Making (self-) history: Women's autobiography and pre-Marxist socialism in France

The dissertation traces the emergence and development in France of a mode of women's autobiographical writing influenced by pre-Marxist socialist doctrines (most notably, those of Charles Fourier, the Saint-Simonians, and Pierre Leroux) which link social progress to the emancipation of women. The nineteenth-century autobiographers on whom I focus--Flora Tristan, George Sand, and Louise Michel--revise and combine the discourses of religious autobiography and historical memoir. Each autobiographer anchors her personal saga in contemporary events, thereby establishing an organic parallel between her own evolution as an individual, and the evolution of humanity. Drawing upon a socialist conception of history, she simultaneously challenges the interdependent ideologies of individualism and of gender promoted by autobiography in the post-Rousseau romantic tradition.;In Chapter One, I argue that the conception of selfhood put forth by Rousseau in his autobiography and social theory is inseparable from an ideology of gender. After reviewing women's historically problematic relation to autobiographical writing, I show how pre-Marxist socialist doctrines liberated the female autobiographical project from certain constraints imposed by these intertwining ideologies.;Chapter Two is a reading of Flora Tristan's Peregrinations d'une paria. In the wake of the 1830 Revolution, Tristan chronicles both social unrest and her own progressive transformation into a kind of "Woman Messiah" capable of guiding humanity into a more harmonious era.;Chapter Three is a reading of George Sand's Histoire de ma vie. Implying that her own birth represents a providential convergence of history and heredity, Sand claims for herself an important historical and political role as a writer who mediates between polarized groups.;Chapter Four focuses on the Memoires of Louise Michel, a socialist turned anarchist who participated in the 1871 Paris Commune. Her text reflects the dilemmas encountered by the socialist woman autobiographer writing during a period when socialism is becoming "scientific," and increasingly oriented towards organized (male) labor.;The conclusion briefly considers the renaissance of female autobiography in relation to movements for social change in the twentieth century.