ABSTRACT
Catherine (Kate) Cookson was born illegitimate and into poverty in the lower classes of the North East in England. As a child she had no authority over her own life, but as an author Cookson’s experiences gave her the authority to write about the damaging childhood. In her autobiographical work Our Kate (1969), Cookson says she was always “fighting against what people were thinking … ‘What chance did the lass have?’” (12-13). As Carolyn G. Heilbrun observes, until at least the late 1970s any woman of “accomplishment” had to confront masculine “power and control” in “trying to deal honestly with their past lives” (16-17). A woman who wrote a “truthful” autobiography, one that showed her individuality and highlighted deeper issues, was seen as imitating a masculine activity, and called “strident” (12-16). Apart from Robert Colls’s scathing critique, Cookson was mainly ignored by male reviewers.
