The rhetorical strategy of an autobiography: Reading Satyavati's Atmacaritamu

Abstract

This article describes and analyses the autobiography of an ordinary woman, perhaps the first autobiography by a woman in Telugu. Despite its unique features, the text, strangely enough, fell into oblivion. Published in 1934, Satyavati's Atmacaritamu contains a radical critique of religion and society. Though a widow, Satyavati claimed the status of pativrata and through this ingenious rhetorical strategy legitimated her critique as internal to tradition. The article also situates the text in the corpus of writings by women all over India in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, and traces the evolution the 'women's question' in colonial Andhra in relation to this literature.