Writing Differences in Male/ Female Autobiographies: A Theoretical Perspective

The critical theories on autobiography tend to marginalize women's autobiography-writing and often have a strong subjective as well as objective bias against it. This chapter is an attempt to prove that most of the critical theories established by the male tradition are not applicable to women's life writing due to biological, socio-political as well as psycho-cultural reasons; that women's autobiography-writing is diffe.r_ent. For male individuation 'dissociation' is a must, while for women according to feminist psychoanalytic theorists like Chodorow and Rowbotham 'association' is central to their individuation. Men's autobiography in form, is dominated by an 'I' and this 'I' is always at the center of every incident. While women's autobiography differs in that it goes in circles. She does not stand at the center; there is often a man at the center and she is in the periphery with a dotted 'I' (Benstock). The chapter is an in-depth study of the theory of writing differences in the genre of autobiography under four distinct headings.