Writing a Woman's Life

Book excerpt: Why is it that generations of writers had to describe George Sand as 'a great man'? Why did Dorothy L. Sayers, having created a heroine as independent as herself, then marry off Harriet Vane? And why did Carolyn Heilbrun resort to the pseudonym of Amanda Cross to write her own detective fiction? For Carolyn Heilbrun, May Sarton's "Journal of a Solitude" was a watershed which marked a new way of writing about women's lives. Before then, traditional biography and autobiography assumed that only one narrative was acceptable for women: romantic love leading to conventional marriage. This book uses fascinating insights into the lives of unconventional women such as Virginia Woolf and Colette to show how their stories have been distorted by this assumption.