SOURCE: "Gender Negotiations in Nineteenth-Century Women's Autobiographical Writing," in The Uses of Autobiography, edited by Julia Swindells, Taylor & Francis, 1995, pp. 120-27.

In the following essay, Hirsch examines the construction of gender in the autobiographies of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Sand.

Joanna Russ' provocative book How to Suppress Women's Writing has demonstrated the process of 'false categorizing' which operates in order to distract attention away from the woman writer towards her love affair(s).¹ So, for example, the mythology surrounding Elizabeth Barrett has suggested a pale semi-invalid, a Victorian Sleeping Beauty, dreaming unproductively until awoken by the kiss of Robert Browning into mature poethood. In the case of George Sand, similarly, volumes have been written about her love affairs, representing her as a kind of groupie, attaching herself to men of genius. One of the 'uses of autobiography' for both these women was the articulation of their struggles...