SOURCE: "The Coincidence of Biography and Autobiography: Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë," in Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 4, Fall, 1995, pp. 339-59.

In the essay that follows, Helms considers the manner in which Gaskell comes to understand herself in relation to Charlotte Brontë and thus combines the genres of biography and autobiography.

The ongoing theoretical debates about the genres of biography and autobiography are often concerned with genre classifications, gender issues, intentions as well as techniques and methods, and a general rethinking of given paradigms. Many long-held categorizations and evaluations prove questionable in the context of post-structuralist and feminist theories. Victoria Glendinning has described the situation using an interesting image; she says that the "Berlin Wall between fiction and biography, between autobiography and biography, between politics and biography, has huge breaches in it" (4). I take Glendinning's assessment one step further—this Wall not only has breaches...