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Who are some autistic women writers who've laid a foundation for a true aut-lit?
In wk 6 we talked about a true autistic women’s literary tradition that would help us shore up a discreet identity (similar to gay literature, black american literature and black feminist lit particularly, the male modern literary tradition , etc). Some examples/precursors discussed were great memoirists, both explicit and covert (eg Jane Austen, Edith Wharton). We also discussed autistic womens literary predilections and I left thinking about authors i’ve loved and felt affinities for over the years, thinking of who might be good examples of forerunners to such a tradition (but also great reads!)
Names I came up with:
– George Eliot
– Virginia Woolf: all of her friends were autistic males/female writers: EM Forster, TS Eliot, Vita Sackville-West who inspired Orlando and was likely also autistic; Woolf drowned herself and had extremely disordered eating; had no kids but loved and empathized with her sister’s kids; also obviously synaesthetic [excerpt from The Waves: “the cock crows like a spurt of hard, red water”.] Her formal play with the literary genre specifically defies conventions of linear plot, and blends memory with present in ways that drew heavy criticism and are today reasons for her canonization. Her husband was autistic too and kept scrupulous records of the household spending on margins of pages of old books.
– Gertrude Stein: totally autistic, read Tender Buttons and Lives of Americans for obsessive description / anthropomorphizing of everyday objects, as well as cataloguing of behaviors of a class of Americans immigrating to France in the prewar years. She has autistic style, which you can spot in Picassos famous portrait of her. Theres also a famous sculpture portrait of her by American Sculptor jo Davidson where her ring fingers are clearly longer than her pointer fingers.
– The Brontes (might have been referred to on the meeting)
– Kate Chopin: Read The Awakening (covert autobiography) of a woman who drops out of her marriage and ignores her kids who she admittedly is bored of watching, to pursue an ill-advised romance with a younger family friend and who moves into her own apartment and becomes an artist when the guy ditches her for commercial opportunities in Mexico. The book culminates in her possible suicide by drowning or “deciding to choose nothing” in life.
– Kris Kraus: Contemporary, essayist and fiction writer/memoirist. Aliens and Anorexia is a memoir that tells of her trying self producing a film by working as a telephone sex worker, being anorexic, having deadbeat artist friends, identifying with philosopher/poet/mystic Simone Weils apparent allergy to the world. Also wrote I Love Dick, recently turned into a popular amazon prime show.
– Simone Weil: Christian Mystic author, philosopher, sister of Andre Weil (french mathematician who worked on number theory and was part of the Bourbaki group), famously decided to take up arms in the spanish civil war only to fuck up shooting off a cannon after little training but much conviction and critically damage her leg. Also famous for pulling people aside in parties and asking them if they wanted to do math problems for fun. Her wealthy parents paid for her apartment bc she was too poor her whole life to manage one but too stubborn to live with anyone else and would routinely fire her maid since a maid was luxurious and forget to eat food. Afflicted with debilitating migraines but worked furiously on writing despite them. Told the one man she loved that “she’d never have a romantic relationship” because she was “too wretched” (i.e. imperfect, human, corporeal), worked in a factory making metal widgets after giving up teaching school and nearly destroyed her eyesight, wrote several essays and philosophy books before spending the final years of her life working (uselessly, apparently) on the farm of a french catholic priest and dying at 32 in hospital from anorexia “refusing to consume more than was rationed to soldiers in the war” and in reality eating like two strawberries a day. Read: The Need for Roots, “Void and Compensation”
– Shirley Jackson: American author working largely in the 50s, author of the horror short “The Lottery” which caused such a stir on publication in the new yorker in 1952 that 10% of its readership unsubscribed. She was super autistic (really bad film called “Shirley” made about her and released in 2020 or 2021, cant remember) and was ostracized by the moms in the university town of bennington VT, famously and unfortunately neglectful to her large family of kids, prolific and lucrative writer (she wrote for columns periodicals as well, I believe “good housekeeping”) enormous eater and drinker, famously superstitious/witchy, and had laser intelligence which pissed off her husband constantly who was himself a history professor at the university and famous philanderer. She died really young from lifestyle (drinking, smoking, overeating, and probably chronic stress and depression). Dialogue in her stories and novels is LEGEND, narrative structure interesting though operated within conventions moreso than the others on this list (remember, she SOLD her work to support her family at a young age and was able to). To read: We Have Always Lived in the Castle, “The Lottery”.
– Elena Ferrante: Contemporary Italian novelist whose books are largely based on her life. Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym. Incredible dialogue, plot based on women with unusual lives and talents/skills. Both Protagonists of the popular Neapolitan Novels series are autistic Italian Women during the rise and fall of Fascism and post industrial eras learning how to be mothers and women that participate in the workforce/capitalism, dealing with the fact of being in and outside of society, and competing with eachother over recognition, lovers, social status, intelligence, looks, etc etc.
There are so many more I could list but would love to hear other peoples favorites and start putting together the “aut-lit canon”.
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1 Reply
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I’ve started looking at leading female characters in famous novels written by men, and all the women seem autistic — that is, they have extraordinary special interests and they ignore social norms. I am thinking that men don’t take the time to write about women unless they’re autistic.