writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

Autobiographies written by female writers should therefore be read and examined within the
context of the feminist movement that has taken as its core aim the liberation of woman and the
free expression of the female voice. On the other hand, the form of autobiography, in its capacity to
allow female writers to express new forms of subjectivity, has contributed in significant ways to the
feminist movement and feminist literary criticism. By utilizing this form, female writers had the
opportunity to delve deeper into the female psyche and experiment with various means of
expressing themselves in more truthful and authentic ways.
In the second chapter of her book, Atwood analyzes the relation between a tale teller and a
writer. She stresses that wheras a tale‐teller has his audience in front of her, the writer can not ever
know her reader. Another major difference between the tale‐teller and the writer is that wheras the
tale‐teller can make changes as he goes along and improvises, the writer can not alter the sequence
of events once his book is published. Atwood points out that
The writer on the other hand, can scratch his way through draft after draft, laboring,
like Flaubert, over the shape of sentences, striving for exactly the right word, and throwing
character’s names over the window –indeed throwing whole characters over the
window. 30
As Atwood’s words illustrate, the writer is a storyteller but is confined by the written page.
Producing a book is hard labour which entails scrupulous attention to words and endless revisions.
The writer needs to exercise patience and should have endurance in order to put forth the best that
she can produce.
Feminist critics have also commented on the interrelations between veracity, identity of the
author and autobiography. Feminist critic Leigh Gilmore has commented that
I do not mean that autobiographers have not claimed the certainty of identity,have not
obscured the problem of its production… To confer upon the autobiography, the
authority of a person or to read her and her agency as inevitably the same thing is to
repeat the referential fallacy that consigns all autobiographers and their authors to the
same space in history. I see this strategy as profoundly limiting toa feminist study of
autobiography and women’s self representation. Autobiographical identity and agency are
historically dynamic. There is no single transhistorical identity that all autobiographers
invariantly produce or strive to produce. 31
Thus, questions of identity and agency are central to discussions of autobiography. Since
individuals are never fixed but rather always in a state of becoming, identities and agencies should be
perceived as historically dynamic. As Gilmore points out looking for a stable, “transhistorical identity”
is an exercise in futility.
It would be far fetched to argue that Atwood is the same person she was when she first wrote her
autobiography. People change during the time period the work is written and following its
publication. Every one of us is changing continuously. Identity is not rigid, it is fluid, it is always in the
making. Life events that happen bring to our lives various changes, leave their mark upon the
individual. Atwood also remarks that the reader will judge the characters himself/herself since
he/she will come up with his/her own interpretation. We all interpret, every day – we must interpret,
not only language, but a whole environment which this means that “little green man means cross the
street little red man means don’t –and if we didn’t interpret we’d be dead.” 32
Atwood claims that most writers think about their readers as well as reader’s expectations. Who
will read their books? What is the reader’s reaction going to be? It is rare that the writer says I am
writing for myself only. How can we, as readers, relate to the reality and the writer represented in
the written text? As Atwood suggests: “All writing is motivated deepdown by a fear of and
fascination with mortality–by a desire to make the risky trip to the Underworld and to bring
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