SOURCE: Harish, Ranjana. “My Story.” In Women's Writing: Text and Context, edited by Jasbir Jain, pp. 213-22. Jaipur, India: Rawat Publications, 1996.

In the following essay, Harish underscores the novelty and appeal of My Story.

This book has cost me many things that I held dear, but I do not for a moment regret having written it. I have written several books in my life time, but none of them provided the pleasure the writing of My Story has given me. I have nothing more to say.

(Preface)

In Virginia Woolf's view any woman who sets her pen to paper and adopts the writer's profession, like her, has to undertake two enterprises: “killing the ‘Angel in the House’ in her and ‘telling the truth about (her) own experience as a body’”. She describes an Angel in the House as an “intensely sympathetic, immensely charming and utterly unselfish” woman who...