Anshu Surve, Anwesha Basu
The women writers in the 19th century
represented themselves in the form of writings and presented their ideas
through the medium of autobiography, a genre in the literary world. Genre, as
per Collins dictionary, is ‘a particular type of literature, painting, music,
film or other art form which people consider as a class because it has special
characteristics’. Autobiography is a
tool to represent the ‘Self’ and during the 19th century, the women used it as
one of her weapons to challenge the patriarchal and dominant upper class,
wherein they were categorised in the marginalized section in terms of their
origin and in creative writing field. Their writings became an agency or rather
a space- emotional space within the cultural and societal space, where they put
forth their emotions, desire to become emancipated, create a bench mark
alongside other male writers in the literary world and inspire other women.
This research paper attempts to explore autobiography in a new light through
spatial theory as proposed by Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja, vis-à-vis place and will posit the narratives which
portrays the injustice done upon the marginalized people during the 19th
century. Space will act as a conceptual tool to narrate the slave narratives Incidents in the Life of a
Slave Girl written by herself (1861) and The History of Mary
Prince, a West Indian Slave. Related by Herself (1831) of Harriet Jacobs,
an Afro-American slave in America and Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave in
England respectively.
Autobiography, female writers, slave narrative, space
VOL.12, ISSUE No.2, March 2020