The Formation of 20th-Century Queer Autobiography

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Georgia Johnston

   Pages 1-26

3. wHoles in the Dyke: Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud Figuring the Lesbian

   • Georgia Johnston

   Pages 27-53

4. Counterfeit Perversion: Vita Sackville-West’s Portrait

   • Georgia Johnston

   Pages 55-71

5. Virginia Woolf’s Subjectivities and (Auto)biographies

   • Georgia Johnston

   Pages 73-93

6. Hilda Doolittle’s Lesbian Vision

   • Georgia Johnston

   Pages 95-125

7. Lesbian Textualities in Stein’s Lifting Belly

   • Georgia Johnston

   Pages 127-153

8. Back Matter

   Pages 155-203

   PDF

In their literary autobiographies, modernists Vita Sackville-West, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) challenge the scientific figures of the perverse lesbian, particularly those promulgated by Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud. By multiplying their 'I's, manipulating subject and object divisions, undermining boundaries between writer and audience, and using repetition to code erotic moments, these writers queer the terms of autobiography. That queering requires understanding autobiography as more institutional than introspective, and the autobiographies themselves question the very theories that determine them: theories of lesbianism, female development, and memory.

• biography
• English literature
• female sex
• feminism
• gender
• genre
• literature
• memory
• psychology
• Sigmund Freud
• subject
• understanding
• Virginia Woolf

"This study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of modernism and early 20th century autobiographical lesbian literature. Devoting chapters to Vita Sackville-West, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and Hilda Doolittle, Johnston traces how the autobiographical writings of these women contradict the dominant scientific view of the lesbian as represented in the writings of Havelock Ellis in sexology and Sigmund Freud in psychology. Johnston supports this thesis with creative, insightful, and original interpretations of some important yet less well-known works by these writers. For each of the authors she discusses, she demonstrates thorough knowledge of their lives, body of work, and the relevant theoretical and critical scholarship." - Eileen Barrett, Professor of English, California State University, East Bay

"Johnston's book is an enjoyable read with many rewards for its audience. She is on sure footing in her reading of contemporary theory, Freud and the sexologists, and especially the lesbian modernist autobiographers who are her focus. In her compelling readings she argues that Sackville-West, Woolf, Doolittle, and Stein engaged scientific theories of the perverse lesbian and other models from early psychology and sexology in order to write a new lesbian subject in a distinctly modernist version of autobiography. Figuring the lesbian differently in autobiography creates fertile ground for seeing both new, as Johnston's study deftly reveals. Thestudy of modern lesbian autobiography is deeply enriched by Johnston's complex and convincing work." - Andrea L. Harris, Associate Professor, Mansfield University; Author of Other Sexes: Rewriting Difference from Woolf to Winterson and co-editor with John M. Ulrich of GenXegesis: Essays on Alternative Youth (Sub) Culture

[Art credit]

GEORGIA JOHNSTON is an Associate Professor of English and Women's Studies at Saint Louis University, USA.

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