Debatable lands : exploring the boundaries of fiction and nonfiction through family history
This thesis consists of a work of life writing accompanied by a critical essay that examines the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction. It tells the story of a Victorian family from Cornwall, whose lives were transformed by the age of steam and empire. The men went to sea as sailors or engineers, while the women became schoolteachers and governesses. These were ordinary people who left only a faint mark on history but I show how, starting from a few family relics and official documents, it is possible to reconstruct a complete life. To bring my characters alive I decided at critical moments to fictionalise, to put words into their mouths and thoughts into their heads. My narrative uses imagination to round out the facts of biography with the aim of producing a story that rings true. In Chapter 1 of the critical essay, I examine the relationship between family and public history and consider the role played by inherited objects, myths, and secrets in reconstructing the past. I argue that while the family archive resembles and overlaps with museum collections and official records, it has a different resonance and sometimes a different relationship to the truth. In Chapter 2, I consider family history as a form of life writing. I compare how the different genres of biography, history, and historical fiction deal with what is known and unknown about the past, and I identify three ways in which fiction and nonfiction narratives may differ. The first is invention, or making things up; the second is interiority, or access to the thoughts and feelings of characters who are long dead; and the third relates to narrative structure. But the boundary between fiction and nonfiction is, I conclude, not one that can or should be policed. By allowing the two to coexist, I am proposing one possible solution to the dilemma of how to write everyday lives in a way that gives them the interest and significance that I believe they deserve.
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