Social unrest, mobility, and economic opportunities birthed fresh possibilities for personal identity at the end of the feudal age. Within this context emerged the first extant autobiography written in English, The Book of Margery Kempe.  Kempe recorded her personal experiences, leaving a journal of her spiritual and everyday life.

The context of the Reformation and Renaissance enabled the writing of female autobiographies to emerge as mirrors and testimonies for readers.  Females were able to tell their personal stories as looking glasses for others. In 1591, A Christal Glasse, was a popular narrative account of the life and death of  Katherine Stubbes. It was published by Stubbes’ husband, as “a mirror of woman-hood [and]…a perfect pattern of true Christianity.”(Stubbes 1591)

Females continued in succeeding centuries to produce autobiographies but more often in  unpublished forms. Publication of their autobiographies was problematic. Published autobiographies by male authors were more accepted and respected. Females and their autobiographies often were not taken seriously in male-dominated cultures. Women who published their writing in the 1700’s-1900’s were exceptional.

Male experience was considered normative. Females spoke tentatively from outside the dominant male framework.  Women’s autobiographies commonly were considered insignificant, idiosyncratic, or tedious. There was a basic resistance to valuing women’s experience. Male autobiographies found a place of privilege, while female autobiographies were devalued. (Smith 1987:16) There was a fundamental distrust and resistance to women’s public voice.

Literate, educated women of the Reformation and Renaissance found themselves within a new, but limited, world of discourse. There was a new sphere of freedom and opportunity for female, individual expression; but it was within prescribed scripts, such as that of the unmarried virgin, the wife, the nun, or the queen. Most women were to remain silent in public. Most women autobiographers wrote letters, diaries, and journals and stayed in their domestic place, out of public discourse.

Female writers who had a privileged social status were more likely to write autobiographies in literal language. Others without privileged status often wrote in figurative language. Those female autobiographers, who were bold enough to enter the world of public discourse, moved into it from a disadvantaged societal position. Their autobiographies often became heretic narratives. (Smith 1987:43)

The factor of minority ethnicity further compounded the marginalization of published autobiographies by women.

     It is an unhappy fact that association with a…"sub-culture" has, with occasional exception, relegated
     a writer to less than full writer’s status… (Olsen, in Tate 1983:x)

The public lives of female autobiographers of cultural minorities have been especially complex. They have suffered double or triple layers of others’ misrepresentations and stereotypes.

      In her doubled, perhaps tripled, marginality, then, the autobiographer negotiates…stories, all
     …written about her rather than by her. Moreover, her non-presence, her unrepresentability, presses
      even more imperiously yet elusively on her; and her position as speaker before an audience becomes
      even more precarious. (Smith 1987:51)  

Maya Angelou was cautious with her published autobiographies, seeking to carefully influence her audience:

     She stages her own alienated relationship to her … reader, knowing full well that the reader
     must be conned into believing that she has a privileged relation to an autobiographical truth…The
     double voiced nature of  Angelou’s text allows her to oppose an oppressive social system without risk
     of becoming a term within that system… (Lionnet 1989:163)

Encouraging the writing and telling of edifying female and minority stories continues to be important today. Female writers, speakers, and presenters and those from minority groups (ethnic minorities, the physically challenged, and Christians, for example), who are commonly not taken seriously in public arenas yet have edifying stories to tell, need to be encouraged. One way they can be inspired, motivated, and strengthened is through role models.  Supporting the presenting of autobiographical, role-modeling stories is important as these stories emphasize the subjective values, attitudes, and character qualities that enabled the role model to be exemplary. The next article in this series is to present evidence of the potential power for positive influence through stories of role models, especially for those who are marginalized in our society. 

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