Palimpsest: (Re)Reading Women's Lives

Abstract

Drawing on the postmodern and feminist critique of positivist notions of subjectivity, knowledge, and representation, this essay explores issues of self-representation in the life-history narratives of three female educators born early in the 20th century. This article focuses on how "double voicedness " functions as a narrative strategy that enables women to express conflicting conceptions of self. By rereading the women's life histories against traditional narratives of teaching, the authors acknowledge the layered mean ings-the palimpsest's surface and deep inscriptions-that form the fabric of women's lives and suggest how their emerging understandings of double voicedness might more deeply attune us to the multiple ways women actively construct, resist, and negotiate a gendered self.