The Struggle of Hilda Doolittle to Exist as She Wants to Exist

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The Struggle of Hilda Doolittle to Exist as She Wants to Exist

Journal Title: Akdeniz İnsani Bilimler Dergisi - Year 2018, Vol 8, Issue 2

Abstract

Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), better known by her initials H.D., for the greater part of her prolific life, was concerned about her own life story. She was criticized for repeatedly writing about her own life and pictured as a prisoner of autobiography. However, H.D. was not writing a pure auto-biography. When her prose is analysed, it is clear that she preferred to write roman à clef(A French term meaning ‘novel with a key’, refering to fictional works in which public figures and events are disguised behind a fictional screen, Boyde 2009, 156) rather than autobiography. To understand what was missing in autobiography proper and what parchment H.D.’s modernist roman à clef was written on, I will primarily discuss how autobiography proper has been gendered in Western culture and how this genre is treated within H.D.’s modernist coterie. H.D.’s selection of the roman à clef as a genre did not spring from a strange desire to write her life, but rather, was a deliberate choice serving her own purposes. H.D. used roman à clef ‘therapeutically’, as a ‘passive’ measure to create a powerful voice. I will illustrate my thesis by juxtaposing relevant passages in her romans à clef:Asphodel, The Paint it Today and Hermione, as well as contextualizing it by using the psychoanalytic works of Nancy Chodorow on identity formation to argue that women needed a new form of expression.

Authors and Affiliations

Emel ZORLUOĞLU

Keywords

EP ID EP533644
DOI 10.13114/MJH.2018.441
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