The Tidiest Revolution: Regulative Feminist Autobiography and the De-Facement of the Australian Women’s Movement

Abstract

Discusses the representation of feminist activism in some contemporary women’s autobiographies, focussing on Susan Ryan’s Catching the Waves (1999), Wendy McCarthy’s Don’t Fence Me In (2000), and Anne Summer’s Ducks on the Pond (1999). The article concludes with a fictocritical piece of experimental autobiography, a ‘brief, episodic, fragmentary autograph of soundtracks and wordtracks’.

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Published 1 May 2002 in Volume 20 No. 3. Subjects: Autobiographical writing, Feminism, Feminists, Memoirs, Sexual politics, Women, Women's Liberation.

Cite as: Henderson, Margaret. ‘The Tidiest Revolution: Regulative Feminist Autobiography and the De-Facement of the Australian Women’s Movement.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 20, no. 3, 2002, doi: 10.20314/als.04d178968a.

  • Margaret Henderson — Margaret Henderson is Associate Professor in Literature at the University of Queensland, Australia.