Reading about authors through their biographies or through comments made by them is often more revealing than their books. Carolyn Heilbrun in her book write the life of a woman (more like a dissertation in its first few chapters) states that to really know an author well enough to write her biography, you must go beyond dissecting her works of fiction and get to know her through correspondence with friends and colleagues. This is especially true for female authors before 1970, as Heilbrun regards that year as “the beginning of a new period in women’s biography” and 1973 as the turning point for “modern women’s autobiography”. nancy milford Zelda is the biography and that of May Sarton diary of solitude it is the “turning point in women’s autobiography”.
The author makes a strong case for famous women writers, such as Louisa May Alcott, the Bronte sisters, and Jane Austen, who had to toe the line of acceptable society before that time. The success of many of these women (George Sand, George Eliot) was often made possible by using a pseudonym and by adapting their female characters to prevailing conventions. Therefore, most women writers before 1973 were forced to represent their sex as wives and mothers and to do so as something natural, because they had no other avenues open to them than to drive their characters to the brink of madness. By searching for the author outside of her writings, a biographer can trace the chronological details of the development of the author’s emancipation.
The book becomes more interesting in its last forty pages, when the author discusses the marriage relationship and suggests that for the marriage to be successful, the two individuals must have a friendship beyond the initial passion that attracted them. They must be flexible and respectful of change and the discovery of each other’s self. This self-discovery happens much later for the woman, who tends to postpone her own desires to continue in the role of wife, mother and, as has been seen in recent decades, also as partial providers.
The end of write the life of a woman discusses how women seek their “search” in life. Heilbrun uses herself as an example. She stopped writing her detective series to avoid censorship from the academic community. She was the first full professor at a top Ivy League school. If she had written the series under her own name instead of Amanda Cross, she would never have gotten ownership of it. And even with her pseudonym, she chose a female detective, rich, married and beautiful. Through the series, she “embarked on a quest (the male plot), became a knight (the male role), rescued a princess (the male)”. The secrecy of her mystery series allowed her some control of her destiny and allowed her to do things that she couldn’t do in her professional life. In essence, she allows him to recreate herself.
One of the most profound statements of write the life of a woman It comes towards the end of the book. “I believe that most of us women transform our need to be loved into a need to love, expecting, therefore, from men and children, more than what they, trapped in their own lives, can give us.” When women have power (money) and space of their own, they will create a quest story to replace the old marriage plot.
And age is often the incentive that pushes a woman to stop fearing or hiding in order to try and do important things. For those who fear the loss of appearance and whose hourglass figure has more and more sand collecting at the bottom, the author states: “For a woman to gain weight in midlife is to dissociate her personality from her attractiveness.” feminine of her.” A character from Isak Dinesen states: “Women, when they are old enough to be done with the business of being women and can unleash their strength, must be the most powerful creatures in the world.” Aging can be liberating and makes you think about the possibilities.
