The Study of Autobiography

3. THE STUDY OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY A.O.J. Cockshut. The Art of Autobiography in 19th and 20th Century England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. $25.00 No less than fifty names precede the opening section of A.O.J. Cockshut's The An of Autobiography. This chronological hsting prepares the reader for the sweep of authors and titles discussed m this study which extends in birthdates from 1706 to 1923. Necessarily, the representation is eclectic: Benjamin Franklin (1706), John Ruskin (1819), Havelock EUis (1859), Christopher MUne (1920), Katharine Tait (1923, the daughter of Bertrand RusseU) to cite only five authors. Cockshut has clearly chosen widely in selecting his examples but has he chosen well? That is the dilemma of this study which ranges—one is tempted to say mmmages-quickly through an assorted coUection of titles to create a Baedaker rather than Guide Michelin of 19th and 20th century autobiography. In a volume strong on citation but weak on argument, organization stands out. Among the ten sections of the book, Cockshut devotes four to childhood with three headed "The ChUd Alone," "The Child at Home," and "The Dedicated ChUd." In addition, there is one section on individuals dedicated to the world (Beatrice Webb, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell) and two sections on the more traditional "Quest" and "Conversion" motif. The length of these sections varies as do the choice of examples. Katharine Tait oddly combines with Ruskin and Edmund Gosse, for example, in the section titled The Dedicated Child." The "Introduction" is a disappointing restatement of commonplace notions about autobiography focusing on the question of how people perceive their own development and what hterary form they choose to express it. The question Cockshut proposes is initially one of intent, leading the reader to expect an analysis of the primary stages of autobiographical expression and the transformation of raw materials into a finished form, the "art perhaps of the title. In the case of Beatrice Webb (Section νΠ), this might be the difference between her diaries and her two autobiographical volumes, My Apprenticeship and Our Pannership. But httle companson or analysis of this sort occurs. Rather, Cockshut centers on describing the famUy background of Webb and her belief in effective social work as well as the validity of fact in formulating social pohcy. He also annoyingly second-guesses her, writing for example that "probably she was unaware, m writing this [a paragraph on a possible 'science of social organization'], how much it shows the traces of a utilitarian background" (p. 121). He also criticizes her apparent faUure to understand the practical distinction between politics and administration, although with her husband she wrote two comprehensive studies, The History of Trade Unionism (1894) and English Local Government (1899-1929), works that Cockshut does not acknowledge. He also neglects her difficulties in writing autobiography, a point Webb explicitly details in her diary: "there is the unpleasantness of selhng your personality as well as your professional skiU, you are displaying yourself lüce an actress or an opera singer—you lose your privacy." The only critical comment Cockshut can muster conceming Webb's autobiographies is that the "fascination of her autobiographical books" is that "they give a most valuable study of the complex relation between [her] inner and outer [life]" (p. 128). 96 Such generahties appear with unnecessary regularity throughout The An of Autobiography, weakening the development of any detailed thesis. An example is this statement: "every autobiographer of any merit tries in some way to detach himself from the pressure of experience m order to reflect, to form events into a pattern, to discriminate the important from the trivial, to interpret, to judge" (p. 76). This truth is as self-evident as are the statements on pages 101, 211, and 214. The irony of these broad declarations on the nature of autobiography is that autobiographical theory has advanced far beyond these portentous notions, a development Cockshut has httle noticed. What limits the approach of Cockshut is that it is rooted in the venerable "practical criticism* of I. A. Richards. Rather than develop an overaU argument with a firm theoretical basis, Cockshut has chosen to give us readings of autobiographies distinguished by their functionalism and...