‘The best years of your life’: remembering childhood in autobiographical texts

In this paper, several aspects of autobiographical accounts of childhood are explored. The paper begins with a consideration of Freudian explanations of how recollections of childhood are bounded by memory. The distinctive form of definitions of oneself-as-child are then described and related to post-modern theories about the self. Finally, the ways in which recollections of childhood are framed by the subordinate position of children in the family and society are discussed. Six autobiographies were chosen for study. All were by Australian authors. The authors were Henry Handel Richardson, Ruth Park, Jill Ker Conway, Albert Facey, Hal Porter and Manning Clark.