Feminist Studies
Emancipating the Passive Muse: A Call for a Feminist Approach to Writing Biographies on Historical Women
This essay analyzes two popular biographies on historical women to interrogate how a focus on
gender has shaped the genre: Nancy Ruben Stuart’s The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy
Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation (2008) and Jung Chang’s Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine
Who Launched Modern China (2013). I argue that biographers who perpetuate gender stereotypes miss
a momentous opportunity during the current life writing boom in the United States to educate readers
on women’s social, cultural, and political contributions worldwide. In proposing that feminist-informed
biographies are more accurate, complete, and make social and cultural interventions, I discuss how these
texts celebrate women’s abilities and successes and, thus, counter patriarchal interpretations of history
No Related Publications available