Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English. In this essay, he considers Cook's book in terms of some of the principles of feminist biography.
In her seminal work, Writing a Woman's Life (1988), feminist scholar Carolyn G. Heilbrun points out that it was not until recently that women found the means to write truthfully about their own lives. Up until about 1970, it was difficult even for women of achievement to break out of the passive mold—that centuries of cultural conditioning had imposed upon them—and take credit for their accomplishments. Following the conclusions of another scholar, Patricia Spacks, Heilbrun notes that when women such as Emmeline Pankhurst, Golda Meir, and Eleanor Roosevelt, all of whom made substantial contributions to history, wrote their autobiographies, they, in Spack's words, "fail directly to emphasize their own importance.... These women accept.....
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