- Link:
- http://hdl.handle.net/2328/1594
- Collection:
-
- Subjects
- Biography Primary documents Women Australian Standard Research Classification>420101 English>420200 Literature Studies>420202 Australian and New Zealand>420218 Literary Theory>420303 Culture,
Gender, Sexuality Australian Standard Research Classification > 420101
English > 420200 Literature Studies > 420202 Australian and
New Zealand > 420218 Literary Theory > 420303 Culture,
Gender, Sexuality
- Creator:
- Golden, Jill
- Format
- 269164 bytes
- Format
- application/pdf
- Language
- en
- Publisher
- Routledge: Taylor&Francis Group
- Type
- Article
- Description
- "Beatrice Speaking" is an account of three years of
my mother’s life (from 1945 to 1948). The narrative is written in
the first-person voice of Beatrice, my mother (not, of course, her
real name), and is framed by a prologue and epilogue in the
first-person voice of one of her children (myself) in the present.
I have struggled to find a name for the hybrid offspring that I
have produced; intergenerational auto/biography is much closer than
any of the alternatives. I want to explain the reason for my
difficult decision to tell this story in the first-person narrating
voice of Beatrice. To write in my mother’s voice raises ethical
problems about appropriation and authenticity; more immediately,
for years this was simply an impossibly presumptuous thing for me
to do. Using the third-person ‘she’ was the only way to balance my
role as writer and creator of the character Beatrice against my
sense of intrusion into my mother’s private life. All the writing I
did about her earlier life ("Inventing Beatrice") was done in this
third-person voice. But when I came to the 1945–1948 period, I
became stuck. I had writer’s block. During six months I slowly
realised that I had only two choices: I could either use Beatrice’s
own first-person voice (being honest and faithful to her letters)
or else I would fall silent altogether. I chose the first option,
to let Beatrice speak for herself, and started writing again. The
biggest leap that this entailed was putting myself into her
(Beatrice’s/my mother’s) moral space, living within it and
accepting it at the same time as I profoundly rejected at least
some of it for myself.
- Publisher
- Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group
- Description
- "Beatrice Speaking" is an account of three years of
my mother’s life (from 1945 to 1948). The narrative is written in
the first-person voice of Beatrice, my mother (not, of course, her
real name), and is framed by a prologue and epilogue in the
first-person voice of one of her children (myself) in the present.
I have struggled to find a name for the hybrid offspring that I
have produced; intergenerational auto/biography is much closer than
any of the alternatives. I want to explain the reason for my
difficult decision to tell this story in the first-person narrating
voice of Beatrice. To write in my mother’s voice raises ethical
problems about appropriation and authenticity; more immediately,
for years this was simply an
impossibly presumptuous thing for me
to do. Using the third-person ‘she’ was the only way to balance my
role as writer and creator of the character Beatrice against my
sense of intrusion into my mother’s private life. All the writing I
did about her earlier life ("Inventing Beatrice") was done in this
third-person voice. But when I came to the 1945–1948 period, I
became stuck. I had writer’s block. During six months I slowly
realised that I had only two
choices: I could either use
Beatrice’s own first-person voice (being honest and faithful to her
letters) or else I would fall silent altogether. I chose the first
option, to let Beatrice speak for herself, and started writing
again. The biggest leap that this entailed was putting myself into
her (Beatrice’s/my mother’s) moral space, living within it and
accepting it at the same time as I profoundly rejected at least
some of it for myself.
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