Abstract
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When Christine de Pizan, in her 1410 Lamentation on the Evils of Civil
War, described herself as 'seulette a part' (de Pizan, 1984: 84) she expressed
a divided sense of identity that has echoed throughout women's lifewriting
right up to the present day. Calling desperately for an end to the
warfare that was dividing France, she marshalled all the rhetorical pathos
she could to attain her end, portraying herself simultaneously as a loyal
member of, and an outsider to, French society. The striking ambiguity
of the phrase 'a part' captures the uncertain standing she experienced as
a widow and a female commentator, alluding to the social marginality
her position brought with it, but also, vitally, to the valuable reflective
distance it allowed her as a lone woman calling for peace in her fractured
society. In this short, three-word self-description, which informs the title
of this chapter, Christine captures succinctly the complex, uneasy relationship
between the female autobiographical self that is 'a part' of communities
and institutions, and the self that stands 'apart' from them. It
is this complex and frequently agonized sense of self - seeking to belong
yet yearning for solitude and privacy, or indeed for distinction from the
group - that is at the heart of this volume's exploration of women's lifewriting.
This mode of self-representation, in the many guises in which
It is taken up in the chapters that follow, is at the heart of what we are
(,lIlling the unsociable sociability of women's lifewriting.