The Formation of 20th-Century Queer Autobiography : Reading Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, Hilda Doolittle, and Gertrude Stein

Using the figure of the Lesbian in modernist lesbian autobiographies, this book interrogates both the genre autobiography and modernist scientific theories of female sexual development. 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. Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction....Pages 1-26 wHoles in the Dyke: Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud Figuring the Lesbian....Pages 27-53 Counterfeit Perversion: Vita Sackville-West’s Portrait....Pages 55-71 Virginia Woolf’s Subjectivities and (Auto)biographies....Pages 73-93 Hilda Doolittle’s Lesbian Vision....Pages 95-125 Lesbian Textualities in Stein’s Lifting Belly....Pages 127-153 Back Matter....Pages 155-203