Lest the Modern Matriarch readers think this is a website devoted to Virginia Woolf, here’s a little biographical information about the next author I will be reading/disscussing. Carolyn G. Heilbrun was a Humanities professor at Columbia University who specialized in feminist theory.
Heilbrun also wrote detective novels under the pen name Amanda Cross. She explains her choice to use a pseudonym in her book Writing a Woman’s Life:
I had very good reason for secrecy, but as I now perceive, the secrecy itself was wonderfully attractive. Secrecy is power. True, one gives up recognition and publicity and fame, should any be coming one’s way, but for me that was not difficult . . . I think that the secrecy gave me a sense of control over my destiny that nothing else in my life, in those pre-tenure, pre-woman’s movement days, afforded.
Heilbrun is passionate about the cultural narratives of women’s lives and has had an unmistakable impact on women’s memoirs. I highly recommend Writing a Woman’s Life to aspiring writers. Although I do not always agree with everything Heilburn has to say, her dedication to the feminine narrative is unsurpassed, making her one of the most influential voices of the 20th century.
With chapters like “Woman as Outsider” and “Women Writers and Female Characters: The failure of Imagination,” Reinventing Womanhood should prove to be just as challenging.
