Writing The Self a Study of Select Dalit Womens Personal Narratives

Abstract

Originally autobiography belongs to the male literary tradition that has established male as self and the female as other . But the female autobiographical tradition subverts the notion and appropriates selfrepresentation as the history of the self. The genre entrusts women with power of self-representation and enable women to validate gendered group identity. In the process of establishing a self female autobiographical tradition created a writing subject that speaks on behalf of the women of entire community. It is a narrative of pain, trauma, anguish and exploitation. This writing subject is the autobiographical subject that creates the text. This subject brings the self in a discursive pattern where the subject enunciates the self within the intersectionality of gender, caste and ethnicity. Thus, autobiography as a genre creates a space for women, articulating the self , providing a larger scope of self- evolution. So autobiography is a genre of literature, which provides an insight into the selfevolution of the author .As it is based on an individual s life, it focuses on the development of his personality. Usually autobiography, as Lejeune observed, is considered as a retrospective prose narrative produced by a real person concerning his own existence, focusing on his individual life, in particular, on the development of his personality (Lejeune, 193). newline