and explains life. Howells, Sartres Existentialist Biographies, 274.
195. Ibid.
196. Sartre, Saint Genet, 645, qt. in Howells, Sartres Existentialist
Biographies, 274.
197. See, for example, Suzanne Fields, Biographer Too Dazzled to See Beyond
Steinems Halo, Washington Times, October 15, 1995, B8; Marion Winik,
Then & Now: What Could Have Been a Lively Account of a Racy Life
Comes Out More Like a Dry Tale, Sun-Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale, FL,
October 29, 1995, 8F; Katie Donovan, Feminist Enigma, Irish Times,
April 9, 1996, 9. See also Joan Mellen, Heilbruns Gloria Steinem: A Wall
of Aloofness, The Sun, Baltimore, MD, September 3, 1995, 4F and Laura
Shapiro, Saint Gloria, Newsweek USA Edition, October 2, 1995, 90.
198. Penelope Mesic, Steinems Lives: Exploring the Growth of a Celebrated
Feminist, Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1995, 3C.
199. Ibid.
200. See also Barry, who emphasizes the need for the feminist biographer to
sympathize with her female subject: Placing oneself in the situation of
the other through subjective interaction . . . takes on feminist meaning as a
woman-centered approach. Barry, The New Historical Synthesis, 78.
She continues: But it is the biographer who must be conscious of male
power sufciently to pursue its varied potential manifestations (ibid., 84).
Applied to Heilbrun, her biographical approach differs from Sartres, whose
approach does not take into account the possibility that gender might have
an (adverse) effect on the biographical subjects freedom of choice.
201. Olney, Autobiography, 13.
202. Driedger, The Education of a Woman, 61.
 CHAPTER 5

Deconstructing the LifeFeminist

Poststructuralist Biography

The inuence of postmodern and poststructuralist theories on feminism in

the 1980s and 1990s resulted in a suspicion of biography and the very value
of politicizing individual womens lives. The reason was skepticism of the
rational and coherent biographical subject and the biographer as the sole
authority of the life story. Despite such skepticism, poststructuralist feminists
have still been drawn to the genre as a method by which to test their theories
of subjectivity onas Toril Moi would have itthe concrete case.1 The
1990s saw two biographies of Simone de Beauvoir published in response to
what Jean-Franois Lyotard called the postmodern condition.2 Mois
Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman was published
in 1994. Two years later, sa Mobergs Simone och jag: Tankar kring Simone
de Beauvoir was published in Sweden. Theoretical formulations of the post-
modern condition have often been interpreted as direct attacks on biogra-
phy.3 Most of these attacks have come from critics within the elds of ideas
usually identied by the term poststructuralism. Epstein, however, argues
that certain postmodern tactics does not preclude or exclude the biogra-
phical.4 Instead, they induce us to rethink or rearticulate the theory and
practice of biography.5 Identifying how the two biographers discussed in
this chapter are rethinking and rearticulating the genre highlights the poli-
tical use they are making of Beauvoir.
While Beauvoir is commonly understood to have inuenced the foun-
ders of the second-wave movement, in the 1980s and 1990s critical voices
questioned her continued relevance for contemporary women. In their

The Author(s) 2016 151

M. Lidstrm Brock, Writing Feminist Lives, Breaking Feminist Waves,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47178-5_5
152 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

different ways Moi and Moberg are both seeking to (re)afrm her rele-
vance in and through their respective biographies. Unlike the biographies
previously analyzed in Writing Feminist Lives, those by Moi and Moberg
depart methodologically from the chronological and developing narrative
of modern biography. Central to their biographical method is the meta-
structural presentation of subjectivity and authorship as ideological con-
structions. The biographers whose work has been discussed so far never
question their own authority, or their portrayal of their subjects as unied,
coherent wholes. Even Heilbrun, who is skeptical of the realist biogra-
phers objective position, maintains a belief in the integrity and coher-
ence of the (female) biographical subject.
Like Heilbrun, the two biographers discussed in this chapter have
backgrounds as feminist critics. In the 1980s, the Norwegian critic Moi
came to academic fame through her study Sexual/Textual Politics, a
linguistic critique of modern feminist literary criticism. Mobergs femin-
ist engagement originates in the 1970s Swedish womens movement.
Most often identied as a liberal feminist, her study of Beauvoir consti-
tutes a striking departure from her earlier, strictly modern feminist
stance.6 Mois and Mobergs Scandinavian backgrounds are likely to
have inuenced their interest in revalidating Beauvoir. In Mois case,
she speaks

out of a current of socialist feminism which in Europe, or at least in Britain

and Scandinavia . . . is much more mainstream than in the U.S. . . . Since the
1960s, socialist feminism in its various forms has been the dominant trend in
British and Scandinavian feminism, both inside and outside academic
institutions.7

As will be shown, Mois (re)conrmation of Beauvoirs signicance for

contemporary feminists seems to stem from her commitment to a socialist
and materialist feminism. For reasons that will be made clear later in this
chapter, Mobergs political position is more difcult to pinpoint. In both
cases, the two biographers explicitly articulated political perspectives and
their introduction of multiple and conicting accounts of their subject
result in gaps and inconsistencies in their biographies narrative frame-
works, but these gaps do not undermine the biographers politicization of
the subject. Instead, they form deliberate parts of their poststructuralist
methodologies.
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 153

POSTSTRUCTURALIST PERSPECTIVES
The individual elds of study in which poststructuralist thinkers have
developed their ideas vary.8 Despite methodological and theoretical dif-
ferences, however, poststructuralists tend to express similar views on how
human beings understand the worldviews that similarly inform Mois
and Mobergs respective biographies. Characteristically, critics associated
with poststructuralist thought dismiss all absolute and universal truth-
claims. The lack of a universal framework by which to explain the world
is seen as a fundamental aspect of the postmodern condition.9 There is no
longer a horizon of universalization and the individual can no longer
fulll its function as the Archimedean point of departure for knowledge
about the world. All knowledge is understood to be subservient to narra-
tive knowledge.10 Central to this anti-humanist claim is the notion that
human beings can only understand themselves and others through mean-
ingful discourses.11 As Michel Foucault notably puts it, discourses are
social and political practices that systematically form the objects of which
they speak.12 Or, to reference a related poststructuralist tenet, our knowl-
edge about the world is not reected in discourse, but created by it.
The view of human knowledge as discursively constructed also
informs poststructuralist denitions of subjectivity. The poststructuralist
contestation of modern, Enlightenment notions of the subject or indivi-
dual questions the idea of the self as an autonomous and xed entity.
Instead, subjectivity is seen as a contingent and historical construction
that undergoes constant historical and social change as a result of political
practices.13 In other words, discourses provide certain subject posi-
tions with which social agents must identify. The self is merely a
conveyor of unconscious dominant ideologies, or the discursive formation
through which dominant structural forces in society articulate
themselves.14
Despite a rejection of the subject as the source of meaning, poststructur-
alist thinkers, such as Foucault and Barthes, still share a concern with how
the subject functions in, depends on and is inserted into discourse.15 The
preoccupation with how discourses work and assert their dominance articu-
lates itself among poststructuralists partly through the method of decon-
struction. As a school of thought, deconstruction has been criticized by
poststructuralists as being both ahistorical and apolitical. Yet, as a loosely
applied reading method it has been adopted by other poststructuralists to
argue the illusory aspect of universalizing modes of explanation.16 In this
154 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

sense, the method paves the way for arguments that insist on the need for
multiple critical viewpoints and an understanding of author and subject
positions as temporary and ambiguous.17 Typically, poststructuralists per-
form loosely deconstructive readings to question authority, to subvert
institutions and to reorient social values and hierarchies.
Postmodern attacks on biography suggest that the genre is incompa-
tible with a poststructuralist outlook. For structuralist Claude Lvi-
Strauss, the human sciences were a study of structures and systems, not
individuals or subjects.18 Barthes, on his part, sees auto/biography as a
violation, a misrepresentation, of the plurality and discontinuity of human
existence.19 The moment we attempt to determine the meaning of
another human being or ourselves, he argues, we limit and reduce the
very experience of what it means to exist in the world.20 According to this
argument, biographers who attempt to capture the whole human being
and wish to reveal the intimate secrets of their subjects merely re-inscribe
the doxa or the dominant, conventional discourse in society.21
Foucault, too, rejects biography as a truthful account of a life. He
questions the idea of objective knowledge about an individual and
sees the very category individual as an expression of power and a need
by the state and modern economic forces to control their subjects.22 To
Foucault, biography is ultimately a power tool. His attempts to write
history without subjects are motivated by a desire to undermine what
he sees as the humanistic myth of the autonomous individual.23

FEMINIST RE/CONSTRUCTIONS
Although he remains critical of biography, Barthes still expresses a belief in
the genres possibilities. He suggests a radical departure from the realist
narrative form to avoid the reproduction of what he sees as a dominant and
falsely universalizing discourse. His own autobiography offers a practical
example of the kind of fragmentary, self-reexive writing that he believes
offers the greatest contrast, or challenge, to the prevailing doxa.24 Epstein,
too, favors a disruption of the realist form. Through a historical analysis of
the genre, he argues that biography is a fundamentally patriarchal form.25
Yet his analysis leaves room for the potential usefulness of the genre as a
political tool against oppression. For women (and other socially and poli-
tically marginalized groups) to escape the patriarchal abduction of the
biographical subject, they must develop certain linguistic tactics in and
through their writing.26 Taking inspiration from the French feminist Luce
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 155

Irigaray, Epstein suggests disruptive mimicry as a possible tactic for

(feminist) biographers.27 When a woman occupies the space of the bio-
graphical subject, he explains, the generic frame . . . can no longer remain
indifferent to difference but must deal with and be changed by the radical
situatedness of the specic subject.28 Despite the promises disruptive
mimicrys holds, Epsteins reference to Irigaray complicates his focus on
womens situation. Her denition of womens difference includes
both social and biological elements.29 To Irigaray, womens linguistic
disruption of established discourse (in this case biography) originates in
womens biological sex, while Epsteins postmodern biography is an
attempt to escape essentialist categorization.30
Other critics provide alternatives to Epsteins feminist biography. French
feminist Julia Kristeva denes linguistic disruption in texts as feminine
rather than female.31 Although she never refers to biography directly, her
theory provides biographers with a poststructuralist and non-essentialist the-
oretical framework. In her discussion of the semiotic and the symbolic,
she refers to the former as feminine linguistic effects, which disturb the
masculine order of the symbolic (language).32 Typical disturbances include
contradictions, ambiguities and discontinuities. Although the linguistic dis-
turbance of the symbolic (text) is not associated with biological, actual
women, Kristeva still assigns them a strong revolutionary potential.33 Her
preoccupation with the semiotic aspects of language causes her to favor
experimental, avant-garde literature. When her theory is applied to biography,
it highlights the possible political signicance of Barthes and Epsteins post-
structuralist approaches to biography. But her theory also creates troubling
questions for feminist biographers: how does poststructuralist feminist bio-
graphy establish its political perspective? And without an authentic and
coherent female subject for whose liberation feminists must struggle, how is
political action dened in and through feminist biography?
Depending on their feminist perspective, critics have offered distinct
answers to these questions. In line with Kristeva, Sharon OBrien argues the
revolutionary aspects of form and suggests a number of experimental types
of feminist biography. Among them, she lists distinct narrative structures for
the subjects early and later life, disruptions in the narratives linearity and
chronology, and a biography that stretches beyond the subjects death.34
OBriens suggestions correspond with Liz Stanleys assertion that feminist
biography must depart structurally from the realist form.35 Joan Wallach Scott,
on her part, argues that feminists who write womens history should stop
focusing on womens lives entirely.36 From her postmodern perspective,
156 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

biography is unable to fulll the function of feminist criticism.37 Instead,

feminists (specically feminist historians) should concentrate on gendered
social structures and the relationship between the sexes. Feminists who wish
to write about women must deconstruct existing subjectivities to discover
their underlying political implications.38
Yet other feminist critics, such as Felski, believe that the deconstruction
of female subjectivity causes all emancipation plots to come under suspi-
cion.39 While Wallach Scott equates feminist criticism with the perfor-
mance of deconstructive readings, Felski views an identication of the
female subject with a particular discursive position as linguistic deter-
minism, which interprets all discursive language as a reinforcement of
patriarchal structures.40 She criticizes the idea that the female/feminine
can only be articulated as linguistic disruptions of the prevailing discourse
and points out that there is nothing inherently female, or for that matter
feminist, about the experimental writing that, among others, Kristeva
favors.41 On the contrary, Felski continues, Kristevas theory re-inscribes
women in a position of speechlessness outside language, theory, and the
symbolic order, denying any political power and effectivity to female
discourse.42
The two biographers discussed in this chapter agree on the political
limitations of a strictly postmodern approach to biography, but they are
also expressing suspicion against the Enlightenment notions that inform
modern biography. In the 1988 essay Feminism, Postmodernism, and
Style: Recent Feminist Criticism in the United States, Moi establishes her
feminist position and general critical methodology. Modern feminism is an
impossible position in both its liberal and radical form, she argues.43
The feminist commitment to equality for women has resulted in a struggle
to make women seem like men (liberal feminism). Yet this struggle,
she continues, is frequently legitimized by the claim that women are
already as valuable as men, a position that stresses womens difference
(radical feminism). According to this second position, women are of
equal human value in their own way. To emphasize womens difference
nevertheless comes uncomfortably close to repeating the patriarchal pre-
judices against which feminists are struggling. Although the two positions
are typically seen as separate and antagonistic, Moi insists that there is
crucially both a potential contradiction and a productive dialectical tension
between them.44 In contrast to a constraining logic of sameness and
difference, Moi positions Kristeva and her suggestion that feminism must
operate in a third space, one which deconstructs all identity, all binary
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 157

oppositions, all phallogocentric logic.45 Ultimately, Moi remains equally

critical of Kristevas position. In line with Felski she argues that in decon-
structing patriarchal metaphysics, feminists risk deconstructing the very
logic that sustains the two forms of feminism outlined above.46 But it is
this logic that informs feminism with specic political goals. Postmodern
feminists such as Alice Jardine and Jane Gallop dene textual blind spots
and self-deconstructive aspects of texts as intrinsically feminist.47 As a
consequence, Moi concludes, their criticism ends up lacking political
signicance.
In her criticism of Jardine and Gallop, Moi provides a more detailed
explanation for what she considers the limitations of a strictly postmodern
feminist criticism. Her criticism deals primarily with Jardines denition of
woman, or the female/feminine, as the Other against which the male/
masculine subject establishes itself. What is repressed is not otherness
Moi argues, but specic, historically constructed women. After all, women
under patriarchy are oppressed because they are women, not because they
are Other.48 For this reason, Otherness must not be idealized for its own
sake. Moi similarly criticizes Gallops identication of certain speaking posi-
tions as essentially feminist, especially those that seek to undercut their own
authority and reveal the speakers vulnerability. What dogmatism, she writes,
says that is it never feminist to speak with authority?49 Nor does Moi
believe that vulnerability is enough to make a text feminist: feminism is,
of course, much more than a commitment to a certain style.50 In her view,
only politically informed criticism can explain why Otherness has been
assigned to a particular group at a particular time.51 Such criticism can also
investigate what kind of concrete, historical and political effects a particular
speaking position has. Rather than choosing from among the three feminist
positions (liberal, radical or postmodern feminism), Moi maintains that
feminists today have to hold all three positions simultaneously.52 Her
solution is a materialist feminist theory that will be able to push past the
political impasse of postfeminism.53 This feminist method is informed by
poststructuralist theories, but also involves making unpalatable political
choices.54 Nonetheless, she continues, making such choices is preferable
to sitting on the fence, which will never demolish patriarchy.55 In other
words, a poststructuralist perspective must be accompanied by a specic
political vision. As we will see, this is a belief that is reected in Mois
biography of Beauvoir.
Mois feminist perspective results in a dialectical biographical method
that she shares with sa Moberg. Both Moi and Moberg view the
158 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

biographical subject as a textual construction. Their biographies are based

on the assumption that there can be no methodological distinction
between Beauvoirs life and her texts.56 Taking her cue from Freuds belief
that a person can only reveal himself or herself as a text, Moi draws
attention to the amount of material that Beauvoir left behind: [t]he
intertextual network of ctional, philosophical, autobiographical and epis-
tolary texts that she left us is our Simone de Beauvoir.57 The biographers
discussed in previous chapters present their subjects life as a unied,
coherent whole, which is communicated in and through a chronological
and developing narrative. Mois and Mobergs respective biographies
constitute structural and ideological departures from this type of life
writing. Although their respective studies of Beauvoir offer highly specic
interpretations of their subject, they are not presented as nal.
The structural and political effects of Mois and Mobergs respective
biographical methods will be explored further in this chapter, but rst
the vast discursive networks in which the two biographers position their
own texts must be outlined. Beauvoirs biographical recognition con-
sists of multiple and often contradictory accounts. Not only has she
published more than any of the other women whose biographies are
discussed in this book, she has also published within a wider range of
genres, such as ction and philosophy. In sheer numbers, reactions to
her work exceed reactions to Friedans, Greers and Steinems writing.
Any feminist appropriation of Simone de Beauvoirs biographical recog-
nition is further complicated by the fact that for the majority of her life
she presented herself in an almost exclusively existentialist context.
To a greater degree than any of the other women discussed in this study,
Beauvoir also contributed to her own myth-making.58 She emerged as a
public gure in France in 1943 through the publication of her bestsel-
ling rst novel She Came to Stay and went on the win the Prix Goncourt
with the novel The Mandarins in 1954. As part of a group of Parisian
authors, actors, musicians and philosophers, Beauvoir and her partner
Jean-Paul Sartre became fashionable subjects of the postwar French
press, which rst popularized the term existentialism in reference to
the groups philosophical and political opinions, behavior and habitat.59
The lifestyle was actively marketed by the two philosophers themselves,
who openly welcomed the image of themselves as intellectual celebrities
and representatives of a new way of living (unmarried and without
children).60 As a result, the popular press tended to focus on the
couples personalities at the expense of their ideas.61
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 159

Through the international press, the term existentialism spread to

readers outside France; the existentialist way of life was quickly embraced
by popular culture in Europe and the USA.62 Hazel Rowley suggests that
such a focus was not unwelcome. As existentialists, she argues, Sartre
and Beauvoir believed that individuals are no more or less than the sum
total of their actions and offered themselves up willingly to the judgment
of posterity.63 Throughout their lives, Beauvoir and Sartre continued to
give interviews and otherwise actively participated in both the French and
international public sphere. Her celebrity and public engagement have
ensured that Simone de Beauvoir remains a familiar name also after her
death. In addition, they contributed to the iconic image of her as an
independent, intellectual woman. Her identication with Sartres existen-
tialist project, however, has also been used by critics to discredit the
feminist aspects of her writing. More recent information about her emo-
tionally complicated relationship with Sartre has caused feminist critics to
question the exemplary nature of her life choices.
The following overview of the changes in the feminist perception of
Beauvoir serves to contextualize Mois and Mobergs biographies criti-
cally and historically. Special attention is given to how previous readers
have interpreted the relationship between the personal and the poli-
tical aspects of Beauvoirs life choices and her writing. The overview
traces Beauvoirs biographical recognition, that is, how Beauvoir pre-
sented herself and how she has been perceived by feminist critics and
the general public (outside France) since her entry into the public
sphere in 1944. For the purposes of this book, the overview is separated
into two categories. Although the two biographers engage with a wide
variety of the texts that make up Simone de Beauvoir, their respective
approaches involve concentrating on some texts more than others.
Mois preoccupation with Beauvoirs intellectual heritage causes her to
engage predominantly, if not exclusively, with texts of a theoretical
nature. For this reason, the rst part of this overview of Beauvoirs
biographical recognition deals with her feminist essay Le deuxime
sexe/The Second Sex and its feminist reception.64 In Mobergs study,
comparisons between the biographers own life story and accounts of
Beauvoirs life contribute to the biographys political perspective(s).
The autobiographical approach causes Moberg to engage primarily
with the auto/biographical accounts of and by Beauvoir. Because of
this, the second section of the overview deals with Beauvoirs autobio-
graphy and its reception by readers.
160 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

LE DEUXIME SEXE/THE SECOND SEX

Although Beauvoirs existentialist persona and her novels have generated
much publicity, her nonctional writing has also contributed to her bio-
graphical recognition. Beauvoir rst entertained the idea of writing auto-
biography in 1948: I wanted to write about myself . . . I realized that the
rst question to come up was: What has it meant to me to be a woman?65
Her answer to the question was not autobiography, but Le deuxime sexe,
the classic study of womens condition in society. Although the study
contains no direct autobiographical references, it has often been interpreted
by critics in the context of Beauvoir and Sartres relationship. First published
in 1949, Le deuxime sexe is a feminist and existentialist study of womens
inequality. The book offers a critical analysis of biological, psychological and
materialistic historical theories of womens situation and character, and it
traces images of women through myths and literature. In the study,
Beauvoir pioneers the idea of patriarchal oppression. She denes woman
as the Other in relation to the male subject, or Self. The Other, she explains,
is not a complement, but a projection of everything that the Self rejects or
cannot be; it is passive and immanent.66 For all that, Beauvoir maintains, the
position as Other is not an (ahistorical) fact but a social construction.67
The study caused a scandal upon its rst publication in France and came
under strong attack from both the French Right and Left.68 Although
Le deuxime sexe contains no overt autobiographical passages, negative
reviews in the French press tended to focus on Beauvoirs person as much
as on the study itself.69 In 1952, the book was published in English as The
Second Sex. Contemporary American critics praised the studys scope, but
many were critical of Beauvoirs negative treatment of motherhood and
womens domestic roles.70 The studys seminal feminist status developed
gradually. The book inuenced later American feminists such as Betty
Friedan, Kate Millett and Shulamith Firestone, but in the USA it never had
the mass appeal of, for example, Friedans The Feminine Mystique.71 Only in
the 1970s, when The Second Sex rst appeared in paperback, did the book take
on a foundational status among feminists and come to be seen as a classic
text both inside and outside feminist academic circles.72 Because readers have
often interpreted Beauvoirs feminist critical writing in the context of her life,
a short account of the feminist criticism of The Second Sex is in place here. It is
within this critical discourse that Moi positions her study of Beauvoir. The
Second Sexs feminist reception furthermore demonstrates the strong critical
links that have been drawn between Beauvoirs feminism and her lifestyle.
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 161

While it was still possible in 1967 for C. B. Radford to argue that The
Second Sex was weakened by Beauvoirs allowing the personal to intrude
into her analysis . . . this argument had begun to lose its force, Jo-Ann
Pilardi wrote in 1993.73 The feminist preoccupation with the political
aspects of womens personal lives meant that The Second Sex was often
read in the context of what was known about Beauvoirs private life.
Shulamith Firestone is an early example of a feminist critic who connected
the message of The Second Sex with Beauvoirs personal refusal both of
marriage and motherhood, as well as her political activism.74 Firestone
dedicated her own feminist social study, The Dialectic of Sex, to Simone
de Beauvoir, who endured. Other modern feminists were more critical of
the book. Sandra Dijkstra observes that from its rst appearance in English,
even women who were well-disposed to feminism seemed inclined to
dismiss [The Second Sexs] impact on them.75 Critics focused especially on
what they perceived as a lack of political praxis in the book.76 One suggested
reason for the critique is the rst English translation. In the 1980s, Margaret
Simons found that more than 10% of the original text had been deleted in
the English translation and that the translator, H. M. Parsley, had mistrans-
lated much of Beauvoirs philosophical terminology.77 As a consequence,
Beauvoirs thinking and writing appear sloppy and contradictory in English.
According to Moi, at times [the translation] makes it difcult to discover
what Beauvoir actually thought about important feminist issues.78 The
translation and the omissions begin to explain some of the frustration and
ambivalence that many American feminist scholars have felt towards the
study.79
The absence in The Second Sex of a specic plan for womens liberation
has been criticized and regarded as the outcome of Beauvoirs relationship
with Sartre, or more precisely, with her intellectual debt to Sartres exis-
tentialism and its male bias.80 Critics have reacted to her phallocentric
analysis, which seems to suggest a biological hierarchy between the sexes,
based on womens ability to give birth.81 In The Second Sex, Beauvoir
states that childbirth is a fundamentally passive rather than active condi-
tion, which does not result in a womans transcendence of her own
circumstances.82 Charlene Haddock Seigfried suggests that this argument
is indebted to Sartres version of existentialism. She calls it a category
mistake that equates the male with a gender-neutral position.83
Biographical interpretations of Beauvoirs feminism have not been
limited to her views on childbirth. According to Naomi Green, Sartres
inuence on Beauvoir extended to The Second Sexs negative descriptions
162 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

of womens sexuality, which Beauvoir refers to in passive and vaguely

threatening metaphors.84 Critics have further pointed out that her discus-
sion of romantic love (and the danger such love supposedly poses) lacks a
social and historical context.85 As a result, they have argued, her dismissal
of marriage is ahistorical.86 Finally, by universalizing some womens asym-
metrical relationship with men, Beauvoir has been criticized for sabota-
ging her own analysis. The Second Sex, writes Judith Okely, is really
anthropology (or autobiography). What it offers, she suggests, is a study
of an urban village in mid-twentieth-century Paris and the white, middle-
class women, like Beauvoir herself, who lived there.87
The Second Sex and its author have also been received positively, especially
by poststructuralist feminists, who have sought to disprove or diminish the
importance of Sartres inuence on Beauvoir. Critics such as Margaret
Simons, Eva Lundgren-Gothlin, Michele LeDoeuff and Judith Butler base
their interpretations on the French original text and argue that Beauvoirs
existentialist philosophy differs in fundamental ways from Sartres. For
example, Lundgren-Gothlin observes that Beauvoir does not view freedom
as absolute, nor does she interpret relationships between human beings as
necessarily antagonistic.88 Sympathetic critics have stressed the emancipa-
tory potential of a (feminist) theory that identies the social and historical
mechanisms that stop women from making free choices.89 Regardless of the
different attitudes to the study, in 1993 Pilardi drew attention to the scarcity
of whole books dedicated to the exploration of The Second Sex.90 Despite a
serious reassessment of the book, she wrote, existing research has typically
not been narrow enough to satisfy scholars working on Beauvoir.91
Instead, many critics have chosen to focus on her autobiography.92

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
Despite the controversies surrounding The Second Sex and the inuence
the study has had on later feminist theory, the book has not been widely
read by the general public, even by those who identify themselves as
feminists.93 The neglect suggests an alternative, or additional, explanation
for the general publics fascination with Beauvoir, namely a popular cul-
ture that thrives on auto/biography and romance. It is within a feminist
discourse about Beauvoirs position as a female icon, or role model, that
sa Moberg positions her biography.94
In 2000, Ann Curthoys observed that even though The Second Sex is
Beauvoirs major theoretical contribution to feminism, many women in
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 163

the 1960s and 1970s rst became familiar with Beauvoir through her
autobiographical writing.95 In other words, the relative theoretical and
philosophical shortcomings of The Second Sex were either irrelevant or
simply not known to many general readers. Consequently, they had little
immediate impact on their perception of Beauvoir. Instead, readers
focused on her life story and what it promised to teach them. While
Beauvoirs feminist criticism has frequently been read autobiographically,
her autobiography has often been read as an extension of her feminism.96
The ve-volume autobiography is Beauvoirs most ambitious attempt at
writing herself into history and the general publics imagination.97
To Curthoys, the autobiography does not present feminism as a set of
ideas and a political movement, but as a guide to living.98 She stresses
the autobiographys importance for young, middle-class female readers
who were the rst generation of women to enter higher education.99
Tracing the reading habits of young women, Curthoys suggests that the
books belong to a group of stories that have been signicant in providing
strong female role models.100 It was Beauvoirs autobiographies, she
argues, which more than any other texts indicated that it was possible
to forge an alternative to the narrow options then facing women.101 The
autobiographies suggested that one could live according to a different
conception of femininity, intellectuality, independence, sexuality and
friendship.102
The freedom that Beauvoir represents includes a voluntary absence of
children and a heterosexual relationship based on intellectual honesty and
sexual freedom. In the rst volume of the autobiography, Beauvoirs meet-
ing with Sartre forms the culmination of her personal journey towards
independence and freedom, a journey begun as a young woman, still
under the inuence of her parents. In several of her novels, the main
protagonists are couples.103 Biographers Claude Francis and Fernande
Gontier claim that the general publics fascination with Sartre and
Beauvoir goes beyond an interest in their respective works, by underlining
the relationships ctional and romantic dimensions:

That Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre were great writers, navigators
who charted the ocean of a tumultuous half century, goes without
saying . . . But if this splendour has always had a special allure, it is that
there was a double brilliance, a twofold fame . . . They fascinate us because,
of all the gifts exceptional people can give, they have presented us with
something both rare and commonplace, the stuff that weaves its way
164 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

through novels and binds them together: a love story that has been so long
in the public domain that the two lovers seem real and at the same time
ctional. They invented ways to live out their love, and in setting up free-
dom and honesty as its guidelines they conquered and maintained this
harmony, sometimes despite of themselves and always despite others.104

Francis and Gontiers idealized description of Sartre and Beauvoirs liaison

helps to explain why people who have never read either author are still
familiar with them as a famous couple. The couples joint biographical
recognition reads like a storybook romance, in which the two protago-
nists love transcends all social conventions and family constraints.105 Early
biographers such as Francis and Gontier conrm rather than question the
idealization of the relationship. In her lifetime, Beauvoir welcomed bio-
graphers and assisted them by answering questions and commenting on
proofs. This ensured her some control over the way her life story was told,
which is noticeable in the biographies. Although Francis and Gontier
based much of their biography on Beauvoirs letters to Algren, they
dutifully footnoted all instances where Beauvoir disagreed with their
interpretation of events. Carol Aschers critical study of Beauvoir contains
similar biographical elements. She decided against seeking out Beauvoir
personally, but corresponded with her through letters.106 Beauvoirs bio-
grapher Deirdre Bairs original intention was to write a joint biography,
which would include Beauvoirs own version of events.107
If early biography contributed to the mythical and idealistic image of
the relationship, that image was seriously challenged by the posthumous
publication of the two philosophers letters and war diaries.108 In the
letters and diaries, Beauvoir and Sartres relationship is revealed to have
involved several other people. Moreover, the relationship seems more
emotionally complex and deceitful than in the autobiography and in
early, authorized biographies. In the beginning of the 1980s feminist
critics were also becoming more critical of the autobiographical genre.
Curthoys draws attention to the increase of feminist critical work at the
time that stressed the constructed nature of autobiography in general and
[Beauvoirs] autobiographies in particular.109
For several reasons, then, modern feminist critics stopped reading the
autobiographies as examples of how Beauvoir had applied her feminist
beliefs. Instead, the autobiographies were seen as illustrations of her
feminisms limitations, as exemplied by Mary Evans, who argued that
the alternative [critical] views of de Beauvoirs autobiography can take
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 165

issue not just with the degree of accuracy . . . of the work, but also with the
contribution made by the author to the emancipation of women.110
Feminist critics, Curthoys observes, increasingly viewed the autobiogra-
phies as depicting a woman who loses her freedom and autonomy for the
sake of her relationship to a man, Sartre.111 She quotes Ellen Willis, who
states that Beauvoir was no more able than the most traditional house-
wife to transcend or circumvent male supremacy.112 Curthoys believes
that such criticism has resulted in fewer readers. The autobiographies
appear to be not nearly so well read today, she concludes.113
Tracing the history of Beauvoirs biographical recognition reveals the
amount of material that pertains to her life. It furthermore points to the
many changes in both the feminist critical reception and general readers
impression of her life and work. According to Lyotard, it is the acknowl-
edgment of the amount of stories that appear simultaneously that signies
the postmodern and contributes to the radical shift in our understanding
of knowledge.114 In this sense, both Mois and Mobergs biographies are
decidedly postmodern. They both dene their biographical subject as a
constantly shifting textual construction. Nevertheless, both biographers
still make explicit political use of this construction. They both approach
Simone de Beauvoir as an exemplary feminist, yet they do so by presenting
her as an example of womens ambiguous social situation in contem-
porary society.

LIFE AS AN INTERTEXTUAL NETWORK

In her introduction to Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual
Woman, Moi gives two reasons for writing her book. The rst relates to
what she calls a new egalitarian mystique.115 Her allusion to Friedans
famous feminine mystique implies that Moi wishes to make visible a
previously unacknowledged dimension of intellectual womens situation.
Many women in schools and universities erroneously believe they are
being treated as equals in an egalitarian system, she argues.116 To dispel
the egalitarian mystique Moi studies Simone de Beauvoir, whom she
calls the emblematic intellectual woman of the twentieth century.117
Belonging to the rst generation of women to be educated on the same
level as men, Beauvoirs experiences gain in intensity and sharpness. In
her texts, Moi tells us, the conicts and contradictions experienced by
intellectual women in a patriarchal world emerge with unusual clarity.118
Convinced that Beauvoir still has much to teach us, for better or worse,
166 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

she therefore sets out to analyze her subjects experiences. The second
reason Moi gives for her study is to re-establish Beauvoirs position as a
feminist thinker. Despite the contradictory lessons that Beauvoir offers
contemporary women, Moi stresses her subjects importance as intellec-
tual role model. To study the greatest feminist theorist of [the twentieth]
century, Moi nds it necessary to take into account Beauvoirs feminist
and philosophical writing, as well as her autobiography. A (re)interpreta-
tion of Le deuxime sexe is necessary if one wishes to take Beauvoir
seriously as a philosopher, as a feminist and as an intellectual woman,
she states.119 By insisting on the viability of Beauvoirs feminism, Moi
thereby positions herself ideologically among other poststructuralist fem-
inists, such as Margaret Simons and Michele LeDoeuff, who make the
same claim.
Mois interest in Simone de Beauvoir suggests that she is writing
intellectual biography.120 She nevertheless makes a point not to call her
study biography, which she denes as a linear and narrative text that
argues in terms of beginnings and endings and seeks to disclose an
original identity.121 Nor does her study of Beauvoir t such a description.
On the other hand, it could be argued that Moi has written the only
biography possible taking into account her particular feminist outlook.
Unlike authors of linear and narrative biography, Moi does not seek to
establish a sense of (female) identity in her study. Instead, she denes
her subject as an intertextual network. That is, she makes no methodo-
logical distinction between Beauvoirs life and her texts.122 In her read-
ings, questions of subjectivity (the speaking subject) and textuality (the
body of texts) completely overlap.123 From this overlap does not follow
that Moi reads Beauvoirs texts as autobiography, or that she doubts her
subjects existence as a once living person with a clearly dened sense of
self.124 Rather, and inspired by Freud, she believes that Beauvoir only
reveals herself to contemporary readers in the form of text.125
According to Moi, dening Beauvoir as an intertextual network is parti-
cularly suitable because her writing challenges common genre assumptions.
Beauvoirs documentary texts (letters, diaries, interviews) cannot easily be
ascribed superior biographical value, she argues. Conversely, many of
Beauvoirs literary texts explore autobiographical themes that are not dis-
cussed elsewhere in her writing.126 Indeed, Moi frequently nds the doc-
umentary texts more revealing than Beauvoirs autobiography, which
excludes important biographical events and themes. Because of these exclu-
sions, Moi continues, the autobiography cannot be read as a straightforward
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 167

reconstruction of the self. By ignoring generic boundaries, Moi can avoid

positioning her study in a strict relation (sympathy/distance) to
Beauvoirs published autobiography suite. Instead, she subjects Simone
de Beauvoir to a genealogical investigation.127 Taking her cues from
Foucault, she seeks to understand the emergence and production of
Beauvoir as a social phenomenon, by studying what she identies as the
complex play of power involved.128 Moi refers to this kind of study as
personal genealogy.129 A personal genealogy differs notably from her
denition of biography. Because Mois subject is a textual network, it can
never be exhausted. Nor will her book ever provide any objective truth, or
what Moi calls a nal totalization of knowledge about her subject. Unlike
the subject in (realist) biography, her Beauvoir remains an unnished
text.130
The refusal to establish a nal meaning in her study allows Moi simulta-
neously to argue Beauvoirs exceptionality and present her as an example of
what she sees as (intellectual) womens ambiguous condition in patriarchal
society. To make such seemingly contradictory claims, Moi reads Simone de
Beauvoir as overdetermined.131 To read a text as overdetermined is to
draw attention to its plurality of meaning, to claim that signication emerges
as an unstable compromise between the pressures exerted by a whole range of
factors.132 This is why, Moi maintains, feminist critics must study womens
writing both at the level of texts and at the level of institutions and social
processes.133 In other words, Moi approaches her subject as a textual
weave, consisting of overlapping, contradictory yet comparable strands.134
The untangling of some of these strands becomes the task of the analytical
critic/biographer. Mois methods of choice include biography and literary
criticism, but also reception studies, sociology of culture, philosophical ana-
lysis, psychoanalytic enquiry and feminist theory.135 In short, her view of
Beauvoir as an overdetermined textual network frees her from the obliga-
tion to preserve the illusion of generic purity, that is, to register the effect of
one and only one strand of the textual weave.136
When Moi insists on the overdetermined nature of texts, however, she
simultaneously opens up her own text(s) to such a reading. Although
she restricts her approach to explore the overdetermination of
Beauvoirs texts, in another essay she admits to the possibility of uncon-
scious inuences on her own study:

[T]he cultural sociologist nds herself in a position analogous to that of the

psychoanalyst, that is to say, not as one who has managed to jettison her
168 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

own unconscious, or who is free from blind spots, but rather as somebody
who can be expected to recognize the strategies of the unconscious for what
they are when they manifest themselves.137

In her study of Beauvoir, Moi acknowledges a number of what she calls

generalizable factors that are likely to have inuenced her approach, but
she limits the self-analysis to her theoretical perspectives, her geogra-
phical position and her political afnities with the kind of materialist
feminism she [Beauvoir] represents.138 To acknowledge such inuences
on her study results in a critical position that differs radically from the
realist biographers objective stance. Mois theoretically and politically
explicit approach amounts to an author position that adds specicrather
than general or objectivemeaning and direction to her deconstruc-
tion of the texts that make up Simone de Beauvoir. What such an
author position entails, apart from a specic political perspective, is a
question I will return to shortly. First, the ideological dimension of
Mois approach must be established.
To bring home her point about her subjects feminist position, Moi
makes a clear distinction between Beauvoir and modern feminists, such as
Friedan, Greer and Steinem.139 Through her presentation of Beauvoir as the
greatest materialist feminist thinker of the twentieth century, Moi provides
clues to the ideological dimension of her own study.140 According to
Jennifer Wicke, materialist feminists do not view social gender arrange-
ments as the result of a singular, persistent patriarchy.141 Instead, they
aim to identify what they see as the multiple causes for womens social
position(s). Or, as Wicke explains it: materialist feminism . . . gauges the
web of social and psychic relations that make up a material, historical
moment, when the women in question may be situated in a variety of
positions that defy a horizontal reading.142 What should be clear from
this short outline of Wickes denition of materialist feminist methodology
is how closely the latter resembles Mois genealogical approach to Beauvoir.
That is to say, Mois anti-humanist, poststructuralist perspective on Beauvoir
as a textual network has a specic ideological dimension, which goes
beyond a mere deconstruction of the modern subject.
Despite the many theoretical perspectives in her study, materialist feminism
determines Mois overall critical position. Her analysis is based on a herme-
neutics of suspicion, where the texts that she reads are thought to have
multiple, not immediately visible meanings. To reveal some of the invisible
meanings in Beauvoirs texts, Moi looks to Pierre Bourdieus social theory of
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 169

culture. According to Moi, Bourdieu views the relationship between indivi-

duals and institutions as a eld, governed by competitive social games.143
The aim of these games is to achieve legitimate dominance, which is
invisible but tacitly accepted by participants.144 The result is a seemingly
objective social structure, or what Bourdieu refers to as a habitus.145
By adding a gender perspective to Bourdieus theory, Moi can argue
that Beauvoirs position in a male-dominated habitus was a position
where her femaleness was often working against her. According to Moi,
Beauvoir is particularly appropriate for a feminist study precisely
because her life so closely resembled those of her male colleagues.
Like them, she was white, middle class, well educated and living in
Paris. Moi points out that although one cannot always assume that
gender is the most important factor in a given social situation, in
Beauvoirs case it is a sensible assumption. She claries: Born into a
bourgeois Paris family and educated on a par with her male counter-
parts, the only obvious social stigma from which she suffer[ed was]
that of her femaleness.146 It is therefore reasonable, Moi continues, to
ascribe certain tensions and contradictions in her text mainly to that
femaleness. When Moi reads Beauvoirs texts next to and against each
other, she nds that these texts reveal such points of tension, contra-
dictions and similarities.147
The appropriation of Bourdieus theory of culture allows Moi to per-
form concrete and specic analyses of the social processes and institutions
that determine Beauvoirs texts. It enables her to include the most mun-
dane details of everyday life in the analysis and to link those details to a
more general social analysis of power.148 The approach, she nds, is
particularly suitable for a feminist analysis that seeks to undo or overcome
the traditional individual/social and private/public divide.149 In this
case, it lets Moi establish social, psychological and philosophical links
among specic instances in Beauvoirs autobiographies, her novels and
the essay Le deuxime sexe.
By focusing on what she identies as logical blind spots in Beauvoirs
writing, Moi brings to light what she sees as the unconscious and powerful
psychological and social inuences on Beauvoirs speaking position. The
result of these inuences, Moi argues, is an ambiguous or inconsistent
position.150 The starting point for Mois analysis is the identication of a
blind spot in Beauvoirs rst autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful
Daughter.151 Beauvoir describes a meeting with Sartre in the Luxembourg
Garden, where the two of them discuss her budding philosophical ideas. At
170 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

the end of the conversation, she has rejected her own theories in favor of
Sartres philosophy.152 According to Moi, the autobiography traces the road
from inauthenticity towards a life of unfailingly lucid authenticity.153 By
the time Beauvoir wrote her autobiography, Moi continues, existentialism
had become her spontaneous outlook on herself and the world. Her
meeting with Sartre represents liberation from the stiing universe of her
family.154
Yet, Moi doubts Beauvoirs insistence on the necessity of Sartre in her
life. She is especially suspicious of the famous myth of . . . unity between
the two philosophers, nding Beauvoirs effort to combine a traditionally
Romantic belief in the twin souls with an existentialist belief in freedom
and contingency psychologically impressive, but philosophically uncon-
vincing. The pact with Sartre constituted a fundamental part of
Beauvoirs identity and caused her both pride and joy, she continues,
but it also resulted in much personal pain, which Beauvoir never acknowl-
edged. The real blind spot of Simone de Beauvoirs memoirs, Moi
argues, is her inability to recognize this distress.155
Moi then sets out to explain the blind spot in Beauvoirs reasoning.
Initially she analyzes Beauvoirs memoirs from a psychoanalytic perspec-
tive, paying particular attention to the relationships with her parents and
with Sartre. She interprets the pact with Sartre as an example of what she
calls the erotico-theoretical relationship, where intellectual or superior
women enter into a relationship game where women are meant to be less
masterful than their lovers in order to seduce.156 In a genealogical study,
however, a psychological or philosophical approach alone cannot explain
the blind spots in the subjects speaking position. For this reason, Moi
also considers the elite French intellectual institutions, such as cole
Normale Suprieure (ENS), where Sartre but not Beauvoir was a
student.157
According to Moi, Beauvoir unconsciously internalized the (seemingly
objective) habitus of institutions such as the ENS. She goes on to stress
the sexist attitudes that pervaded all aspects of this habitus, including the
rhetoric that was used in the prestigious philosophy agrgation, or
exam.158 When graduating, Simone de Beauvoir was among the youngest
agrges ever. Furthermore, she was one of only a handful of women who
had ever taken the philosophy exam and nished at the very top (second
only to Sartre). Nevertheless, Moi points out, Beauvoir never publicly
acknowledged, much less took any advantage of, these facts. Instead, she
identied with the (sexist) values promoted by the ENS.159
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 171

As a result, Moi argues, Beauvoirs speaking position became deeply

ambiguous. Her identication with the system and its sexist values (which
also inuenced her erotico-theoretical involvement with Sartre) meant
that Beauvoir failed to recognize the extent to which the habitus favors
men.160 As an agrge, Beauvoir possessed considerable social author-
ity. As a woman, however, she was victimized by the symbolic power and
enslaved by the mechanisms of the intellectual eld. Throughout her life,
Moi continues, Beauvoir remained unaware of both aspects of her position
and ended up becoming an accomplice in her own oppression. That is, she
chose freely the only position that was in fact available to her if she
wanted to be taken seriously. As an intellectual woman in mid-twentieth-
century France, Beauvoir had to speak like a female (and therefore suppo-
sedly still inferior) version of a male normalien.161
Through her materialist feminist analysis and her denition of Beauvoir
as a set of overdetermined texts, Moi can simultaneously argue the
validity of Beauvoirs feminist theory and demonstrate her subjects
supposedly unconscious internalization of the habitus in both the auto-
biography and Le deuxime sexe. Previous critics, such as Judith Okely and
Mary Evans, have dismissed Beauvoirs feminism as too phallocentric
and unduly inuenced by Sartres existentialist philosophy to be of use for
contemporary feminists. In contrast, Mois materialist feminist approach
allows her to argue that Beauvoirs ambiguous speaking position lled a
strategically important function. As we shall see, the contradictions and
ambiguity in Beauvoirs feminist essay offer a solution to many of the
problems that Moi identies in both modern and postmodern
feminisms.162
Mois identication of a blind spot in the autobiography is followed
by analyses of other texts, most signicantly Le deuxime sexe. Moi agrees
with critics who claim that Beauvoir writes like a man in the feminist
essay, yet points out that she writes as a very specic man: a French
normalien, that is, a former student of the ENS.163 The nearly absolute
dominance of the ENS in the French intellectual eld, Moi explains,
means that Beauvoirs speaking position aims to minimize her difference
(her femaleness) and increase the power of her feminist analysis. In this
respect, Le deuxime sexe is an investigation into womens marginality
from a position of centrality.164
To Moi, Beauvoirs insistence on claiming the universal status for
women is not the same thing as to concur in the universalizing of the
masculine.165 At the same time, she argues, the autobiographical
172 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

impulse behind the essay stops it from being a truly universalizing text.
Since Beauvoir writes according to the rules of the French philosophical
eld, she seldom uses the rst person singular in her writing, but prefers
the third person woman.166 Yet, elsewhere Beauvoir states that Le
deuxime sexe originated in a wish to write an autobiographical essai-
martyr, that is, an essay in which the protagonist exposes the innermost
truth about her being.167 The result is an ambiguous author position,
Moi writes, which saves Le deuxime sexe from reading like just another
falsely universalizing master text.168 She acknowledges that some women
readers felt left out of the experiences that Beauvoir describes, but
observes that other women found their own experiences legitimized by
the essay. If there is a problem with the text, Moi continues, it is that
Beauvoir is not in control of the ambiguity: sometimes it works for her
and sometimes it does not.169
Insisting on the specicity of a female author position, Moi can
acknowledge the negative feminist criticism voiced against Le deuxime
sexe without questioning what she still considers the validity of Beauvoirs
feminism. In other words, Beauvoirs ambiguous speaking position func-
tions as a concrete example of (intellectual) womens ambiguous con-
dition in society. In addition, Moi can argue the exemplarity of Le
deuxime sexe and Beauvoirs feminism. Emphasizing the social violence
committed against women within the habitus, Moi can refer to Beauvoirs
writing of Le deuxime sexe as a remarkable, exemplary feat.170
By acknowledging her intellectual debt to Beauvoir, Mois study
further conrms the strengths of her subjects materialist feminist the-
ory. Throughout Le deuxime sexe, Beauvoir discusses womens contra-
dictory, or ambiguous, position in patriarchal society. Moi draws
particular attention to Beauvoirs identication of women as both free
and autonomous human beings and socialized in a world in which men
cast them as Other, as objects to their subject.171 This argument is based
on what Moi refers to as Beauvoirs overdetermined idealization of
mens social condition as completely free, but it is also a historically
specic argument. [W]hen oppressive power relations cease to exist,
Beauvoir believes that women will be no more and no less split and
contradictory than men.172 In other words, Moi writes, Beauvoir pre-
supposes that womens social (and material) conditions must change
before genuine freedom can be achieved.
Beauvoir especially stresses the need for economic equality between the
sexes. Nonetheless, she also believes that women must be in a moral, social,
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 173

and psychological situation identical with that of man.173 The goal is not a
sexless society, Moi explains, nor an abstract, modern notion of freedom.
Instead, Beauvoir advocates a concrete, ethical equality, which aims to
liberate women from patriarchal femininity without denying the differ-
ences between the sexes.174 This type of equality, however, cannot be
reached through the cultural and social institutionalization of sexual differ-
ence.175 Such institutionalization, Moi argues, is not compatible with
Beauvoirs vision of freedom.176 For [Beauvoir], women do not have a
secret, long-oppressed identity which must be liberated, she explains.177
Moi views Simone de Beauvoirs universalist vision of liberation as
her strongest contribution to materialist feminism, but she acknowledges
that Beauvoirs description of the means by which women will achieve
liberation lacks any notion of a collective womens movement.178 She
traces this absence back to the overdetermined nature of her subjects
writing and to Beauvoirs belief that women rarely identify with other
women, preferring instead men of their own social group. For this reason,
Moi continues, Beauvoir views womens emancipation as a slow and
contradictory process, which requires that women take advantage of the
multiple contradictions of patriarchal ideology in order to undermine
the system from within.179 Moi views this as the weakest aspect of
Beauvoirs feminism.180
Although she identies aws in Le deuxime sexe, Moi is nevertheless
careful to establish the essays inuence on modern feminism. Regardless
of how feminists dene womens emancipation, she writes, they express
this emancipation in narrative terms. In this sense, all feminists are
indebted to Le deuxime sexe:

The strongest legacy of [Le deuxime sexe] is the fact that all its analyses and
polemics are placed within a powerful narrative of liberation. By taking as
her point of departure a story of historical and social transformation, or in
other words: by giving feminism an end, by imagining society in which there
would no longer be any need to be a feminist, Beauvoir provided women all
over the world with a vision of change. This is what gives her essay such
power and such a capacity to inspire its readers to action, and it is also the
reason why [Le deuxime sexe] remains the founding text for materialist
feminism in the twentieth century.181

In her description of feminisms debt to Beauvoir, Moi acknowledges that

feminist emancipation narratives can take various forms and aim for different
174 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

results.182 Yet Mois materialist feminist perspective causes her to favor one
emancipation narrative above the others. Her identication of a particular
emancipation narrative in Beauvoirs feminist theory simultaneously makes
visible the emancipatory vision of her own study. One could say that her study
thereby draws attention to the ideological aspects of its own meaning
production.
To see how this is done, one must follow Mois analysis to the end. In the
third and last part of her study, Moi returns to the blind spot in Beauvoirs
autobiography to explain Beauvoirs depression in old age.183 When doing
so, she offers her reader a materialist feminist narrative of womens emancipa-
tion. The blind spot in her subjects autobiography serves to obscure the
pain that Beauvoir experienced in her relationship with Sartre. As pointed out
earlier in this chapter, readers have frequently interpreted Beauvoirs pact of
unity with Sartre as the practical realization of her feminism, that is, as a
guide to living as a free woman.184 According to Moi, this interest in the
pact stems from Beauvoirs own writing. Her life invites us to consider love
and intellectual women.185 Moi reads the autobiographical accounts of
Beauvoirs relationship with Sartre as an (unfullled) promise of absolute
emotional fulllment.186
Expressed differently, Beauvoirs autobiography communicates what
might be referred to as an emancipation narrative of love.187 Love, Moi
explains, is intimately associated with Beauvoirs notion of ethical equality
and its mutual recognition of the other as a free, acting subject.188
Beauvoir refers to such recognition as reciprocity (rather than the more
common term brotherhood).189 For Beauvoir, ethical equality is a neces-
sary condition for both love and freedom.190 According to Moi, the idea of
reciprocity is particularly attractive to the intellectual woman, who values
her mind [and] usually wants to be loved for her thinking powers as much as
for her sweet temper or sexy legs.191 To such a woman (assuming she is
heterosexual), intellectual men will always seem attractive, because they
hold the promise of understanding and support, that is, mutual intellec-
tual recognition or reciprocity.192 Posthumous publications of diaries and
biographies have nevertheless undermined the exemplary image of the pact,
thereby throwing doubt on the ethical equality of Beauvoirs own rela-
tionship. Such doubt, Moi explains, has caused many women to express
their disappointment with Beauvoirs life choices.
To explain why Simone de Beauvoir remained in a relationship that did
not fulll her idea(l) of love, Moi highlights the narrative aspects of her
subjects feminism. In Le deuxime sexe, Simone de Beauvoir identies
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 175

three categories of women: traditionally oppressed women, independent

women and the free women of the future.193 Through these categories,
freedom appears as a slow and gradual process. When Moi identies
Beauvoir as an independent woman she similarly relies on a denition
of womens emancipation as a slow and contradictory process, where
women gradually undermine the system from within.194
Mois denition positions Beauvoir only halfway through her own eman-
cipation narrative. To Beauvoir, an independent woman is equal to men
economically, but lacks moral, social and psychological equality.
Independent women, Moi explains, are trying to live the future before the
conditions are ripe.195 For this reason, Beauvoirs description of the pact
must be understood as overdetermined.196 Her identication of the rela-
tionship as necessary, Moi continues, is conditioned by a society where
womens sexuality is repressed. Absolute happiness and total despair charac-
terizes the independent woman, who is split between the desire to assert
herself and her desire for self-effacement.197 To Moi, patriarchal ideology has
always sought to enforce the split between body and mind with particular
rigor in the case of the intellectual woman.198
Mois identication of Beauvoir as an independent rather than a truly
free woman suggests that readers who disapprove of Beauvoirs relationship
choice are merely projecting their own, overdetermined and narcissistic
ideals onto the relationship.199 To her, such readers disregard the advantages
that the imperfect pact brought Beauvoir. Signicantly, Moi writes, the pact
made her into one of the most inuential women in the world.200 Unlike these
disapproving readers, Moi sees her subjects struggle to achieve autonomy and
independence as in itself inspirational and exemplary. Beauvoirs insistence on
womens right to emotional and sexual happiness teaches women that we do
not need to be perfect.201 We simply need never to give up [the ambition],
Moi concludes.202
Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman corresponds
methodologically and ideologically with Mois elsewhere articulated deni-
tion of a feminist critique.203 For Moi, the aim of feminism is primarily
social change, but she recognizes that such change is grounded in practice,
in the objective conditions of every-day life.204 For this reason, the
revolutionary role of intellectuals is bound to be relatively limited.205
What intellectuals can do, she maintains, is to criticize, verbalize and analyze
the unspoken and repressed rules that govern our behavior.206 Through
her appropriation of Pierre Bourdieus social theory of culture, Moi can
argue that Simone de Beauvoir performed a critique from within the
176 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

very system that oppressed her. As such, both Beauvoirs life and her theory
draw attention to the social interests that are at stake in the construction of
woman as a social essence.
From Beauvoir we learn, Moi writes, that sexual differences are
neither essences nor simple signiers, neither a matter of realism nor
of nominalism, but a matter of social practice.207 Her study of
Beauvoirs life and theory conrms Mois belief that sexual identities
cannot simply be deconstructed away. Instead, real social change
is required to empty these categories of current meanings.208 When
Moi interprets Beauvoir thus, she also reclaims the signicance of
her existentialist-materialist feminism on behalf of contemporary
women. The limitation of Beauvoirs feminism, Moi continues, is
that she does not recognize the extent to which her own discourse
is the product of the social practices that she seeks to resolve.209
The limitations of Beauvoirs feminism ll an important function in
Mois study. They allow her to demonstrate what she sees as the ambi-
guity of Beauvoirs position and support her claim that the category
woman carries different amounts of symbolic capital in different
contexts.210 That is, they permit Moi to present woman as a unique
social category.211 She explains: To say that Simone de Beauvoir was a
woman, then, is no longer to invoke a rather static or predictable social
category, but to open for highly exible analysis of a variable and often
contradictory network of generalities.212 The exibility of Mois
materialist feminist approach to Beauvoir distinguishes it from the realist
biographical approaches discussed in previous chapters in this book.
Although her authoritative attitude towards Beauvoir supercially
resembles that of a realist biographer, Moi does not entirely usurp
her subjects own version(s) of her life. Through the inclusion of multi-
ple perspectives on the life, including Beauvoirs own views, Moi
claims to reappropriate the life on behalf of her subjects feminist
vision.
Critical reactions to Mois approach have varied. Diana Knight posi-
tions Mois study of Beauvoir in a tradition of thought where the concrete
example is not the secondary illustration of a general rule, but the
primary place where thought happens, where theoretical questions get
raised, elaborated and answered.213 Moi shows by example how close
attention to the particular case can produce serious theoretical insight,
Knight argues.214 Through her study of Beauvoir, Moi explains how
individual women have found room for political, cultural and social
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 177

maneuvering within oppressive systems. In the process, I wish to argue,

Mois own study turns into an example of the kind of maneuvering that
women must do within oppressive systems. When Moi articulates the
political and theoretical foundations of her approach to Beauvoir, she
does this based on a belief that a feminist social or political critique
necessarily nds itself caught up in the mechanisms and strategies . . . of
the intellectual eld that it criticizes. In other words, Moi acknowledges
that her study, too, is simultaneously limited and made possible by certain
systems.215
Mois views on subjectivity and authorship thereby differ from those of
realist biographers. In her study there is no coherent, rational subject or
objective author position from which to make politically neutral
truth-claims. Despite this, Mois approach should not be understood as
strictly postmodern. Instead, Moi argues for a study of Beauvoir where the
explicit articulation of her own political perspective forms part of a larger
study of the mechanisms that inform both the life and the text.
Nevertheless, when she admits that every discourse is haunted by the
ghosts of the individual and social unconscious, Moi invites readers to ask
which specic, unconscious ghosts haunt her own study.216 As Moi
expresses it, what we say is never quite what we think we say.217 But it
should not stop the feminist critic, she continues.218 All the same, a reader
might still wonder, for example, what causes Moi to argue that most
intellectual women prefer equally intellectual men and wish to be
loved for their thinking powers as well as their sexy legs. Moi does not
offer any answers in anticipation of this and similar questions or com-
ments. In line with Barthes, she prefers not to throw that level of doubt on
the dominant authorial presence of her own [critical] activity.219 In
the process, Moi asserts greater control over her ambiguous author posi-
tion than Beauvoir ever could.
Methodologically, Moi asserts and justies her authority through a
meticulous account of how she has organized her study of Beauvoir. This
account, I argue, is inseparable from her materialist feminist outlook.
Stanley suggests that realist biographys popularity among readers can be
traced back directly to its narrative, which is comparatively easy and
pleasant to read.220 But the feminist reader, she continues, is frequently
expected to be a specialist theoretical and deconstructionist reader whose
reading is contingent upon these and other facts of her intellectual and
other autobiography.221 Mois complex theoretical apparatus risks alie-
nating non-academic readers. Indeed, it could be argued that her detailed
178 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

analysis (deconstruction) of Beauvoirs texts threatens to obscure the

politics (the emancipatory narrative) of her study.
In a review, Elaine Marks refers negatively to the visibility of what she
calls the textual effects in Mois study. She dislikes that Moi always
gives the reader process and product and what she considers to be notes
taken during the research phase of the project by the scholar as well as the
conclusions elaborated by the writer.222 Marks calls this practice at
times tedious and redundant.223 Yet it should be noted that Markss
criticism has an unacknowledged political dimension. In her study, Moi
refers to Marks as an example of liberal critics, who tend not to dene
themselves as political.224 In Markss critical writing, Moi identies a
profound belief in the supreme reality of unchanging human essences
and a description of Beauvoirs openly social, political and moral point of
view as an example of egoism.225 Truth, or what Marks calls the
contemplation of things as they are, is viewed as incompatible with
political commitment, Moi explains. Furthermore, she continues, critics
such as Marks frequently associate political commitment with bad
prose.226 As such, Markss preference for a biography whose underlying
organizing processes remain hidden, where smoothness and elegance of
style are not sacriced and no political point of view is openly expressed,
is a reection of her modern (feminist) point of view.227
In this context it can, indeed, be argued that Mois genealogical
study of Beauvoir is the only biography possible if the life is to function
as a feminist materialist critique. Realist biography can never provide an
answer to the questions that inform Mois feminist interest in Simone de
Beauvoir. From Mois point of view, realist biography can only reproduce
the habitus of its own social eld, without revealing its symbolic violence
against women. Personal genealogy, on the other hand, promises Moi new
insights to more than one womans life. It also purports to reveal the social
elds in which many women live and write, the invisible games that are
played there and the impact of these games on the women who participate
in them.
What personal genealogy cannot do, without seriously undermining its
critical function, is to question its own political perspective, that is, ques-
tion its political authority, by asking which additional (conscious and
unconscious) uses it might be serving. Therein lie the necessary limita-
tions of Mois poststructuralist biographical approach. To (temporarily)
authorize, or control the narrative, to give it political gravitas, Moi must
remain silent on the subject of at least some possible inuences on her
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 179

study. In the following section, the ideological and methodological effects

of breaking this silence are addressed through an analysis of sa
Mobergs study of Simone de Beauvoir.

EVERYBODYS BEAUVOIR
In Simone och jag: Tankar kring Simone de Beauvoir, sa Moberg explores
Simone de Beauvoirs potential as a feminist guide to living and her
practical usefulness as a role model.228 Moberg shares Mois dialectical
approach by describing Beauvoir as a set of texts. In the study, Moberg
refers to Beauvoir as an image, created by cross-readings of novels,
autobiography, philosophical works, articles, essays, as well as posthu-
mously published diaries and letters.229 Still, Mobergs method differs
in important ways from Mois. Most notably, she adds an explicitly auto-
biographical element to her study by making frequent comparisons
between her own life story and her interpretations of Beauvoir. As will
be shown in this section, the autobiographical element adds a dimension
to her study that separates it from the other biographical approaches
discussed in this book.
The auto/biographical comparisons deal especially with Beauvoirs rela-
tionship, or pact of unity, with Sartre. Perhaps it is possible, Moberg
suggests in the beginning of her study, for a woman to be dependent on a
mans emotional and intellectual support and, at the same time, maintain her
[feminist] integrity.230 She explains that this thought originates in her
personal needs and experiences. More precisely it originates in the relation-
ship she once had with the Swedish photographer and author Tor-Ivan
Odulf. In the 1960s, Moberg was synonymous with a new generation of
young, independent women who were associated with the emerging
Swedish womens movement.231 As a journalist, she wrote on subjects
such as sexuality and womens rights.232 For more than twenty years she
was also living in a monogamous relationship with a much older man.233
Unbeknownst to her readers, Moberg writes, Odulf actively inuenced her
career choices, her writing and most aspects of her daily life.234 Unable to
reconcile her dependence on Odulf with her public image as an emancipated
woman, Moberg experienced deeply felt shame.235 In my darker
moments, she admits, I felt like a . . . propaganda lie.236 In the study,
Moberg describes the difference that reading Beauvoirs autobiography and
Deirdre Bairs biography of Beauvoir made to her self-perception. Both texts
were important turning points in her self-understanding.237 In Beauvoirs
180 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

life story she recognized her own trust in and dependence on a beloved
mans judgment. She also identied her own willingness to satisfy such a
mans constant need for attention.238
Like Moi, Moberg studies the example Beauvoir to raise and explore
questions regarding womens emancipation. In her study, Beauvoir is
presented as an ambiguous, or inconsistent, subject. Moberg pays special
attention to the overdeterminedto borrow Mois termaspects of
the famous pact.239 Particularly, she contrasts the programmatic
declarations of happiness in Beauvoirs autobiography with the more
complex and negative accounts of the relationship in Beauvoirs ction
and letters.240 In line with Mois tracing of Beauvoirs personal geneal-
ogy, Mobergs study is characterized by a non-chronological and non-
linear structure. The short chapters explore the subject Beauvoir from
several different angles. The study has no obvious, overarching plot struc-
ture, with a clear beginning and ending. Instead, it is written as a series of
non-chronological essays in which Moberg thinks critically and from
multiple perspectives about womens emancipation.
Throughout the study, Moberg reads Beauvoirs conicting descrip-
tions of the relationship in light of her own experiences. Early in her study,
the comparative reading makes her wonder whether Beauvoirs refusal to
publicly acknowledge her unhappiness was deliberate. Can such a clear-
sighted person have been unconscious of her darker sides, or did she
publicly deny them for practical reasons? she asks and then offers a
possible explanation: to be jealous is one thing, to admit it, another,
since this causes more pain and involves other people.241 Moberg further
speculates whether the image of Beauvoir as Sartres disciple contributed
to the harmony in the relationship, yet she doubts whether such harmony
ever existed in the rst place: the fact that both protagonists support it
[the public image] does not make it true.242 When Moberg suggests that
Beauvoirs insistence on her absolute happiness was a lie, she questions
the pact as the practical realization of Beauvoirs feminist ideal.243
At the same time, she throws doubt on the sustainability of the ideal itself.
Beauvoir, she speculates, made feminist ideology of that which he
[Sartre] refused to give her.244 Mobergs conclusions thereby appear to
differ from Mois suggestion that Beauvoirs ambiguity was, at least
partly, unconscious. Furthermore, her arguments resemble those of
other critics, such as Mary Evans and Ellen Willis, who dismiss
Beauvoirs feminism on the grounds that her relationship with Sartre was
unequal.245
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 181

Initially, Moberg establishes what at rst appears to be an omniscient

author position in the text. From this position, she dismisses Beauvoirs role
model status, yet then asks whether emotional and material dependency
(rather than the mutual reciprocity prescribed by Beauvoir and Moi) is, in
fact, a necessary and desired precondition for at least some womens eman-
cipation. As a result, Beauvoir suddenly gains new signicance as a feminist
role model. To clarify her new, or more accurately, additional, perspective
on the SartreBeauvoir pact, Moberg makes references to her own life.
Odulf once described himself as an artists wife, she writes.246 Sartre,
she continues, would have gained male prestige by ending his collabora-
tion with Beauvoir, but he chose to stay.247 When comparing the two mens
behavior, Moberg recalls the long tradition of male artists and authors
whose emotional and practical dependency on female relatives and friends
was a necessary condition for their ability to create.248 Women artists, she
observes, lack a similar tradition by which to expect and justify their depen-
dence on a man.249 However, Beauvoirs life choices suggest that a creative
woman, too, needs support in order to work.250
Indirectly, Mobergs reassessment of the pact undermines her initial
authorial stance. Throughout the study, her opinions on Beauvoir vacillate.
Although she questions the ideal aspects of the pact between Beauvoir and
Sartre, she simultaneously expresses admiration for what she calls Beauvoirs
courage and the fantasy required to imagine a new role for women and a
new emancipation narrative.251 She recognizes inconsistencies in Beauvoirs
descriptions of the pact, but she interprets Beauvoirs autobiographical
silence on the subject of her unhappiness as a possibly conscious political
strategy.252 Because equality between the sexes does not exist, it must be
invented, she claims, thereby echoing Heilbruns argument concerning
female genius in her biography of Steinem.253 Frequently, Moberg estab-
lishes Beauvoirs role model status through a circular authentication process
similar to that in Heilbruns biography. Through comparisons between her
own life and Beauvoirs, she adds feminist signicance to her own life
experiences, in this way seemingly conrming her authoritative stance
through a sympathetic approach. Aided by the comparisons, she explores
the positive effects of the SartreBeauvoir pact and her relationship with
Odulf without shying away from the relationships problematic
dimensions.
Yet the autobiography also draws attention to Mobergs study as c-
tional construction of Beauvoir. According to Moberg, a role models
function always originates in the needs that you have in your own
182 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

life.254 More precisely, she claims, it is from the accidental combination

of your own weaknesses and your erroneous impressions about . . . role
models that you gain strength.255 She continues:

No Beauvoir-experience is truer than anybody elses. They all demonstrate

her practical usefulness in the daily life of many different kinds of
women . . . There is my Beauvoir and your Beauvoir and every readers
Beauvoir, all over the world . . . The intensity we feel when we read her
originates in the projection of our own experiences onto her life and work.
This book is a summary of my Beauvoir-projections.256

Through the comparisons, Moberg examines Beauvoirs practical useful-

ness as a role model.257 As in the quotation above, however, she simul-
taneously undermines the objectivity or authority of her examination
by suggesting that her interpretations of Beauvoir may simply be wrong
(erroneous), or too personal to have any wider, feminist signicance.
When Moberg vacillates between a personal and a universal (that
is, political) perspective on Beauvoir, her author position appears ambig-
uous and consequently lacking in authority. In this respect, her bio-
graphical approach differs from both Heilbruns and Mois approaches to
their subjects. Moi acknowledges that the reasons for her study are not
objective, but can be traced back to her political afnities with
Beauvoirs feminism, as well as her (Mois) geographical position and
theoretical perspectives, allowing her author position to remain politically
consistent and (at least provisionally) authoritative. In contrast, Moberg
contradicts and questions her own political perspective and author posi-
tion throughout her study. Nor does she transform her interpretations of
Beauvoir into a higher level of synthesis (that is, into a coherent, rational
subject), in a manner similar to Heilbruns biography of Steinem.258 What
the ambiguity that characterizes the subject and author positions in her
study allows her to do, is to explore the idea of female emancipation from
multiple and contradictory perspectives. Although Moberg undermines
her author position through the self-reexive elements in her study, the
title Simone och jag points to the central role that the author (jag, or
I in English) still occupies in the text. The vacillating author position,
I argue, encourages readers to critically reect on the notion of feminist
emancipation plots and their practical usefulness in womens lives.
To aid readers in this task, Moberg includes her own life story. Despite
the autobiographical aspects of the study, she does not refer to her writing
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 183

as autobiography. Instead, she points to what she sees as a new trend

among biographers:

The book Im writing is about my relationship with Simone de Beauvoir,

I explain, embarrassed. It sounds so presumptuous, so preposterous.
I explain that I have read in various international journals about a new
trend in biography. The biographers spend more and more time on them-
selves, on their relationship with their subject. If I was not doing the same
thing, I would dismiss it as a ridiculous idea.259

From a modern perspective, Mobergs denition of her study as biogra-

phy suggests that her claims about Beauvoirs life and character must be
objective and truthful. But the autobiographical aspects of the study
stop it from being, in Mois words, a truly universalizing text.260 Indeed,
Moberg alleges that Beauvoirs choices will not appeal to all women, or even
to most other women. I recognize myself in Beauvoirs happiness project,
she points out, but I suspect that [she] has generalized a certain type of
intellectual female loneliness . . . which was her own and perhaps many other
women writers experience, but maybe not every young womans.261
Indirectly, her denition of Beauvoirs circumstances as particular under-
mines the universality of Beauvoirs life choices but also the comparative
references she makes to her own life.
At other times, Moberg contradicts herself more explicitly. For instance,
by claiming that she often felt trapped by my professional dependence [on
Odulf], Moberg questions her previous denition of women artists and
their specic needs and experiences.262 Early in the study she proposes that
Beauvoirs dependency on Sartre was, indeed, unconscious, thereby con-
tradicting her later understanding of this dependency as a conscious
political strategy.263 Contradictions such as these are symptomatic of
Mobergs whole approach. Nowhere in the study does she offer a nal
version of Beauvoir, or, indeed, of her own life story. Instead, the reader is
presented with contrasting and vacillating notions of female emancipation
as based either on dependency or reciprocity, or both.
From a modern feminist perspective, Mobergs ambiguous author position
suggests that she is committing what Bell Gale Chevigny calls a specically
feminist fallacy, namely the feminist biographers projection of her actual,
latent, or ideal experiences onto the subject.264 Moberg repeatedly acknowl-
edges that her readings may result in such fallacies. She points out that one
must be vigilant against private identications. I identify with [the novel
184 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

LInvite] to such an extent that, automatically, I assume it must be a self-

portrait of Simone de Beauvoir. That might not be the case.265 In Mobergs
study, the reader is actively encouraged to identify both with her and with
Beauvoir. Simultaneously, I wish to argue, they are encouraged to remain
skeptical of the biographers and the subjects life stories and to critically
explore the ideas concerning womens emancipation that the two authors
lives raise. In this process Moberg becomes, in effect, both the author/
biographer and the subject of her own study.
As pointed out earlier in this chapter, Mobergs approach to Beauvoir
resembles Mois personal genealogy. Yet, her study lacks not just a
consistently authoritative author position, but equally the complex theore-
tical argumentation that characterizes Mois method. Instead, Moberg turns
the reader into a direct participant in her comparative and deconstructive
project. When Moberg presents universal claims that she later questions,
she encourages readers to reect critically on the overdetermined aspects of
both her own and Beauvoirs texts. This method, I wish to argue, mirrors
Mobergs ambivalent attitude towards feminism as a political movement in
general.
In line with Beauvoir, Moberg views womens emancipation as a highly
personal project, performed by individual women rather than a collective.
She quotes Beauvoir, who states that, the feminist idea has no monolithic
features. Every woman who participates in the struggle has her own motives,
her own point of view, her unique experiences and she presents them to us in
her particular way.266 Beauvoirs view on female emancipation complicates
the idea of feminism as a political idea or social force around which women
can and must unite. In Mobergs opinion, Beauvoirs individualistic femin-
ism liberates individual women from trying to live up to idealized, and
therefore unrealistic and too inexible, notions of female emancipation. It
is in this context that Mobergs shame about her relationship with Odulf is
perhaps best understood. Her letting go of the shame, I argue, is likely to
stem at least partly from her criticism of what she sees as the normative, even
dogmatic, aspects of all happiness projects, including feminism.267 She does
not dismiss feminism altogether, but insists that its aims can never be once
and for all decided. When womens conditions change, feminisms aims
must be redened, she argues.268 To Moberg, womens emancipation is
always a work in progress.
This emphasis on constant change is reected methodologically in
Mobergs dialectical approach to Beauvoir. Her individualistic vision of
female emancipation at rst suggests a modern feminist view of the (female)
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 185

subject as the agent of her own destiny. Partly informed by an idea of

literary friendship, the study strengthens the impression of Mobergs
feminism as decidedly modern:

The reader can get closer to [Beauvoir] after her death than anyone could
during her life time. In her writing, she talked about things that she might
not have discussed with anyone, not even those closest to her. This is why a
reader can feel so close to an author that a literary friendship is formed. This
is the story of such a friendship.269

The idea of literary friendship in biography has been addressed by numer-

ous feminist critics, usually in contexts that stress the idea of a shared female
identity.270 According to Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, a common motivation for
biographers is the fantasy of contentment, nding each other and nding
that [the fantasies of the biographer and those of the biographical subject]
seem to t together as though by designlike the two sides of an arch.271
The dream team consisting of Heilbrun and Steinem is a case in point. The
level of correspondence between Mobergs own life story and her musings on
Beauvoir suggests a similar literary friendship, based on the idea of a shared
female identity. Then again, other aspects of her study suggest that such a
friendship is nothing more than a biographical fantasy, to quote Young-
Bruehl once more.272 Mobergs denition of Beauvoir as a set of texts that
are open to erroneous interpretation throws further doubt on the uni-
versality and authenticity of this friendship, as does her poststructuralist
approach to Beauvoir, which involves a deconstruction of the image of
Beauvoir on which Moberg then project her own needs.
Despite possible disadvantages, the vacillation between modern and
poststructuralist denitions of the subject and the author allows Moberg
to explore and present feminist strategies and goals without turning them
into feminist doctrines. If I can clear up some old misunderstandings in
the case of Simone de Beauvoir, I probably contribute with just as many
new ones, she admits.273 By insisting on the utopian nature of all feminist
ideals she can refer to Beauvoirs autobiography as a rare example of an
inspirational, if still mythical, textual construction, to borrow Felskis
term. This allows her to present Beauvoir as a female role model, while
simultaneously questioning the very existence of such models. In the
process, Moberg hopes to liberate herself and presumably other
women from feelings of guilt or shame for not living up to their own
feminist principles.274
186 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

Yet the result is also a breakdown of the biographys meaning produc-

tion. In its wake, readers are left with a literary and rhetorical mise en abyme
where truth, even of a politically explicit kind, is never nally estab-
lished.275 The mise en abyme effect leaves Moberg open to the kind of
criticism that has been voiced against postmodern feminists by, among
others, Moi. From Mois point of view, Mobergs claim that all readings
of Beauvoir are equally valid is especially problematic from a political
perspective. After all, to Moi feminism is, as pointed out earlier in this
chapter, much more than a commitment to a certain style.276 Feminism
is about taking a stand, no matter how provisional.
Unlike Moi, Moberg never establishes a consistent political and
authoritative stance in her study, but this does not mean that her
approach is merely postmodern, linguistic play. Instead, her approach
illustrates her expressed belief that a role models function always origi-
nates in the needs that you have in your own life.277 The comparative
method allows her to simultaneously argue both the personal and the
political aspects of those needs. In the process, her study comes to
include the same potential contradiction[s] and productive dialectical
tension[s] that Moi identies in Simone de Beauvoirs writing.278 Of
course, Moberg is arguably not in control of the ambiguity that char-
acterizes her author position any more than Beauvoir was. The absence of
a dened political stance in the study undermines all such authority,
however temporary.
On the other hand, the dialectical tensions that characterize Mobergs
approach to Beauvoir do introduce the reader to a variety of potentially
strategically useful positions by which it might just be possible, according to
Moi, to undermine the system from within.279 Throughout her study,
Moberg makes universalist arguments that are accompanied by interpre-
tations of Beauvoir which seem based on ideas about womens particular-
ity as well as their shared female identity. At other times, she questions
modern ideas about the coherent subject, the autonomous self and the
authoritative author. As such, Moberg also questions the separation
between biographical and autobiographical truths. Her study of
Beauvoir suggests that both types of life writing are ideological and ctional
(imaginary) constructions. This denition of auto/biography corresponds
with that of other poststructuralist feminist critics of auto/biography, such
as Stanley and Sharon OBrien. Indeed, Mobergs study of Beauvoir can be
understood to exemplify the so-called intersubjective aspects of both genres.
In her auto/biography, the subject and the author emerge from a
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 187

dialectical process, by which Moberg seeks both to legitimize herself

through a dominant discourse (auto/biography) and, simultaneously, to
resist it.280
Viewed in light of Mois feminism, it could therefore be argued that
Mobergs approach is methodically more sophisticated than Mois study
of Beauvoir. Despite the absence of a theoretical apparatus, Moberg
appears simultaneously to occupy all three feminist positions, as advocated
by Moi. In addition, Moberg includes the reader in her exploration of the
unspoken and repressed rules that govern our behavior.281 A reader of
Simone och jag must decide which stories and narratives to distance
herself from, or to sympathize with. In this respect, the reader, too,
becomes a participant in the endless and ideologically informed process of
giving meaning to the life story. As such, the reader functions as yet
another example of the notion that there is no position outside ideology
from which not just to write, but to read, a life.
Mobergs study of Beauvoir, it would seem then, is as far from the
ideas informing realist biography as one can come and still talk of
biography. One could even ask whether we are still within the realms
of the genre. The long-lasting effect of reader participation is, as already
mentioned, an endless row of meaning deferrals, which appears to
conrm the claim that biography is what Epstein calls a tragic, or
impossible, genre, forever caught in the trap of its own meaning-produc-
tion.282 But to accept this claim is also to accept the strictly postmodern
viewpoint that is its premise. It is worth keeping in mind that Mobergs
study is not strictly postmodern. The postmodern position is only one of
several positions taken in her study. As such, she joins the other biogra-
phers discussed in this book, who in their distinct and conicting ways
continue to argue for and exemplify the political uses that biography
continues to serve for feminists.

NOTES
1. The concrete case is a central concept in Mois feminism. As she expresses
elsewhere, any theory of subjectivity that fails when confronted with a con-
crete case is not going to be able to tell us much of what it means to be a man or
a woman today. Toril Moi, What is A Woman? And Other Essays (Oxford:
Oxford University Press 1999), viiiix. Stanley expresses a similar opinion when
she argues that if structural analyses do not work at the level of particular lives
then they do not work at all. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 5.
188 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

2. Jean-Franois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report of Knowledge,

trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1984).
3. Kjell Jonsson, Frihet eller determinism: principiella problem i den
idhistoriska biograns genre, in Att skriva mnniskan: esser om biogran
som livshistoria och vetenskaplig genre, ed. Sune kerman, Ronny
Ambjrnsson and Pr Ringby (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1997), 8991.
4. Epstein, Introduction: Contesting the Subject, 1.
5. Ibid.
6. Johanna Essevald and Lisbeth Larsson, Inledning, in Kvinnopolitiska
nyckeltexter, ed. Johanna Essevald and Lisbeth Larsson (Lund:
Studentlitteratur, 1996), 18.
7. Toril Moi, Feminism, Postmodernism, and Style: Recent Feminist
Criticism in the United States, Cultural Critique 9 (Spring 1988): 44.
8. Poststructuralism is a loosely applied term for theories within a number of
elds, such as literary theory, linguistics, psychology and archeology.
9. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 15.
10. Lyotard, Dening the Postmodern, in The Norton Anthology: Theory and
Criticism, ed. Vincent B. Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 1612.
See also Barthes, who views writing as the destruction of every . . . point of
origin. Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1978), 142.
11. Sara Mills, Discourse (New York: Routledge, 2004), 1, 3.
12. Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge, trans. Sheridan Smith.
(London: A. M. Tavistock, 1972), 49.
13. David Howarth and Yannis Stavrakakis, The Political Construction of
Social Identities, in Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities,
Hegemonies and Social Change, ed. David Howarth et al. (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2000), 6.
14. Ibid., 3.
15. See Barthes, Image-Music-Text; and Michel Foucault, What Is an
Author?, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, in Aesthetics,
Method and Epistemology, ed. James D. Faubion (New York: The New
Press, 1998).
16. Jonsson, Frihet eller determinism, 89.
17. In Barthes words, thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is
made of multiple writing, drawn from many cultures and entering into
mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation. Barthes, Image-Music-
Text, 148.
18. Jonsson, Frihet eller determinism, 89.
19. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 6061.
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 189

20. According to Barthes, biographical discourse is uttered in the name of the

Law and/or of Violence (ibid., 84).
21. As Barthes explains it, the Doxa . . . is Public Opinion, the mind of the
majority, petit bourgeois Consensus, the Voice of Nature, the Violence of
Prejudice (ibid., 47).
22. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality I: The Will to Knowledge, trans.
Robert Hurley (London: Penguin, 1998), 95.
23. Ibid., 6.
24. Barthes claries his position thus: To write by fragments: the fragments are
then so many stones on the perimeter of a circle: I spread myself around: my
whole little universe in crumbs; at the center, what? Barthes, Roland
Barthes, 9293.
25. Epstein, (Post) Modern Lives: Abducting the Biographical Subject, 217218.
26. Ibid., 229230.
27. Ibid., 231.
28. Ibid. According to Epstein, disruptive mimicry involves exaggerating
certain feminine characteristics to reveal their constructed nature (ibid.).
29. Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 205.
30. Luce Irigaray, When Our Lips Speak Together, trans. Carolyn Burke,
Signs 6, no. 1 (Autumn 1980), 6979.
31. Julia Kristeva, Womens Time, trans. Alice Jardine and Harry Blake, Signs
7, no. 1 (Autumn 1981), 1335.
32. Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 68.
33. Ibid., 190191.
34. OBrien, Feminist Theory and Literary Biography, 129131.
35. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 249253.
36. Joan Wallach Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights
of Man (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 1516.
37. Wallach Scott warns readers that those seeking for a biographical narrative
with causal links between personal experience and individual action will not
nd them in this book (ibid., 15).
38. Wallach Scott motivates her anti-biographical approach to womens history
by arguing that agency is not an expression of autonomous individual
will, rather [it is] the effect of a historically dened process which forms
subjects (ibid., 16).
39. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 42.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., 35. See also Moi, who similarly questions linguistic disruption as
feminist strategy: It is still not clear why it is so important to show that
190 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

certain literary practices break up the structures of language when they seem
to break up little else. Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics, 171.
42. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 42.
43. Moi, Feminism, Postmodernism, and Style, 5.
44. Ibid., 6.
45. Mois italics.
46. Moi, Feminism, Postmodernism, and Style, 6.
47. See Alice Jardine, Gynesis; Congurations of Woman and Modernity
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985) and Jane Gallop, Reading
Lacan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), discussed in Moi,
Feminism, Postmodernism, and Style, 1319.
48. Moi, Feminism, Postmodernism, and Style, 12.
49. Ibid., 15. Mois italics.
50. Ibid., 7. Mois italics.
51. Ibid., 9.
52. Ibid., 7. Postfeminism (or postmodern feminism) fails, Moi argues, because
it does not take into account the other two conicting feminist discourses.
Thereby, it unwittingly enacts a scenario of exclusion and delimitation as
rigorous as any Enlightenment taxonomy (ibid., 19).
53. Ibid., 7.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 34. Mois italics.
57. Ibid., 4. Mois italics.
58. Karen Vintges, Philosophy as Passion: The Thinking of Simone De Beauvoir
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), 15.
59. Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier, Simone de Beauvoir, a Life, a Love
Story, trans. Lisa Nesselson (New York: St. Martins Press, 1987), 223225.
60. In the USA, the two philosophers gave interviews to mainstream publica-
tions such as Vogue, Time and Harpers Bazaar. In 1967, Boris Vian
observed that the popularity of the quarter Saint-Germain-Des-Prs in
Paris was due mainly to Sartre and Beauvoir. Boris Vian and Nol Arnaud,
Le Manuel De Saint-Germain-Des-Prs (1967; repr. Paris: Pauvert, 1997),
162163.
61. George Cotkin, French Existentialism and American Popular Culture,
19451948, The Historian 61, no. 2 (January 1, 1999): 327.
62. According to Cotkin, nearly everyone . . . coming of age in 1950s and
1960s America danced to the song of French existentialism. George
Cotkin, Existential America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2003), 1.
63. Hazel Rowley, Tte--Tte: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (New
York: HarperCollins, 2005), x.
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 191

64. Because the differences between the original French text and the rst
English translation are signicant, both versions are discussed in this book.
To separate the two versions, they are referred to by their respective French
and English titles when appropriate. Unless otherwise stated, the English
title refers to the 1952 translation into English, by H. M. Parsley. A second
and complete English translation was published in 2009 and translated by
Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevalier, but in this book, The
Second Sex refers to the 1952 translation only.
65. Simone de Beauvoir, After the War: Force of Circumstance I (New York:
Paragon House, 1992), 94. See also Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxime sexe I
(1949; repr. Paris: Gallimard/Folio, 2001), 14.
66. Beauvoir, Le deuxime sexe I, 2021.
67. See Beauvoirs famous statement: On ne nat pas femme: on le devient.
Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxime sexe II (1949; repr. Paris: Folio, 2001), 13.
68. Le deuxime sexe was published in two volumes. The rst volume was well
received, while the second volume caused a scandal, mainly because of its
discussion of womens sexuality. Extracts from Vol. II were rst published in
Les Temps Modernes in the June, July and August issues in 1949. Jo-Ann
Pilardi, The Changing Critical Fortunes of The Second Sex, History and
Theory 32, no. 1 (February 1993): 56. See also Beauvoir, After the War:
Force of Circumstance I, 186.
69. On the French reception of Le deuxime sexe, see Beauvoir, After the War:
Force of Circumstance I, 186193. See also Pilardi, The Changing Critical
Fortunes of The Second Sex, 56; and Francis and Gontier, Simone de
Beauvoir, 251252. For an overview of French criticism of Beauvoir in the
1990s, see Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 7392.
70. Pilardi, The Changing Critical Fortunes of The Second Sex, 5960.
71. Suggested reasons for the essays unpopularity include Beauvoirs
expressed socialist opinions and the books radical content. The essays
scientic status increased only with the publication of The Kinsey Report
in 1965, which cited The Second Sex as a source of evidence on issues
regarding human sexuality. Sandra Dijkstra, Simone de Beauvoir and
Betty Friedan: The Politics of Omission, Feminist Studies 6, no. 2
(Summer 1980): 290303. For more on Beauvoir criticism before the
feminist movement in 1970, see Pilardi, The Changing Critical
Fortunes of The Second Sex, 52.
72. According to Pilardi, The Second Sexs status as classic feminist text corre-
sponded with the womens movements increasing representation in acade-
mia. Pilardi, The Changing Critical Fortunes of The Second Sex, 6162.
Pilardi denes a classic as a text that creates a new paradigm, that is, that
virtually reorients our most basic way of viewing an object or a concept
(ibid., 52).
192 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

73. C. B. Radford, Simone de Beauvoir: Feminisms Friend or Foe?, Part II:

Nottingham, French Studies 7, no. 1 (May 1968): 44, qt. in Pilardi, The
Changing Critical Fortunes of The Second Sex, 62.
74. Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, discussed in Pilardi, The Changing Critical
Fortunes of The Second Sex, 6263.
75. Dijkstra, Simone De Beauvoir and Betty Friedan, 292.
76. For example, see Judith Sabrovsky, From Rationality to Liberation: The
Evolution of Feminist Ideology (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979),
113124; and Anne Whitmarsh, Simone De Beauvoir and the Limits of
Commitment (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
1981), 160, discussed in Pilardi, The Changing Critical Fortunes of The
Second Sex, 6264.
77. Margaret Simons, Beauvoir and the Second Sex: Feminism, Race and the Origins
of Existentialism (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleeld, 1999), 61.
78. See, for instance, Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 157, n281 and n282. She points
out that the philosophical incompetence of the [1952] translation pro-
duces a text that is damaging to Beauvoirs intellectual reputation in parti-
cular and to the reputation of feminist philosophy in general. Toril Moi,
While We Wait: The English Translation of The Second Sex, Signs 27,
no. 4 (Summer 2002): 1007.
79. The 2009 English translation of Le deuxime sexe has been subjected to
criticism as well. See, for example, Toril Moi, The Adulteress Wife,
London Review of Books 32, no. 3 (February 11, 2010): 36.
80. Pilardi, The Changing Critical Fortunes of The Second Sex, 65.
81. See Jean Leighton, Simone De Beauvoir on Women (Rutherford, NJ:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1975), 29, 40 and Dorothy
Kaufmann McCall, Simone De Beauvoir: The Second Sex, and Jean-Paul
Sartre, Signs 5, no. 2 (Winter 1979): 209223, footnoted in Pilardi, The
Changing Critical Fortunes of The Second Sex, 65.
82. According to Moi, Beauvoir describes pregnancy as a state of passivity or
immanence (an existentialist term that equates to living in bad
faith) in Le deuxime sexe. In contrast, mens actions, particularly risk-
ing their lives (e.g. in war), signify transcendence of the present state
and are therefore acts of good faith, or examples of authentic living.
The belief that Le deuxime sexe presents an argument against mother-
hood, Moi continues, is an example of the many misconceptions caused
by the mistranslation of the original French text. She writes: Once I
took at look at the translation of the passages concerning mothers and
motherhood in [Le deuxime sexe] I realized that Parsleys translation
techniques have a lot to do with [the widespread impression that the
book is hostile to motherhood.] . . . I cant nd any advocacy of child-
lessness in [Le deuxime sexe]. Moi, While We Wait, 10251026. For
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 193

an explanation of Beauvoirs use of the terms good and bad faith in

an existentialist context, see Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of
Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Citadel Press, 1976.
83. Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Gender-Specic Values, The Philosophical
Forum 15, no. 4 (Summer 1984): 425442, quoted in Pilardi, The
Changing Critical Fortunes of The Second Sex, 66.
84. Naomi Green, Sartre, Sexuality, and The Second Sex, Philosophy and
Literature 4, no. 2 (Fall 1980): 199211.
85. See Irving Singer, The Nature of Love, Vol. 3: The Modern World (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 312316, mentioned in Pilardi,
The Changing Critical Fortunes of The Second Sex, 70. Ann Ferguson
observes that Beauvoirs description of lesbianism similarly lacks a social and
historical base, which reduces her denition of lesbianism to a matter of
choice. Ann Ferguson, Lesbian Identity: Beauvoir and History, in
Hypatia Reborn: Essays in Feminist Philosophy, ed. Azizah al-hibri and
Margaret A. Simons (Bloomington, MN: Bloomington and Indianapolis
University Press, 1990), 280289, mentioned in Pilardi, The Changing
Critical Fortunes of The Second Sex, 69.
86. Singer, The Nature of Love, 313, qt. in Pilardi, The Changing Critical
Fortunes of The Second Sex, 70.
87. Judith Okely, Simone de Beauvoir (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 71.
88. Eva Lundgren-Gothlin, Sex and Existence: Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex,
trans. Linda Schenck (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996), 14.
89. Pilardi argues that Beauvoirs emphasis on the psychological differences
between the sexes prophesized some of the ideas brought forth by later
French feminists, such as Luce Irigaray, Hlne Cixous and Julia Kristeva.
Pilardi, The Changing Critical Fortunes of The Second Sex, 6869.
90. Ibid., 55.
91. Ibid., 56.
92. Pilardi refers to a 19491986 bibliography, complied by Joy Bennett and
Gabriella Hochmann, where The Second Sex leads with 114 entries (the
number of citations in critical works until 1987), but is closely followed by
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, with ninety-six entries. See Joy Bennett and
Gabriella Hochmann, Simone de Beauvoir: An Annotated Bibliography
(New York: Garland Publishing, 1988), discussed in Pilardi, The
Changing Critical Fortunes of The Second Sex, 55.
93. After a memorial service of Beauvoir sponsored by the feminist group
Redstockings, Carol Ascher wrote that most of the women who spoke after
the memorial, if they mentioned Beauvoir at all, admitted to not having read
much of her work. Carol Ascher, Simone de Beauvoir: Mother of Us All,
Social Text, no. 17 (1987): 109. Nancy Bauer observes that the study of
Beauvoir in feminist theory classes usually consists of reading the
194 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

Introduction and maybe another chapter of The Second Sex . . . as though

Beauvoirs writing were theoretically pass and of purely historical interest.
Nancy Bauer, Must We Read Simone De Beauvoir?, in The Legacy of Simone
de Beauvoir, ed. Emily R. Grosholz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006),
116. The initial dismissal of existentialism as a fashionable philosophy by
American academics might have contributed to an unfavorable perception of
Beauvoir. In the New York Magazine from 1947, Sartre and Beauvoirs early
bohemianism is already described as a thing of the past: Sartre is a pontiff, de
Beauvoir a well-groomed literary lady who has abandoned hand-knitted hose
for the sheerest nylons. John L. Brown, Chief Prophet of the Existentialists:
Sartre of the Left Bank Has a Philosophy that Provokes both Sermons and
Fistghts, New York Magazine, February 2, 1947, 20, qt. in Cotkin, French
Existentialism, 327.
94. Moberg, Simone och jag, 11.
95. Ann Curthoys, Adventures of Feminism: Simone De Beauvoirs
Autobiographies, Womens Liberation and Self-Fashioning, Feminist
Review 64, no. 1, Feminism 2000 One Step Beyond? (Spring 2000): 4.
96. The universal aspects of her autobiographical writing are stressed by
Beauvoir herself: On the one hand this I, when I use it, is also a female
I . . . the I that I use is universal, it concerns a large number of women.
Moberg, Simone och jag, 112. Here, Moberg quotes from Simone de
Beauvoir, Les crits de Simone de Beauvoir, la vielcriture, Avec en appen-
dice Textes indits ou retrouvs, ed. Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier
(Paris: Gallimard, 1979), 451. Les crits de Simone de Beauvoir has not been
published in English.
97. Moberg emphasizes the importance of Beauvoirs autobiography: She had
the courage to insist on a place in literature, why not in history? Moberg,
Simone och jag, 271. Beauvoirs ve-volume autobiography was published
between 1958 and 1972. It has been translated into English as Simone de
Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, trans. James Kirkup (London:
Penguin, 1963); The Prime of Life, 19291944, trans. Peter Green (New
York: Paragon House, 1992); Force of Circumstance I: After The War,
19441952; Force of Circumstance II: Hard Times, 19521963, trans. Peter
Green (New York: Paragon House, 1992); and All Said and Done, 1962
1972, trans. Patrick OBrien (1974; repr. New York: Paragon House, 1993).
98. Curthoys, Adventures of Feminism, 3.
99. Curthoys refers to an Australian readership, but the number of critical works
on the autobiography suggests that the American and European readers
have consisted mainly of equally young, university-educated women, who
ended up writing about her professionally.
100. Curthoys, Adventures of Feminism, 12.
101. Ibid., 13.
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 195

102. Ibid.
103. See, for example, Pierre/Franoise in She Came to Stay, and Henri/Paula
and Anne/Robert in The Mandarins.
104. Francis and Gontier, Simone de Beauvoir, 23.
105. Joint biography of Sartre and Beauvoir suggests that their two lives are often
interpreted in relation to each other. For example, see Axel Madsen, Hearts
and Minds: The Common Journey of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul
Sartre (New York: William Morrow, 1977); Kate Fullbrook and Edward
Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a
Twentieth-Century Legend (New York: Basic, 1994); and Rowley, Tte--
Tte. The American title to Francis and Gontiers biography of Beauvoir,
Simone de Beauvoir: a Life, a Love Story, also plays up the love story element.
106. Carol Ascher, Simone de Beauvoir: A Life of Freedom (Boston, MA: Beacon,
1981), 1.
107. Beauvoir died before the project could be realized. Bair, Simone de
Beauvoir, 16.
108. See Simone de Beauvoir, Journal de Guerre: septembre 1939 janvier 1941, ed.
Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1990); Simone de Beauvoir, Letters
to Sartre 19401963, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare (New York: Arcade
Publishing, 1991); Simone de Beauvoir, A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to
Nelson Algren, ed. Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, trans. Ellen Gordon Reeves (New
York: New Press, 1998); Simone de Beauvoir, Correspondance croise: Simone de
Beauvoir et Jacques-Laurent Bost, 19371940, ed. Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir
(Paris: Gallimard, 2004); Jean-Paul Sartre, Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-
Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir, 19401963, trans. Lee Fahnestock and
Norman MacAfee (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1992); Jean-Paul
Sartre, War Diaries: November 1939March 1940, trans. Quintin Hoare
(1983; repr. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984); and Jean-Paul Sartre,
Carnets de la drle de guerre, Septembre 1939Mars 1940, ed. Arlette Elkam-
Sartre (Paris: Gallimard, 1995). Francis and Gontier based their biography
mainly on the tracing down of the handwritten, [then] unpublished letters
between Simone de Beauvoir and the American author Nelson Algren, with
whom she had fallen in love. Francis and Gontier, Simone de Beauvoir, ix.
Rowley based her joint biography of Sartre and Beauvoir primarily on published
and unpublished letters. Her interpretation of the effect the letters had on the
publics perception of the couple corresponds with mine: In recent years, Sartre
and Beauvoir have continued to divulge their tangled secrets from beyond their
graves. Beauvoirs love letters to Nelson Algren . . . astonished readers. Her
correspondence with Jacques-Laurent Bost . . . surprised readers again.
Rowley, Tte--Tte, xiv.
109. Curthoys, Adventures of Feminism, 10.
110. Mary Evans, Simone de Beauvoir (London: Sage Publications, 1996), 45.
196 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

111. Curthoys, Adventures of Feminism, 15.

112. Ellen Willis, No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (Middleton, CT:
Wesleyan University Press, 1992), 162163, qt. in Curthoys, Adventures
of Feminism, 15.
113. Curthoys, Adventures of Feminism, 15.
114. Lyotard, Dening the Postmodern, 1613.
115. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 2.
116. Ibid., 3.
117. Ibid., 1.
118. To Moi, Simone de Beauvoir was more purely an intellectual . . . than any
other woman of her era. She also became an intellectual in France at a time
when intellectuals were considered important members of society (ibid., 1).
119. Ibid., 3. Moi refers to The Second Sex in her biography of Beauvoir, but she
bases her analyses on Le deuxime sexe, which is why I use the original
French title in conjunction with her study.
120. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 3.
121. Ibid., 7.
122. Ibid., 4.
123. Ibid., 7.
124. Ibid.
125. Ibid., 4. Moi also reads texts about Beauvoir, which she nds condition the
perception of her subjects texts in themselves (ibid., 6).
126. Ibid., 5.
127. Ibid., 7.
128. Moi understands the making of her subject in three ways. First, she focuses on
Beauvoirs education, or more precisely the educational structures that pro-
duced her as a philosopher and an intellectual in the rst third of this century.
Second, she studies the works that made Beauvoir a major twentieth-century
intellectual, as well as the works that explain how she managed to make it as an
intellectual in the rst place. Third, Moi speaks of Beauvoir as an intellectual
woman in a more general sense, as an extraordinary complex effect of a whole
network of different discourses or determinants (ibid., 6).
129. Ibid., 7.
130. Ibid., 8.
131. According to Moi, the term overdeterminism was used by Freud to argue
the complexities of the human psyche. In Mois study it refers to textuality as
an overdetermined process (ibid., 7).
132. Ibid.
133. Moi, Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieus
Sociology of Culture, New Literary History 22, no. 4, Papers from the
Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change (Autumn 1991):
1018.
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 197

134. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 78.

135. Ibid., 7.
136. Moi sees such readings as especially rewarding: To read an overdetermined
textual element, then, is to point to its potential plurality of meaning . . . There is
nothing reductive in this procedure (ibid., 78).
137. Moi, Appropriating Bourdieu, 10281029.
138. Moi mentions the following generalizable factors that help to explain my
interest in Beauvoir. There are, rst, my political afnities with the kind of
materialist feminism she represents; second, my need to reect on my own
identity as an intellectual woman; third, the fact that I was never socialized
to accept the high bourgeois standards of taste that tend to make Beauvoir
unpalatable to many, and fourth, the effects of geography. Moi, Simone de
Beauvoir, 10.
139. Ibid., 213.
140. Materialist feminists tend to disagree on the precise denition of the term
materialist feminism. There is particular disagreement regarding the pre-
cise relationship among materialist feminism, Marxist feminism and socialist
feminism. Toril Moi and Janice Radway, Editors Note, South Atlantic
Quarterly 93, no. 4, Special Issue: Materialist Feminism (Fall 1994): 749.
141. Wicke, Celebrity Material, 385.
142. Ibid., 385.
143. Moi, Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieus
Sociology of Culture, 1020.
144. Ibid., 1021.
145. Ibid.
146. Ibid., 1037.
147. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 5.
148. Moi, Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieus
Sociology of Culture, 10191020.
149. Ibid., 1020.
150. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 174175.
151. Ibid., 30.
152. Im no longer sure what I think, nor whether I can be said to think at all.
Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, 344.
153. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 30.
154. Ibid., 28.
155. Ibid., 30.
156. Michle LeDoeuff, Hipparchias Choice: An Essay Concerning Women,
Philosophy, Etc., trans. Trista Selous (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 135137,
discussed in Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 15.
157. According to Moi, [m]any critics, misled by the fact that [Sartre and
Beauvoir] sat the same examination in 1929, apparently believe that [the
198 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

ENS] is where they met. In fact, Beauvoir attended Sorbonne. Moi, Simone
de Beauvoir, 4849.
158. This exam was open to students both from the ENS and Sorbonne (ibid., 48).
Moi observes that the philosophy subject was described as virginal in the
exam, waiting to be penetrated by the supposedly male philosophy student.
In her study of the French reception of both Le deuxime sexe and Beauvoirs
other writing, she demonstrates how Beauvoirs femaleness is always central in
the different topoi by which French (male) critics have attempted to discredit
the author and her work (ibid., 58).
159. Ibid., 56.
160. Ibid., 65.
161. Ibid., 66.
162. Moi, Feminism, Postmodernism, and Style, 57.
163. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 66.
164. Ibid., 68. Mois italics are removed.
165. Ibid., 194, 68. Mois italics. According to Moi, refusing girls and women access
to the universal is at the heart of an unequal society: Sexism, for Beauvoir,
consists in refusing womenand little girlsaccess to the universal. As long as
women continue to be dened as the particular, she argues, men and women
will tend to develop different sets of values and attitudes, even when it comes to
intellectual and philosophical choices (ibid., 194).
166. Ibid., 67, 145.
167. Ibid., 145146. Moi reads the nished essay, Le deuxime sexe, as more
transparently autobiographical than, for example, Sartres philosophical
texts.
168. Ibid., 146.
169. Ibid., 68.
170. Moi argues the startling originality of Le deuxime sexe by pointing out
that in France in 1949, womens issues were not central to the political
agenda of any major party or faction, nor was there an independent womens
movement outside the established parties; in this historical context, The
Second Sex is nothing short of unique (ibid., 189190).
171. Ibid., 155. In other words, women under patriarchy are torn between states
of freedom and alienation (ibid., 156).
172. In Beauvoirs theory, some (independent) women paradoxically become
more authentically human than men, because women occupy the space of
both subject and object. Moi reads this argument as overdetermined and
deeply indebted to Beauvoirs tendency to idealize (and thereby dehuma-
nize) men and their position in society (ibid., 155).
173. Ibid., 198.
174. Moi mentions the social instigation of maternity leave as an example of
concrete equality (ibid., 209). According to Wicke, there are areas of
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 199

material interest in the fact that women can bear children . . . Materialist
feminism . . . is less likely than social constructionism to be embarrassed by
the occasional material importance of sex differences. Wicke, Celebrity
Material, 392. Moi also stresses that nothing in particular follows from the
recognition of biological difference, since . . . the meaning of that difference
is never given but always to be constructed anew. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir,
172. Mois italics.
175. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 213.
176. Ibid., 144.
177. Ibid.
178. Ibid., 211212.
179. In other words, Beauvoir views womens revolution as a slow and contra-
dictory process, the one truly non-violent revolution in history (ibid., 208).
180. Ibid.
181. Ibid., 213.
182. Ibid., 208.
183. Ibid., 217.
184. Curthoys, Adventures of Feminism, 4.
185. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 255. According to Moi, the woman in love is a
recurring and overdetermined gure in Beauvoirs texts (ibid.).
186. Ibid., 254. Moi further argues that our interest in [Beauvoirs] love life is
not fortuitous (ibid., 255).
187. There is, Moi observes, an extraordinary consistent vision of freedom in
The Second Sex (ibid., 185).
188. Ibid., 209.
189. Ibid.
190. Ibid., 198.
191. Ibid., 253.
192. Ibid.
193. Ibid., 191.
194. Ibid., 208.
195. Ibid., 198.
196. Despite her economic and social independence, Beauvoir still displayed the
most painful conicts and contradictions when it comes to asserting emo-
tional autonomy or intellectual independence in relation to Sartre. Moi,
Appropriating Bourdieu, 1032. Moi acknowledges that these problems
could be interpreted from a psychoanalytic perspective, but argues that
they should also . . . be grasped as the political effects of the socially con-
structed habitus of a bourgeois woman brought up in Paris in the 1910s and
1920s (ibid., 1033). Mois italics.
197. Beauvoir, Le deuxime sexe II, 616, trans. and qt. in Moi, Simone de
Beauvoir, 199.
200 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

198. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 256.

199. According to Moi, the discovery of what Beauvoirs life was really like
makes it difcult to continue to imagine that perfect satisfaction is to be had
in this world: perhaps it is not only Beauvoir who has some difculty in
coming to terms with the reality principle, but her readers as well (ibid.,
254255).
200. Ibid., 254.
201. Ibid., 257.
202. Ibid.
203. Moi, Appropriating Bourdieu, 1017.
204. Ibid., 1029.
205. Ibid.
206. Ibid.
207. Ibid., 1034. Mois italics removed.
208. Ibid.
209. Ibid., 10281029.
210. Ibid., 1036. Pierre Bourdieus theory permits the materialist feminist critic to
grasp the immense variability of gender as a social factor (ibid., 10351036).
211. Ibid., 1040.
212. Ibid.
213. Diana Knight, What Is a Woman? And Other Essays by Toril Moi, MLN
115, no. 4, French Issue (September 2000): 829. Knight quotes Moi, What
Is a Woman?, 302.
214. Knight, What Is a Woman?, 829.
215. Moi, Appropriating Bourdieu, 1028.
216. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 8.
217. Moi, Feminism, Postmodernism, and Style, 7.
218. Ibid.
219. Stanley, The Autobiographical I, 17.
220. Stanley, The Autobiographical I, 121.
221. Ibid.
222. Elaine Marks, Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman,
South Central Review 14, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 95.
223. Ibid.
224. Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 84.
225. Ibid., 8788.
226. Ibid., 87.
227. Marks, Simone de Beauvoir, 96.
228. Moberg, Simone och jag, 11.
229. Ibid., 11.
230. Ibid., 9.
231. Essevald and Larsson, Inledning, 18.
 DECONSTRUCTING THE LIFEFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST BIOGRAPHY 201

232. Ibid., 18. Moberg, Simone och jag, 50.

233. Ibid., 59.
234. According to Moberg, Odulf had strong opinions about everything,
including details in my life (ibid., 193).
235. Ibid., 9.
236. Ibid., 76. Moberg admits that she played a free and independent woman,
which I dont think I could have managed for a second if he hadnt stood by
me . . . I had to pretend that he didnt exist. The admission offers clues to
what caused her to feel shame, namely a lack of independence (ibid., 77).
237. Bairs biography seems to have had a particularly strong effect on Moberg.
When she read Deirdre Bairs biography of Beauvoir in 1990, it was a relief
to discover that this megastar in the category of independent women had
lived in a lifelong relationship of emotional dependency, never revealing its
inequality to the world (ibid., 78).
238. Ibid., 202.
239. Ibid., 117.
240. Ibid., 87.
241. Ibid., 57.
242. Ibid., 33.
243. Moberg believes that the pact required hypocrisy in order to be upheld.
The diaries and the letters reveal a systematic lying (ibid., 120).
244. Ibid., 61.
245. Evans, Missing Persons, 45.
246. Moberg, Simone och jag, 38.
247. Ibid., 190.
248. Ibid., 223.
249. Ibid., 189.
250. Ibid. Moberg argues that there is no shame in being dependent on others.
Only stupid people try to remain independent (ibid., 219).
251. Here, Mobergs defense of Beauvoir resembles Heilbruns defense of
Steinem. Moberg writes: Simone de Beauvoir had the courage and the
fantasy to create a completely new role for women. Partly, it had to consist
of lies (ibid., 78).
252. To me, Moberg writes, Beauvoirs unique talent for happiness sounds
more like a political statement than a personal point of view (ibid., 78).
253. Ibid., 94.
254. Ibid., 191.
255. Ibid.
256. Ibid., 11.
257. Ibid.
258. Sharon OBrien, Feminist Theory and Literary Biography, 126.
259. Moberg, Simone och jag, 168.
202 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

260. Ibid., 160.

261. Ibid., 96.
262. Ibid., 77.
263. Ibid., 22.
264. Gale Bell Chevigny warns that the confusions about the personal in [fem-
inist] theory risks making feminist biographers more susceptible to uncri-
tical identication with their subjects. Gale Bell Chevigny, Daughters
Writing: Toward a Theory of Womens Biography, Feminist Studies 9,
no.1 (Spring 1983): 81.
265. Moberg, Simone och jag, 160.
266. Beauvoir, Les crits de Simone de Beauvoir, 518, qt. in Moberg, Simone och
jag, 54.
267. Moberg points to the underlying inequality behind many happiness pro-
jects. The dream of the exemplary self, as part of a larger social vision, must
be understood in the context of antiquated beliefs in authority. Educated
people with a social conscience seem to have taken for granted their posi-
tions as role models, she observes. Moberg, Simone och jag, 90.
268. Ibid., 116.
269. Ibid., 1112.
270. For example, see Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, Friendship between
Women: The Act of Feminist Biography, Feminist Studies 11, no. 2
(Summer 1985): 287305.
271. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Subject to Biography: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and
Writing Womens Lives (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 2.
272. Ibid.
273. Moberg, Simone och jag, 220.
274. Moberg expresses it thus: I was happy. Suddenly I thought I understood one of
the conditions for equality between the sexes: It is a dream (ibid., 78).
275. See also Barthes, who argues that everything comes back, but it comes back as
Fiction, i.e., at another turn of the spiral. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 6869.
276. Moi, Feminism, Postmodernism, and Style, 17.
277. Moberg, Simone och jag, 191.
278. Moi, Feminism, Postmodernism, and Style, 6.
279. Ibid.
280. See also Nussbaum, The Autobiographical Subject, 179.
281. Moi, Feminism, Postmodernism, and Style, 22.
282. Epstein, (Post) Modern Lives, 228.
 CHAPTER 6

Conclusion

This book set out to discover how biographers and their subjects have
responded to some of the challenges and possibilities involved in writing
feminist lives. In 2013 it was fty years since The Feminine Mystique,
Betty Friedans groundbreaking study of the American suburban house-
wifes plight, was rst published. When the semi-centennial was cele-
brated in the national news, several critics pointed out that the books
description of Friedan as an ordinary housewife was not telling the
whole truth, but purposefully excluded her background as a former
left-wing journalist. Daniel Horowitzs biography seemed to have done
its job well, and this time its subject was not around to contradict it;
Betty Friedan died in 2006. Womens life stories have played a crucial
role in modern feminisms development, but as the example of Friedan
demonstrates, stories of womens lives have also been used to question
and discredit feminism. By insisting on a story that highlights Friedans
socialist past at the expense of her feminism, Horowitz could dismiss the
life story, as told by Friedan herself, as well as the feminist analysis in The
Feminine Mystique. In his account of Friedans life, gender appears
irrelevant.
A gender perspective in biography is, of course, no guarantee that the
subjects expressed understanding of her life is respected, as shown in my
readings of Judith Hennessees biography of Friedan and Christine Wallaces
life of Germaine Greer. Under the guise of authorial objectivity,
Hennessee and Wallace set out to undermine their respective subjects

The Author(s) 2016 203

M. Lidstrm Brock, Writing Feminist Lives, Breaking Feminist Waves,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47178-5_6
204 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

political outlook, either by questioning an existing life story, as in the case of

Hennessee, or by establishing such a story in the rst place, as in Wallaces
case. From a perspective that stresses the signicance of individual womens
agency and right to their own life story, however fragmentary or contra-
dictory, these two biographies are problematic, but to dismiss them as
serving no feminist purpose is to ignore the ideological struggle taking
place between their covers. The struggles between versions of the life por-
trayed take interesting shapes, to borrow Liz Stanleys term once more, in
these biographies. Gaps and inconsistencies in the narrative framework make
visible the two biographers feminist outlook and draw attention to the
constructed nature of all life writing.
The narrative gaps in their biographies reveal Hennessees and
Wallaces reliance on what Carolyn Steedman refers to as a prevalent
myth in biography of women, namely the isolated womans emancipation,
or failure at emancipation, through a conict with her father. The mythi-
cal, or ctional, aspects of biography come to the fore in two contrasting
biographical approaches to Gloria Steinem. Sydney Ladensohn Sterns
acknowledgment of the central function storytelling plays in the modern
feminist project allows her to dene Steinem as the unwitting victim of
dominant social and psychological forces, while simultaneously presenting
her as a feminist role model through her talent for inspirational story-
telling. Sterns dismissal of Steinems version of her life as ction exem-
plies the realist biographers usurpation of the subjects life story in
objective terms, but exposes Sterns biography to the same kind of
criticism that she voices against Steinem. In contrast, Carolyn G.
Heilbruns presentation of Steinem as an active, autonomous subject
depends almost entirely on a sympathetic reading of Steinems own
life story. By stressing the ctional aspects of auto/biography, Stern and
Heilbrun can present Steinem as an idealif contradictorysubject, but
only at the expense of a biographical truth that they remain unwilling to
entirely forsake.
The difference between Sterns and Heilbruns accounts is not just a
conict between distinct biographical approaches to Steinems life, but a
conict between the feminist perspectives that motivate their respective
uses of the genre. In Chapter 5 I explored biographies whose authors
explicitly acknowledge the relationship between their feminist views and
their biographical method. In Toril Mois and sa Mobergs respective
studies of Simone de Beauvoir, the subject is not so much a historical
agent, the author of her own story, or the passive, unconscious victim of
 CONCLUSION 205

invisible social and psychological structures, as a textual network, exem-

plifying several subject positions simultaneously. To present the dialectical
potentials of such a complex subject position, the biographers openly
admit to the possibility of being similarly conicted. The result is bio-
graphy only temporarily saved by its own critical perspective. While the
short-term benets are politically potent, a longer-lasting effect is an end-
less row of meaning deferrals, which suggests that biography is what
Epstein refers to as a tragic genre, forever caught in the trap of its
own meaning-production. But is it? Mobergs biography of Beauvoir
suggests that the highly subjective misreading of texts that we all per-
form will have effects beyond those imagined by either the feminist subject
or her biographer. Such misreadings are not limited to poststructuralist
biography, of course, but are arguably taking place in the encounter with
all biography.
The aim of Writing Feminist Lives has been to explore biographys
feminist potentials through a study of seven biographies of Betty Friedan,
Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem and Simone de Beauvoir. My reading of
the 1990s biographies of these modern feminists has meant to illustrate
not just the genres versatility per se, but the specic uses it can and has
been put to by biographers (and their subjects) who wish to write the
feminist life. As pointed out in the Introduction, the purpose of this book
has not been to trace an upward trajectory from bad modern biography
to good poststructuralist biography. Rather, it has been to answer
questions about feminisms relationship to biography, questions that
appeared around the same time as the biographies discussed in this book
were rst published. In 1992, for example, Liz Stanley asked:

However, is the fact that a text is feminist authored or about a feminist

subject sufcient to dene it as feminist auto/biography? Is the form or
structure of what is written as feminist auto/biography, not just the subject
who forms the bones of its content, actually different from any other auto/
biography? My response is that it is, or rather could be, different.1

My own belated response to Stanleys question is in agreement with her

second, moderated, reply. Feminist biography can be different from
other biography, which Stanley elsewhere denes as realist biography,
but it does not have to be. Nor does the subjects previous biographical
recognition as a feminist spokesperson guarantee that her biographer will
be sympathetic to that recognition or, indeed, to feminism in general.
206 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

The subjects biographical recognition must nevertheless be taken

into account by the biographer and as such, it will leave traces behind
in the nished biography, traces waiting to be identied by readers,
no matter how mistaken they might be in their own misreading of
the life.
Despite a relative dearth of contemporary feminists biographies since
the 1990s, there are signs that the battles outlined in this book are still
taking place. Womens life stories, especially stories by white Western
women in the (popular) media, continue to be a means by which to
exemplify and advocate a feminist outlook on the world and the self.
Equally, these womens life stories continue to offer ammunition for
attacks on feminism. The twenty-rst century has seen bestselling auto-
biographies by a new generation of celebrity feminists, such as American
lm maker, actor and producer Lena Dunham and British columnist and
music critic Caitlin Moran.2 Both women are commonly referred to as
spokespersons for contemporary feminism and both womens autobiogra-
phies have been criticized by other feminists and anti-feminists alike.3
Specically, their autobiographical accounts have been reinterpreted
by critics to undermine the two womens biographical recognition as
feminist spokespersons. It remains to been seen whether Dunhams and
Morans fame will eventually result in longer biography, and what kind of
feminist or anti-feminist battles will be fought within those texts.
The publicity afforded Dunham and Moran suggest that feminist dis-
courses in the public are still dominated by white, heterosexual women. It
must be stressed that my focus on the biographies of white, Western and
heterosexual feminists in this book does not imply that these are the only
feminist lives worth historicizing, even though the appearance of these
particular biographies at a time when modern feminist history rst came
under scrutiny falsely suggests that they are. Rather, my preoccupation
with the seven biographies stems at least partly from curiosity about the
reasons for these particular biographies appearance (and no others) at a
time when feminism and biography were both being reconsidered. In the
rst decade of the 2000s, long-overdue biographies of Alice Walker,
Audre Lorde, Bella Abzug and Florynce Kennedy were published. While
biographer Evelyn C. Whites socio-historical approach results in a sym-
pathetic approach to Walkers life, much like Sherie M. Randolphs
account of Florynce Kennedy, Audre Lordes biographer, Alexis De
Vaux, aims to demystify the mythic identity that Lorde supposedly
created for herself.4 On their part, editors Susan Braun Levine and Mary
 CONCLUSION 207

Thom have compiled interviews and extracts from Abzugs unpublished

memoirs and writing into what critics call a unique oral history char-
acterized by fragmentation and multiple viewpoints.5 Together, these
biographies widen the understanding of the women who contributed to
the development of the modern womens movement in the USA and offer
a more diverse account of modern feminism (mainly through the inclusion
of black and lesbian feminist perspectives) than I have presented here, yet
they also seem to participate in battles not dissimilar from those taking
place in and among the biographies discussed in this book.
So where do debates over biography go after the poststructuralist and
post-humanist dissemination of the genre? The proliferation of biography
indicates that the genre has continued to develop in the directions taken in
the seven biographies discussed in this book. Realist biography still dom-
inates the eld, although experimental biography is also being published.
Although digital technology enables new biographical structures (inter-
active and dispersed) and subject choices representing hitherto margin-
alized groups (not white, poor, female, queer, disabled), research suggests
that sites such as Wikipedia, where a quarter of its 4.5 million pages in
English are biographical, continue to produce digital life narratives domi-
nated by Enlightenment ideas about the subject as not only notable, but
coherent and autonomous.6 As Anna Poletti and Julie Rak have
discovered, the conditions of Internet subjectivity remain indebted to
classical liberalism.7 In other words, Wikipedia entries, too, are or risk
becoming, politically contested areas. This is made visible in discussions
taking place in the so-called back pages of entries, where editors are invited
to make and justify changes to the text. To use the example of Friedan
once again, in June 2016 an editorial disagreement occurred whether to
include a reference from an article by David Horowitz (not to be confused
with Friedans biographer Daniel Horowitz) in which it was claimed that
Friedan was a liar and that she had concealed her past as a Stalinist
Marxist.8 Although a less potentially inammatory reference to Daniel
Horowitzs biography was kept, the reference to David Horowitzs articles
was removed, suggesting that the biographical recognition of Betty
Friedan is a contested subject also online.
Finally, the new interest in so-called bioction, or the ctionalization of
(historical) lives, points to an alternative direction for writing the feminist
life.9 Bioction adds weight to the notion that biographers and novelists
use the same rhetorical devices, strategies and techniques and supports the
claim that biographies are really novels in disguise.10 Fiction allows the
208 M. LIDSTRM BROCK

biographer to portray the inside of his characters, the undocumentable

inside.11 Equally important to remember, of course, is what the biographi-
cal adds to the ctional. Writing lives, especially feminist lives, as this book
has made clear, means always engaging in debates over meaning and truth,
no matter in which genre these debates appear.

NOTES
1. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, 247.
2. The reference to celebrity feminism is a reference to the discussion in
Chapter 3 of this book, regarding the mechanics behind Germaine Greers
biographical recognition. Dunhams and Morans feminism has developed
in the celebrity sphere, making them vulnerable to charges of inconsistency
and exhibitionism. As if to conrm this, Morans autobiography How to Be a
Woman has been called Germaine Greers The Female Eunuch as written
from a bar stool. Brendan ONeill, Caitlin Moran Knows How to Be a
Woman and You Dont: Popular Feminist Yuk-fest is Really a Class-based
Etiquette Book. Reason.com, 17 July, 2012, http://reason.com/
archives/2012/07/17/caitlin-moran-knows-how-to-be-a-woman-an.).
3. Dunham and Moran have been criticized by other feminists as white women of
privilege, and accused of insensitivity towards the plights of women of color and
transgender people. Kjerstin Johnson, Why I Didnt Run the Caitlin Moran
Interview, Bitchmedia.com, October 23, 2012, https://bitchmedia.org/
post/why-i-didnt-run-the-caitlin-moran-interview. They have also been sub-
jects of anti-feminist criticism. In Not that Kind of Girl, Dunhams account of a
childhood sexual episode with her younger sister has resulted in accusations of
child molestation. Bradford Thomas, Lena Dunham Describes Sexually
Abusing Her Little Sister, Truthrevolt.org, October 29, 2014, http://
www.truthrevolt.org/news/lena-dunham-describes-sexually-abusing-her-
toddler-sister. Moran, on her part, has been accused of class contempt and a
Victorian sensibility in her autobiographically informed book, How to Be a
Woman, where she discusses, among other things, pornographys inuence on
contemporary British working-class attitudes to sexuality ONeill, Caitlin
Moran Knows How to Be a Woman and You Dont.
4. Evelyn C. White, Alice Walker: A Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004);
Sherie M. Randolph: Florynce Flo Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist
Radical (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015); and
Alexis De Veaux, Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde (New York: W.
W. Norton, 2004).
5. Susan Braun Levine and Mary Thom, eds., Bella Abzug: How One Tough
Broad from the Bronx Fought Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy
 CONCLUSION 209

Carter, Battled for the Rights of Women and Workers, Rallied against War
and for the Planet, and Shook Up Politics along the Way (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2007).
6. Pamela Graham, An Encyclopedia, Not an Experiment in Democracy:
Wikipedia Biographies, Authorship and the Wikipedia Subject, Biography 38,
no. 2 (Spring 2015): 222. Despite Wikipedias expressed democratic aims, the
site expressly requires biographical subjects to be notable (that is, be biogra-
phically recognizable to its readership) (ibid., 226). Although anyone can add
to a Wikipedia entry, the sites authors are ranked hierarchically, according to
individual status and familiarity with the sites structure. Indeed, Wikipedias
own study implies that the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia authors are
white males in their thirties, who live in Europe or the USA. The study further
concludes that only 9% of contributors to Wikipedia are women (ibid., 229
230). Finally, the sites visual style, its rhetoric of order, results in the presenta-
tion of subjects as coherent and stable (ibid., 232).
7. Anna Poletti and Julie Rak, Introduction: Digital Dialogues, in Identity
Technologies: Constructing the Self Online, ed. Anna Poletti and Julie Rak
(Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 4.
8. David Horowitz, Feminisms Dirty Secret, Jewish World Review, June 12,
2000, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/horowitz061200.asp. The
reference to David Horowitzs article rst appeared in the Wikipedia entry
Betty Friedan at 21:52, on June 7, 2016. The revision (which removed the
reference entirely) took place at 22:44 on June 7, 2016. See Betty Friedan:
Difference between Revisions, Wikpedia.com, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/
index.php?title=Betty_Friedan&diff=prev&oldid=724227570.
9. The proliferation of authors writing bioction includes familiar names, such
as Julia Alvarez, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, J. M. Coetzee, Michael
Cunningham, Anne Enright, David Lodge, Hilary Mantel and Joyce Carol
Oates.
10. Michael Lackey, The Rise of the American Biographical Novel, in
Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists, ed.
Michael Lackey (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 2; and Jay Parini, Some
Necessary Angels (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 252. See
also Monica Latham, Serving under Two Masters: Virginia Woolfs
Afterlife in Contemporary Bioctions, Auto/biography Studies 27, no. 2
(March 28, 2014).
11. Robert Penn Warren in Ralph Ellison, William Styron, Robert Penn Warren
and C. Van Woodward, The Uses of History in Fiction, Southern Literary
Journal 1, no. 2 (Spring 1969): 61, qt. in Lackey, The Rise of the
Biographical Novel, 3.
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 INDEX
A biographical, 1, 2, 28, 29, 79, 126,
Abortion, 56, 115, 135
Abzug, Bella, 12n22, 72, 98n110,
206207, 208n5
Agency
female, 2, 24, 67, 71, 80, 108,
125, 204
as historical process, 67, 46n108,
189n38
lack of, 71, 91, 125
Androgyny, 134, 149n169
Artists
dependent vs. independent, 179
male vs. female, 181
Attribution error, 71
in psychology, 71
Authentication process, 132, 138,
140, 142, 181
circular, 132, 138, 140, 142, 181
Author
death of the, 12n19, 22
male vs. female, 109
See also Autobiographer;
Biographer; Female
Bildungsroman
Authority, 59, 79, 157, 202n267
ambiguous, 154, 171, 177, 182
autobiographical, 8, 17, 24, 94n31
The Author(s) 2016
M. Lidstrm Brock, Writing Feminist Lives, Breaking Feminist Waves,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47178-5
141, 142, 151152, 178
temporary, 154, 186
as vantage point of interest, 7
Autobiographer
female, 25, 26
male, 25
See also Authority; Autobiography
Autobiography, 2224, 29, 31,
43n72, 44n44
confessional, 20, 25, 27
contestation of, 17, 18, 38, 56, 67
denition of, 17, 20, 24, 25, 29, 64,
135, 186
exemplary, 5, 9, 22, 38, 44n75, 77
failed, 21, 24
in feminist theory, 27, 162, 163
feminist turn from, 8, 10, 164
and ction, 3, 20, 24, 36, 141, 180
fragmented, 23, 25, 154
ideal, 2123
intersubjective, 26, 186
mens, 3336
proper, 2124, 40n26
reading of, 17, 27, 37, 164, 179
seamless, 118, 125
as story, 9, 18, 20, 22, 23, 26, 29,
31, 43n72, 56, 117, 182, 204
227
228 INDEX
Autobiography (cont.)
unmediated, 17, 24, 126
womens, 3, 10, 20, 21, 2427,
40n19, 40n24, 41n33, 64,
126, 206
Autonomy, 42n53, 80, 111, 139, 165,
175, 199n196
womens, 80, 111, 139, 165, 175
Awakening, 56, 111, 113, 133,
135, 137
feminist, 56, 113, 133, 135
See also Epiphany, feminist; Steinem,
Gloria
B 51, 75, 78, 91, 117, 120, 122,
Bair, Deirdre, 13n23, 164, 179,
201n237
Barthes, Roland, 153154
The Death of the Author, 188n10,
188n17, 189n24
Roland Barthes by Roland
Barthes, 23
See also Author, death of; Biography,
as ction
Battles
biographical, 2, 4, 5
feminist, 4, 6, 10
ideological, 24, 6, 56, 91, 124
Beauvoir, Simone de
biographical recognition of, 5,
14n26, 158, 159, 164, 165
as celebrity, 159
The Ethics of Ambiguity, 10n2
and existentialism, 158, 161, 170,
192n77
as intertextual network, 158, 166
Le deuxime sexe, 159, 160, 166,
169, 171, 172, 174, 191n65,
191n67, 191n68, 191n69,
192n79, 192n82, 196n119,
198n158
education of, 165, 171, 196n128
on love, 162, 164, 170, 174,
199n185
and Sartre, Jean-Paul, 159, 163,
164, 194n93, 195n105,
195n108, 197n157
The Second Sex (1952), 160, 192n78
The Second Sex (2009), 191n64
See also ENS; habitus
Bioction, 207, 209n9
Biographer
authoritative, 10, 126, 176
feminist, 2, 5, 29, 38, 40n18, 67,
79, 150n200, 205
objective, 9, 17, 29, 31, 32, 44n75,
129, 138, 141, 152, 168, 204
overdetermined, 10
sympathetic, 117, 140, 141,
204206
Biographical recognition, 5, 51,
54, 56, 78, 79, 89, 115, 139,
158, 159, 160, 164, 165,
205206, 207
See also Under individual names
Biographical turn, 3, 6, 810, 107, 140
Biography
19th century American, 32, 45n96
19th century British, 11n4, 32
attacks on, 2, 18
characterization in, 7, 32, 45n93,
91, 104n229, 207208
as concrete case, 6
digital, 207
distancing in, 9, 1718, 28, 38, 60,
71, 78, 87, 108, 117, 121123,
167, 187
exemplary, 32, 107142
existentialist, 138139, 149n182
experimental, 37, 155, 207
feminist, 8, 37, 60, 61, 64, 91, 142,
150n200, 155, 205

as ction, 3, 36, 204, 207, 208
as guide to living, 163, 174, 179
and history, 10, 28, 32, 34, 35,
48n130, 52, 87, 139, 206
intimate, 32, 33, 47n108
investigative, 30, 34, 45n88
joint, 164, 195n105, 195n108
life and times, 33, 34, 47n114
as literary construction, 7, 9, 92,
158, 165
mens, 34, 36, 72
minority, 20
modern vs. postmodern, 23, 5, 17
and the nation, 33
non-chronological, 25
postmodern attacks on, 154
poststructuralist, 8, 9, 28, 142,
151187, 205;
feminist, 151187
psychological approaches in, 31,
78, 117
realist, 810, 18, 2838, 44n77,
44n78, 5192, 107, 117,
121123, 132, 136, 139141,
167, 177, 178
as reconstruction, 9, 31, 36, 92,
108, 135
revolutionary potential of, 155
socio-historical, 28, 30, 32,
44n77, 64
structure of, 3, 7, 148n141,
205, 207
sympathetic, 140, 141
tragic, 187, 205
womens, 5, 51, 54, 150n189,
202n264, 206
in the womens movement, 14n26,
5254, 65, 88, 121, 207
See also Wikipedia, biography in
Birth control, 56
Blind spots, 157, 169, 170
logical, 169
INDEX 229
Boswell, James, 32, 33, 46n99,
46n108, 48n119
Bourdieu, Pierre, 7, 168169, 175
Breslin, Jimmy, 135, 136, 137
Brooks, Peter, 62
C
Careers, 1, 25, 54, 57, 121, 131, 179
for women, 54, 57
Carlyle, Thomas, 47n114, 47n115
Caro, Robert, 31
Ceballos, Jacqui, 87
Celebrity feminism, 90, 91
Childhood, 97n94
Carolyn G. Heilbrun on, 114,
118, 129
See also Steinem, Gloria, childhood of
Class, 65, 68, 193n93, 208n3
Cohen, Marcia, 13n25, 39n8, 88,
145n71
The Sisterhood, 88
Community
female, 111, 112, 121, 133; in
feminist Bildungsroman, 112,
121; in narrative of
self-discovery, 111
Confessional see Autobiography
Consciousness-raising
and autobiography, 20, 55, 107
and biography, 107, 124, 126, 129,
137, 140
program for, 19, 39n11
Counter-culture
Australian, 82, 86; the Push, 82
British, 84
Criticism
black feminist, 4
lesbian, 193n85, 207
literary, 17, 21, 36, 47n108,
108113, 119, 152, 167
politically informed, 157
230 INDEX

Criticism (cont.) English, Deirdre, 124

of postmodern feminism, 157
poststructuralist, 2, 23, 28, 153, 186
Culture
female, 38
patriarchal, 38
popular, 159, 162
social theory of, 168169, 175
D 155, 187, 205
Demystication, 81, 89
of womens lives, 81, 89
Dialectical tensions, 156, 186
in biography, 186
Dictionary of National Biography, 33
Difference, 6, 7, 22, 27, 29, 38, 58,
60, 66, 70, 72, 76, 78, 81, 82,
98n110, 115, 126, 153, 155,
156, 171, 173, 176, 179,
191n64, 199n174, 204
See also Feminism, radical
Discourses
of anxiety, 29
opposing, 7
of usurpation, 29
See also Foucault, Michel
Distance
establishing, 2, 58, 78, 87, 121
ideological, 2
overcoming, 2
Divas
feminist, 12n21
Doxa, 154
Dunham, Lena, 206, 208n3
Enlightenment, the, 156
ENS (cole Normale Suprieure)
and sexist language, 170
and women, 171
Epiphany, 135
feminist, 135
Epstein, William H., 5, 6, 9,
14n26, 14n29, 15n38, 28,
44n78, 147n126, 151, 154,
Equality
economic, 75, 172
as invention, 181
as myth, 80
between the sexes, 172, 181
Evans, Mary, 69, 71, 79, 81, 164,
171, 180
Exemplary life
feminist, 28, 38
skepticism of, 8, 142
Existentialism, 158, 159, 161, 170
in the USA, 159
Existentialist biography, 149n182,
149n183
See also Sartre, Jean-Paul
Experiences, 5, 17, 19, 20, 24,
25, 33, 36, 38, 40n13, 51, 54,
60, 64, 66, 7677, 86, 91, 114,
117, 119, 121, 129, 131, 134,
135, 140, 141, 143n15,
165166, 172, 179181,
183, 184
womens unique, 38, 51, 129, 184

F
E Fallacy
Edel, Leon, 31, 34, 45n93, 56, 75 of autobiographical
Education, 54, 60, 70, 74, 111, 114, introspection, 25
115, 129, 163 feminist, 183
See also Under individual names Faludi, Susan, 92n4

Feelings
and The Feminine Mystique, 54, 64
in feminist theory, 19, 61
womens, 19, 55, 185
Felski, Rita, 20, 26, 108, 110113,
119, 121, 122, 123, 133,
135, 137, 139, 146n109, 156,
157, 185
Female Bildungsroman, 112, 121, 125
Feminism
biographical turn in, 3, 8, 10,
107, 140
on culture, 4, 38, 55, 104n231,
124, 143n14, 162, 167
egalitarian, 115
empirical, 3738
equality, 156
existentialist-materialist, 176
and history, 61
liberal, 1, 10n1, 55, 58, 77, 78, 88,
123, 156, 157
Marxist, 67
Materialist, 9, 152, 157, 168, 171,
172, 173, 174, 176, 177
modern, 1, 2, 4, 9, 11n6, 15n42,
36, 52, 53, 57, 85, 8789, 90,
107, 108, 121, 125, 156, 157,
171, 173, 190n52, 203, 207;
crisis in, 52
and the Other, 72, 78, 88, 89,
92n4, 116, 119, 120, 133,
137, 156, 161, 206, 208n3
postmodern, 4, 11n6, 157, 171,
186, 190n47, 190n52,
200n217
poststructuralist, 3, 25, 151, 155,
162, 166, 186
radical, 78, 88, 97n87, 111,
115, 137
second-wave, 2, 4, 17, 19, 52, 78,
79, 80, 81, 85, 89
and the self, 206
INDEX 231
socialist, 67, 78, 137, 140, 152
standpoint, 3738
third-wave, 11n4, 77, 87
Fiction
confessional, 20
mens, 109
womens, 3, 20, 36, 109
Field
intellectual, 171, 177
social, 178
See also Bourdieu, Pierre
Firestone, Shulamith, 39n10, 160, 161
Foucault, Michel, 153, 154, 167
Francis, Claude, 163, 164, 194n96,
195n108
Freedom
as feminist epiphany, 135
and sexuality, 163
as a slow process, 175
Freud, Sigmund, 36, 75, 97n94, 158,
166, 196n131
Friedan, Betty
biographical recognition, 54, 56, 207
cashmere Marxist, 69
conicts, 68
death of, 57, 59
The Feminine Mystique, 9, 5458,
59, 6162, 63, 65, 69, 70, 79
friendships, 60, 98n108
It Changed My Life, 94n34, 94n36,
94n38, 96n71
as liberal feminist, 1, 55, 56, 58, 65,
66, 67, 75, 78, 88, 124, 125
Life So Far, 56, 74
and love, 71, 80
in the media, 4, 55, 73, 95n62, 116
parents, 55, 57, 94n38
and the problem that has no
name, 61
Friendship, 60, 72, 111, 115,
163, 185
literary, 185
232 INDEX
G rape of, 85, 86
Games
social, 169
See also Bourdieu, Pierre
Gaskell, Elizabeth, 33
Genealogy, 167, 168, 170, 178,
180, 184
personal, 167, 178, 180, 184
Genius, 32, 138, 139, 181
female, 181
Genre, 4, 610, 17, 18, 20, 21, 2329,
31, 3437, 40n24, 44n78,
45n88, 49n143, 75, 90, 110,
126, 127, 141, 151, 154, 164,
166, 187, 204205, 207, 208
Gilbert, Sandra M., 33, 46n108, 109
Glamour, 144n63
Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics,
and Mystique
Gontier, Fernande, 163, 164, 195n108
Gordon, Lyndall, 17, 39n1
Grand narrative, 86
biography as, 86
Greer, Germaine
biographical recognition, 78, 79, 89
The Change, 82
Daddy, We Hardly Knew
You, 102n180
The Female Eunuch, 79, 80, 8183,
85, 8889, 100n148,
101n155, 101n158, 104n221,
208n2
feminism of, 1, 2, 4, 51, 80, 85, 90,
101n158
as femme fatale, 8192
and liberal feminism, 88
and love, 10n3, 80, 83, 84, 100n140
Marxist, 2, 79
and the media, 4, 79, 80, 85, 86,
90, 116
parents, 82, 83
and radical feminism, 126
and the Romantic self, 2, 81
Sex and Destiny, 82, 101n168
See also Counter-culture
Gubar, Susan, 33, 46n108, 109
H
Habitus, 169, 170, 171, 172, 178
male-dominated, 169
Hagiography, 34, 140
feminist, 140
Happiness
as feminist project, 184
programmatic, 180
Heilbrun, Carolyn G.
The Education of a Woman, 9, 107,
127, 129
Writing a Womans Life, 5, 25, 72,
127, 128, 138, 148n145
See also Androgyny; Plots, marriage,
mother-daughter
Hennessee, Judith, 56, 9, 28, 51, 56,
67, 6878, 82, 87, 90, 92, 94n35,
97n102, 98n108, 98n110,
98n116, 98n122, 124, 203, 204
Betty Friedan: Her Life, 9, 68
Hermeneutics, 168
of suspicion, 168
Hero (heroine), 33, 57, 67, 72, 73,
86, 110, 112, 120, 124, 125
History
biography in, 10, 28, 86, 87
of biography, 28, 32, 34, 35, 37,
47n114, 48n130, 123
feminist, 10, 18, 32, 36, 37, 38,
156, 206
and gender, 37, 5961, 67
new social, 34, 35, 65, 66
without subjects, 154
of the womens movement, 52, 53,
63, 65
 INDEX 233

Horowitz, Daniel, 5, 9, 12n22, 28, K

51, 56, 57, 5867, 68, 69, 70, 71, Kaiden, Elizabeth A., 90, 104n230
75, 78, 91, 94n35, 95n62, Kempe, Margery, 41n43
96n74, 96n80, 125, 203, 207 Kennedy, Florynce Flo, 206
Betty Friedan and the Making of the Knowledge, 18, 28, 61, 62, 134, 153,
Feminine Mystique, 9, 57 154, 165
Housewife discursively constructed, 153
The Feminine Mystique, 54, 55, 58, Kristeva, Julia, 155, 156157
66, 203
Friedan, Betty, 54, 55, 58, 203
L
Larsson, Lisbeth, 4, 12n17, 25, 27,
32, 41n39, 46n99, 46n108,
I
47n115, 188n6
Ideology
Leadership
as guideline to living, 6
in the feminine style, 13n24, 53
hidden, 6
feminist, 53
Ignorance, 7, 147n130
informal, 53
of biographer, 7
masculine, 77
Images of women
in the media, 53
cultural, 55
political, 77
in the media, 55
Lerner, Gerda, 49n137, 92n1
Inauthenticity, 75, 76, 89, 125,
Lesbianism, 81, 101n156, 193n85
137, 170
See also Sexual politics
Integrity
Libertarianism, 82, 85
feminist, 179
Liedman, Sven-Eric, 11n8, 12n10, 36
personal, 108
Life
womens, 125
coherent, 22, 75, 89
Intentionality, 3, 62, 150n189
construction vs. reconstruction
Intertextual network, 158, 165179
of, 9, 92, 108, 123, 128, 135
life as, 165179
contradictory, 22, 90, 204
Irigaray, Luce, 155, 193n89
fragmentary, 23, 204
Life writing
as interpretative tool, 19, 55
J womens, 27
Jay, Elizabeth, 32 See also Autobiography; Biography
Jealousy, 180 Linguistic disruption, 155, 156,
sexual, 180 189n41
Jelinek, Estelle, 21, 24, 25, 40n24 revolutionary potential of, 155
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 29, 32, 33, Literary criticism, 108113,
49n146 152, 167
Judaism, 59 feminist, 108113, 152, 167
234 INDEX
Logic
gaps in, 7, 30, 58, 61, 108, 126
phallogocentric, 157
Lorde, Audre, 206
Love, 25, 56, 80, 83, 84, 114, 162,
164, 170, 174
See also Under individual names
Lyndall, Gordon, 17, 39n1
Lyotard, Jean-Franois, 86, 103n206,
151, 165, 188n2
M 183, 187
Mailer, Norman, 87, 125, 135, 136,
147n126
Marcus, Laura, 24, 40n18,
44n75, 73
Marriage, 54, 57, 76, 78, 80,
110112, 115, 131,
161, 162
See also Plots; Under individual
names
Marxism, 2, 59, 65, 66
Hegelian, 2
Marxist socialism, 58
Marx, Karl, 36
Maverick, 8485
female, 8485
McCarthyism, 58, 60, 61, 64, 67,
96n80
McFarlane, Jean, 59, 60
McKeon, Michael, 47n108
Media, the
feminist spokespersons in, 206
See also Biographical recognition;
Under individual names
Methodology
biographical, 6, 56, 67, 68, 121,
126, 138, 152, 157, 158, 204
feminist, 168
poststructuralist, 152, 153
in realist biography, 29, 30, 38, 128
Middle age, 82
Miller, Arthur, 125
Miller, Henry, 109
Miller, Laura, 4, 99n140
Miller, Nancy K., 110, 143n19
Millett, Kate, 13n25, 86, 109, 160
and Sexual Politics, 109
Mimicry, 155, 189n28
disruptive, 155, 189n28
Misch, Georg, 24, 40n18
Moberg, sa
autobiography of, 159, 182,
as propaganda lie, 179
Simone och jag, 9, 15, 44, 151, 179,
182, 187
and the Swedish womens
movement, 152, 179
views on feminism, 152, 184, 185
Modernism, 156
Modernity, 112
soft vs, hard ideas in, 11n8
Moi, Toril
on authorship, 9, 152, 177
Sexual/Textual Politics, 142n4, 152
Simone de Beauvoir, 9, 15n44, 151,
165, 166, 167, 173176, 178,
186, 204
on subjectivity, 9, 152, 177
What is a Woman?, 15n35, 187n1,
200n213
See also Genealogy; Feminism,
materialist, socialist
Monroe, Marilyn, 125, 147n126
Moran, Caitlin, 206, 208n2, 208n3
Mothers, 54, 57, 59, 94n36, 94n38,
100n143, 115, 118, 129130,
192n82
Ms. Magazine, 144n48
Munthe, Axel, 43n72
Mystique
Egalitarian, 165

Feminine, 9, 5459, 6170, 7577,
79, 92n5, 93n8, 94n34,
94n36, 95n60, 99n125, 160
See also Friedan, Betty, The Feminine
Mystique
Myth
social, 129, 148n146
and subjective truth, 139
of unity, 170
N
Nadel, Ira Bruce, 32, 33, 46n96,
148n165
Narrative of female self-discovery,
110112, 115, 137
Narrative frame
collapse of, 7
inconsistencies in, 60, 152, 204
Narrative gap
Interpretative, 63
logical, 58, 108, 126, 152, 204
Narratives
closure in, 91
contradictions in, 173
female emancipation, 108, 110,
132; practical usefulness
of, 179, 182
feminist, 56, 108, 139, 174
logical gaps in, 58, 108, 126,
152, 204
See also Female Bildungsroman;
Narrative of female self-discovery
New historicism, 4
New Journalism, 113
New Left, the, 63, 65, 66
New York Town Hall debate, 87
See also Town Bloody Hall
Novel
realist, 33, 47n108
and womens biography, 33,
128, 169
INDEX 235
Nussbaum, Felicity A., 27, 43n65
Nyns, Carina, 36, 48n122, 48n130
O
Olney, James, 23, 41n35, 141
Ontology, 27, 56, 77, 78, 137
feminist, 27, 56, 77, 78, 137
Order
semiotic, 155
symbolic, 155, 156
Other, the, 157, 160
woman as, 157, 160
P
Pact
between Beauvoir and Sartre, 170,
174, 179, 181; romantic
aspects of, 174
Paglia, Camille, 5253, 92n2, 92n4
Parents see Under individual names
Particularity, 3, 12n10, 66, 78, 186
womens, 3, 12n10, 66, 78, 186
Pascal, Roy, 2125, 31, 40n25,
40n26, 41n43, 41n44, 64
Personal is political, the, 1820, 77
criticism of, 20
Personal Narratives Group, 19, 20
Plots
Biographical, 62, 71, 85, 89
euphoric vs. dysphoric, 110
ctional, 110, 111112
marriage, 110
mother-daughter, 130
new in womens writing, 110
points of departure in, 56
seductions of, 91
Pornography, 84, 88, 208n3
Postmodern biography, 155
Feminist, 155
236 INDEX
Postmodernism, 44n79, 156
Poststructuralism, 151
Power
and autobiography, 14n29, 22
biography as, 38, 128
narrative, 56, 72, 122
struggles in the womens
movement, 68, 69, 121
Psychoanalysis, 30, 31, 33, 75, 76,
97n94, 99n125, 99n134, 139
Psychobiography, 28, 3032, 34, 38,
44n77, 75
Psychology, 35, 55, 57, 59, 86, 90,
94n36, 99n125, 139
Push, the, 8284
R Roe, Jill, 48n129
Reader, 4, 7, 10, 14n26, 20, 27, 29,
32, 34, 38, 51, 55, 61, 75, 81, 90,
91, 107, 114, 121, 124, 125,
126, 128, 130, 140, 141, 159,
160, 163, 165, 166, 172, 174,
177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 184,
186, 187, 206
Readership
American, 194n99
Australian, 194n99
European, 194n99
Reading
deconstructive, 154, 156
for the plot, 62, 95n64
Realism, 29, 176
Realist biography
conforming to, 8
departing from, 8, 92, 139
Redstockings, 116, 144n67, 193n93
Relationships
antagonistic, 107, 162
biographer-subject, 2, 25, 81,
107, 204
biographical, 21, 23, 68
erotico-theoretical, 170
inauthentic, 114115
romantic, 163
See also Beauvoir, Simone de
Revolution
feminist, 99n132, 99n134, 193n93
linguistic, 155
and second-wave feminism, 2, 4,
19, 52
sexual, 76, 80, 83, 84, 88
Rhiel, Mary, 3, 4
Richards, Amy, 77, 99n136
Rights
universalist, 3, 12n10, 78
womens, 52, 79, 84, 147n128, 179
Roberts, J. M., 39n4
Robeson Burr, Anna, 40n19
Role model, 9, 59, 69, 77, 85, 89,
104n231, 107, 108, 109, 111,
119, 120, 121, 123, 126, 127,
130, 132, 135, 137, 140, 162,
163, 166, 179, 181, 182, 185,
186, 204
female, 107109, 111, 121, 123,
126, 127, 130, 132, 135, 137,
140, 163, 185
Rosen, Ruth, 18, 19, 39n6
Rupp, Leila J., 49n135
S
Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin,
47n108
Sarachild, Kathie, 19, 39n10, 39n11
See also Consciousness-raising
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 138, 139, 149n182,
149n187, 158165, 169171,
174, 179181, 195n105, 195n108
Scanlon, Jennifer, 4
Schlaeger, Jrgen, 10, 15n45, 29, 44n74
Schreiner, Olive, 48n134

Selbstbesinnung, 22, 31
Self
-actualization, 24, 77, 79, 89, 107,
110, 138
-censorship, 62
-esteem, 113115, 124, 149n167
-knowledge, 74, 89, 107
-realization, 2, 17, 29, 108, 132
-worth, 113115
Self help, 113, 124
Selfhood, 3, 22, 23, 112, 122
Sexism, 59, 198n165
Sexuality, 71, 80, 82, 83, 88,
100n148, 100n154, 102n168,
162, 163, 175, 179, 208n3
Sexual politics, 7476, 8889, 109
Shame, 179, 184, 185, 201n236,
201n250
Shapiro, Michael J., 7, 15n36, 64,
96n78
Showalter, Elaine, 109, 110, 118, 119,
127, 128, 136, 142n12, 142n13,
142n14, 143n15
Shulevitz, Judith, 65, 66
Smith, Sidonie, 26, 42n60
Social movements, 19, 61, 65, 66
and gender, 19, 61, 65, 66
Society
masculine, 119, 123, 135, 140
patriarchal, 38, 104n227, 107, 113,
118, 132, 167, 172
modern, 111112, 115, 125
reorganization of, 7778, 112, 115
womens reentry into, 121
Solidarity
female, 74, 76, 87, 121, 143n15
See also Feminism, radical
Speaking position
ambiguous, 169, 171, 172
in biography, 157, 169
Spinsters, 59, 95n39
academic, 59
INDEX 237
Stanley, Liz, 3, 7, 12n12, 22, 23, 29,
39n2, 43n68, 44n77, 44n79,
48n119, 90, 91, 104n229, 155,
177, 186, 187n1, 204, 205
Steedman, Carolyn, 26, 37, 38,
39n3, 43n64, 49n143, 8991,
142n2, 204
Steinem, Gloria
abortion, 115, 135
A Bunnys Tale, 113116
childhood of, 114, 118, 128,
130, 132
education of, 114, 148n146
on love, 114, 136
in the media, 73, 116, 120, 121,
133, 134
My Life on the Road, 145n92
Outrageous Acts and Everyday
Rebellions, 144n47, 144n48
parents, 114
as propaganda lie, 179
radical feminism, 115, 137
Revolution from Within: A Book of
Self-Esteem, 113
See also Autobiography, seamless
Stephens, Leslie, 33
Stern, Sydney Ladensohn, 6, 9, 28,
107, 112, 116126, 141,
146n101, 147n123, 204
Stodola Pomerleau, Cynthia, 42n46
Storytelling, 118, 120, 122, 126,
141, 204
autobiography as, 122
Strachey, Lytton, 33, 34
Strachey, Ray, 48n134
Subject, the
autobiographical, 2, 3, 9, 18, 30,
38, 78
biographical, 2, 6, 14n29, 18, 28,
31, 32, 38, 66, 67, 73, 123,
125, 139, 142, 151, 152, 154,
155, 158, 165, 185
238 INDEX

Subject, the (cont.) 112, 115, 116, 119121, 126,

constrained, 66, 127 129, 131, 132, 136, 137,
contradictory, 204 146n109, 157, 164, 170,
damaged, 51 171, 179, 180, 190n60, 203,
dismantling of, 2 205, 206
Enlightenment, 78, 91, 153, 207 mythical vs. historical, 111
female, 27, 33, 38, 51, 80, 89, 90, Town Bloody Hall, 103n209
92, 108, 112, 137, 141, Trashing, 83, 85, 133, 149n167
150n200, 155, 156 Trilling, Diana, 87
fragmented, 23 Truth
heroic, 32 according to vantage point, 7
as intertextual network, 166 autobiographical, 9, 17, 18,
the isolated female, 90 21, 23, 26, 29, 31, 40n25, 54,
male, 160 64, 67, 117, 132, 141, 172,
monstrous, 73 183, 186
rational, 177, 182 biographical, 4, 7, 9, 18, 28, 29,
Romantic, 2 54, 58, 68, 75, 108, 136, 138,
Subjectivity 154, 204
female, 3, 55, 74, 77, 78, 89, 108, as mise en abyme, 186
137, 156 subjective vs. objective, 9, 129
theories of female, 2, 51, 125 Truth-producing processes
unmediated, 20 in poststructuralist biography, 142
Suchoff, David, 3, 4 in realist biography, 9, 18, 28, 63,
Sweden, 151 67, 75, 78, 91, 122, 136, 139
in sympathetic feminist
biography, 141
T
Taine, Hippolyte, 46n108
Theory U
biography without, 108, 154, 155 Unlearning, 111, 148n146
feminist literary, 37, 89, 142n4
materialist feminist, 157, 171, 174,
177, 200n210
postcolonial, 4 V
postmodern, 3, 8, 12n19, 12n20, Violence
14n26, 14n32, 17 Interpretative, 5, 9
poststructuralist, 8, 25, 35, 151, 157 Symbolic, 178
suspicion of, 151, 168
Time, 2, 3, 5, 11n3, 11n4, 11n5,
13n25, 17, 19, 21, 24, 25, 32, W
36, 39n2, 44n74, 59, 62, 69, 70, Walker, Alice, 206, 208n4
72, 82, 86, 88, 97n99, 108, 110, Walker, Cheryl, 4, 12n19

Wallace, Christine, 6, 9, 14n26,
15n42, 28, 51, 52, 7890, 92,
100n143, 102n180, 103n195,
203204
Germaine Greer: The Untamed
Shrew, 81
Wallach Scott, Joan, 155, 156,
189n36, 189n37, 189n38
Weinberg, Steve, 30, 31, 33, 34,
44n81, 45n88, 45n95, 48n119,
61, 96n74
What happened next?-effect,
the, 91
Wicke, Jennifer, 90, 104n231, 168,
198n174
Wikipedia, 207, 209n6, 209n8
biography in, 208n6
INDEX 239
Will
Free, 134
Witnessing, 20
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 17, 39n1
Womens movement, the
American, 2, 4, 11n4, 13n24,
13n25, 14n26, 18, 52, 65, 67,
72, 80, 85, 88
criticism of, 76, 83, 109, 125, 152
development of, 18, 207
French, 193n89
history of, 2, 13n25, 18, 19, 5254,
63, 65, 119, 199n179
modern, 39n6, 39n8, 52, 68, 69, 207
Scandinavian, 152
Women worthies, 49n135
Woolf, Virginia, 14n26, 209n10