In their literary autobiographies, modernists Vita Sackville-West, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) challenge the scientific figures of the perverse lesbian, particularly those promulgated by Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud. By multiplying their 'I's, manipulating subject and object divisions, undermining boundaries between writer and audience, and using repetition to code erotic moments, these writers queer the terms of autobiography. That queering requires understanding autobiography as more institutional than introspective, and the autobiographies themselves question the very theories that determine them: theories of lesbianism, female development, and memory.

Autorentext
GEORGIA JOHNSTON is an Associate Professor of English and Women's Studies at Saint Louis University, USA.

Inhalt
Queering the Subject of Modernist Lesbian Autobiography Wholes in the Dykes: Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud Figuring the Lesbian Counterfeit Perversions in Vita Sackville-West's Portrait Virginia Woolf's Subjectivities and (Auto)Biographies Hilda Doolittle's Lesbian Visions Lesbian Textualities in Stein's Lifting Belly