Despite the fact that women have been writing essays since the late 17th century (Spinner, 2018), there are very few, if any, studies on essays by women writers. After an introductory section assessing the state of the art on essay studies, this contribution will focus on contemporary women’s essays on writing on which, to date, no critical analysis has yet been carried out. More specifically, this paper will examine Deborah Levy’s Things I Don't Want to Know, first published for Notting Hills Editions in 2013 and presented as an essay in response to George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Why I Write”. Levy’s book is an account of the narrator’s quest to acknowledge the aspects of her past life which had silenced her (her childhood in South Africa at the time of the Apartheid), resurfacing in her adult life in the form of an emotional and writerly block. The essay’s protean nature and propensity for reflexivity renders it a particularly suitable space to understand how contemporary women writers construe their literary personas and relate to the literary space. Through a close reading of selected key passages, the contribution will analyse the way in which the writer-narrator essayistically constructs her writerly identity by providing her personal and feminist response to Orwell. She does so by using Orwell’s four reasons – Political Purpose, Historical Impulse, Sheer Egoism and Aesthetic Enthusiasm – as titles to her chapters placing them in this chiastic inverted order. This also allows her to disrupt the traditional linear progress of autobiography – beginning with an adult writer-narrator, moving backwards to childhood and adolescence and returning to the present – and to cleverly touch upon relevant themes such as racist practices during the Apartheid, motherhood, exile, and writing.
Contemporary Women’s Essays on Writing: Deborah Levy’s Things I Don’t Want to Know
Lellida Vittoria Marinelli
2024-01-01
Abstract
Despite the fact that women have been writing essays since the late 17th century (Spinner, 2018), there are very few, if any, studies on essays by women writers. After an introductory section assessing the state of the art on essay studies, this contribution will focus on contemporary women’s essays on writing on which, to date, no critical analysis has yet been carried out. More specifically, this paper will examine Deborah Levy’s Things I Don't Want to Know, first published for Notting Hills Editions in 2013 and presented as an essay in response to George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Why I Write”. Levy’s book is an account of the narrator’s quest to acknowledge the aspects of her past life which had silenced her (her childhood in South Africa at the time of the Apartheid), resurfacing in her adult life in the form of an emotional and writerly block. The essay’s protean nature and propensity for reflexivity renders it a particularly suitable space to understand how contemporary women writers construe their literary personas and relate to the literary space. Through a close reading of selected key passages, the contribution will analyse the way in which the writer-narrator essayistically constructs her writerly identity by providing her personal and feminist response to Orwell. She does so by using Orwell’s four reasons – Political Purpose, Historical Impulse, Sheer Egoism and Aesthetic Enthusiasm – as titles to her chapters placing them in this chiastic inverted order. This also allows her to disrupt the traditional linear progress of autobiography – beginning with an adult writer-narrator, moving backwards to childhood and adolescence and returning to the present – and to cleverly touch upon relevant themes such as racist practices during the Apartheid, motherhood, exile, and writing.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
