The autobiographical beginning is one of the typological features of women's literature. For Russian women's prose of the 19th century autobiography was relevant as a non-fiction strategy. In the 20th century, “autobiographizm” was actively developed, which, thanks to its mythologization, becomes a fiction strategy, then in the 21st century the leading narrative strategy became an autobiographical narrative, potentially allowing to realize the entire range of fiction / non-fiction. Since the autobiographical narrative in women's literature can be realized directly and indirectly, the authors of the article suggest using two terms to distinguish between two different types of its representation in the text. We propose to update the term autobiographical narrative (in the narrow sense) when we find that the facts of the biography of a particular author are reflected to a greater or lesser extent in the narrator.