The dialogic self

This study addresses the dilemma of the female subject whereby women claim empowerment and the right to authorize themselves, yet so resist the idea of patriarchal authority, that in undermining all authority they may deny their own. By theorizing subjectivity according to the dialogic model of Mikhail Bakhtin, author Roxanne J. Fand posits a moderating self-narrator who, rather than imposing a single authoritarian voice of fixed ideology and identity, negotiates among diverse internalized voices of one's social-ecological milieu. Fand analyzes the lives and work of Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing, and Margaret Atwood in the light of various literary, psychoanalytic, sociolinguistic, and postmodern theories in order to show how each writer formulates her dialogic view of subjectivity, considering her historical moment in feminism.