Writing a Woman's Life [Hardcover]

Carolyn G. Heilbrun (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1988

Of the two basic plots that shape our lives, the quest and the erotic script, the quest has been, for centuries, reserved for men only. A woman's journey ended at the altar. Professor Heilbrun notes that the diversity of women's lives now makes it possible for women to dare to choose their own scripts.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With subtlety and great eloquence, Carolyn Heilbrun shows how, throughout the centuries, those who write about women's lives--biographers andautobiographers--have suppressed the truth of the female experience, in order to make the "written life" conform to the expectations of what that life should be. Heilbrun also examines literature's silence on such vital topics as friendship between women, the female physical experience, and the richness that often imbues a women's later years. Recommended reading for everyone, especially women and writers. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

According to Heilbrun ( Reinventing Womanhood , LJ 4/1/79), women's lives and the stories of those lives have been steeped in the language and power of men, making some stories unthinkable and others contrived. Not until the 1970s have there been stories freely and openly expressing the achievements, ambitions, and experiences of women from all walks of life. By examining the traditional written accounts of women's lives and the facts omitted or underplayed, Heilbrun suggests new ways for women to write biography and autobiography. Though a clearer development and connection of some of the issues and topics would have made for an even more interesting presentation, this book is provocative. Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; 1st edition (September 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393026019
• ISBN-13: 978-0393026016
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #714,705 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read for Women, October 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Writing a Woman's Life (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

Since I first read this book over 10 years ago, I think I must have purchased more than 15 copies--some for myself and others to give to other people, that's how strongly I felt about it. It is important how we see the importance of writing our lives, how they have been mis-written, mis-understood, and mis-read for a very long time. Dr. Heilbrun is clear, straight-forward, and to the point in her observations. For such a slender volume, it has an awful lot to say.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thought Provoking., June 9, 2001

By 

"gotsoap" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Writing a Woman's Life (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

I know that's a cheesy title, but it is so true. I had to read this for a Women Writers class, and I had a hard time getting through the prologue. But once I did, I could not put the book down. Heilbrun had many points that just kept me thinking, and the more I thought about them, the more angry I'd become. Her theories on women's biographies are very true. It is hard to find one where the woman is not painted as a housewife saint void of passionate emotions. It is only in recent years that biographers, mainly female biographers, are writing more and more three dimensional stories of women writers. My best friend from high school just turned 21, and for her birthday I bought her a copy of this book. I lent my copy to a male friend who is spending his summer volunteering in Costa Rica. I am making my boyfriend read this as well. Her thoughts on the reputation of women writers, marriage, and women writing of themselves leave you thinking for weeks. I highly recommend that every woman read this, and make your significant other read it as well. It's hard getting used to the thesis format, but once you do, it is well worth it.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Revisiting women's lives, January 2, 2004

By 

Micole I. Sudberg "micole" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Writing a Woman's Life (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

The best respect we can pay the dead, I believe, is to honor the work they did. When I learned of Heilbrun's death last month, I turned to her books--the mysteries she wrote as Amanda Cross and the literary and cultural criticism she published under her own name. The first time I read Writing a Woman's Life was my junior or senior year in college. I was already familiar with feminist literary criticism, but Heilbrun's thesis was new to me: that even extraordinary women who wrote of how women were entrapped by society had not managed to record, in fiction or biography, how they themselves had defied its dictates; that women's biographies were still characterized by "becoming modesty," with success attributed to luck rather than ambition.

I am more critical of some aspects of Heilbrun's argument now (in particular, I find that her heterocentrism makes her an imperceptive observer of the marriages of lesbian and bisexual writers), but eight years later, parts that seemed irrelevant then strike me more now. Heilbrun writes of many women writers who found their voices and their own particular art much later than their male counterparts: Willa Cather, Dorothy Sayers, Virginia Woolf. The youth of many women writers of the past, she argues, were devoted to struggling with and sometimes conforming to female gender roles; freed from these expectations by age and experience, they could begin to write something new.

What is most compelling to me is Heilbrun's insistence on re-envisioning women's lives--on attempting to view them anew, in all their crooked detail, rather than smoothing out their outlines to conform to the stories she's been taught to expect.

Literature and art get the eternal present: Carolyn Heilbrun is still talking to me. I'm still talking back.