Heilbrun, author, humanities professor, and one of our most astute feminist thinkers, shows how throughout the centuries, those who write about women's lives have suppressed the truth of the female experience in order to make the 'written life' conform to society's expectations of what life should be. Drawing on the experiences of celebrated women, from George Sand and Virginia Woolf to Dorothy Sayers and Adrienne Rich, Heilbrun examines the struggle these writers undertook when their drives made it impossible for them to follow the traditional "male" script of a woman's life. Heilbrun also examines literature's silence on such vital subjects as friendship between women, the female physical experience, and the richness that often imbues a woman's later years.
"Accessible, engaging and compelling."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Writing A Woman's Life, a wide-ranging study both personal and feminist, asserts that patriarchal culture has not only defined the limits of women's lives, it has determined what stories about women will be told...If it moves readers to write the full truth about female lives or live lives that are not scripted by others (male or female), its effect will be indisputably emendatory."
--San Francisco Chronicle
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