Writing Feminist Lives : The Biographical Battles over Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, and Simone de Beauvoir (Breaking Feminist Waves)

This book draws attention to the controversy that surrounds Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, and Simone de Beauvoir's lives and the important role that their life stories have played in their feminist writing. Directly and indirectly, the four women have contributed to battles over feminism's meaning through autobiographically informed political writing. Inevitably, therefore, their biographers are also participants in these battles, yet not always on the same side as their subjects. Writing Feminist Lives introduces a further fold of nuance into considerations of biography and feminism by showing that the biographers of the four women have made methodological choices that reflect their loyalty to, or their scepticism towards, competing ideological definitions of the exemplary feminist life. Introduction.- 1. A Question of Authority.- 2. Negotiating the Tradition--Feminist Realist Biography.- 3. Breaking New Ground--Feminist Exemplary Biography.- 4. Deconstructing the Life--Feminist Poststructuralist Biography.- Conclusion.- Notes.- Bibliography.- Index. Malin Lidström Brock is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. She received her D.Phil. in English Literature from Oxford University, UK. Her primary research areas are contemporary American literature and culture, with a particular focus on life writing and gender.