Autobiographical Tightropes: Simone de Beauvoir, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, and Maryse Conde [Paperback]

Leah D. Hewitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1992

"In order to write" said Simone de Beauvoir, "the first essential condition is that reality can no longer be taken for granted." She and four other French women writers of the second half of the twentieth century—Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, and Maryse Condé—illustrate that producing autobiography is like performing a tightrope act on the slippery line between fact and fiction.

Autobiographical Tightropes emphasizes the tension in the works of these major writers as they move in and out of "experience" and "literature," violating the neat boundaries between genres and confusing the distinctions between remembering and creating. Focusing on selected works, Leah D. Hewitt for the first time anywhere explores the connections among the authors. In doing so she shows how contemporary women's autobiography in France links with feminist issues, literary tradition and trends, and postmodern theories of writing.

In light of these theories Hewitt offers a new reading of de Beauvoir's memoirs and reveals how her attempt to represent the past faithfully is undone by irony, by literary and "feminine" detours. Other analysts of Nathalie Sarraute's writing have dwelt mainly on formal considerations of the New Novel, but Hewitt exposes a repressed, forbidden feminine aspect in her literary innovations. Unlike Sarraute, Duras cannot be connected with just one literary movement, political stance, style, or kind of feminism because her writing, largely autobiographical, is marked by chameleon like transformations. The chapters on Wittig and Condé show how, within the bounds of feminism, lesbians and women of color challenge the individualistic premises of autobiography. Hewitt demonstrates that, despite vast differences among these five writers, all of them reveal in their autobiographical works the self's need of a fictive other.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Leah D. Hewitt is an associate professor of French at Amherst College.

Product Details

• Paperback: 259 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (August 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803272588
• ISBN-13: 978-0803272583
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,259,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When the circus critic is an acrobat, herself...., July 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Autobiographical Tightropes: Simone de Beauvoir, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, and Maryse Conde (Paperback)

The beauty of this book is portioned out equally between the skill and dexterity of Hewitt and that of her subjects. Not only does Hewitt walk with ease across the tightrope of autobiography, her entire book is, as a whole, a perfectly balanced affair. It includes the distinct, prismatic effects of each of her selected modern French female autobiographers as she shines a new light on autobiography--but it also includes how each of the autobiographers' lights reflect upon and and influence one another. The book is balanced, as well, in the experiences of the French writers, themselves; Hewitt listens and gives her attention to a wide variety of French females. feminists, anti-feminists, being French in a foreign land, being Foreign in a French land, being lesbian, heterosexual, anti-gender, a black writer, a white writer--Hewitt values the distinct spice each experience adds to the overall genre of autobiography. Although this variety makes Hewitt's book seem to be a superficial sampler of modern feminine French autobiography, nothing can be further from the truth. With concise, yet exciting language, Hewitt sometimes digs so deeply into the experiences of her subjects and how they are novel and unique, this reviewer literally had an urge to go out immediately to the library and spend the rest of her life studying autobiography. This is not to say that Hewitt's book is flawless; no book is. In order to generate her great balance, Hewitt appears to stretch the genre of autobiography too far in order to fit her specifications. In searching for non-white, non-traditionally-gendered and foreign French voices, she included the work of Maryse Conde and Monique Wittig, skilled writers, but unfortunately for Hewitt, not autobiographers. Hewitt breaches the integral attraction/repulsion of autobiography in confusing what are clearly fictions with self-references, and the autobiographical genre. Although there is no clear-cut definition of autobiography, the easiest and most efficient way to discover what is and isn't autobiography is to ask the writer. In these cases, the works of the authors are certainly self-referential, but they are clearly not autobiography. Hewitt addresses these concerns, true, but her justifications for their inclusion in a book about autobiography are not ultimately satisfying. Yet, this book is a gem, filled with fresh insights into the work of the writers she studies and very interesting hypotheses. It is a fairly easy read, clearly digestible for the non-academic, and the readers' knowledge of Hewitt's subjects is not necessary to understand and appreciate this impressive book.