Women in White is a novel, set in Co. Kildare, Ireland in 1864, about a group of women who refused to conform to societal norms and whose voices were silenced and erased from history. Known as the Wrens of the Curragh, they lived beneath furze bushes and sold their bodies to soldiers in the local garrison. Their lives were directly impacted by the testing of Victorian policy in Ireland, such as the Sexually Contagious Diseases Act. The research question is the consideration of how a novel-length work of historical fiction may be written about people about whom barely any evidence exists. The critical commentary considers challenges faced by a writer of historical fiction and how the novel addresses them. It examines historical and contemporary fiction and non-fiction with a bearing on the novel’s subject matter, interprets factual records and provides insight into methods utilised to supplement and enhance these sources. Women in White utilises the gaps in history as a creative space in which to imagine the lives of the Wrens of the Curragh. The shape of what has been omitted from the historical record is defined by the research of contemporaneous events, geographic and architectural features, and socio-political ideology. The effect of these influences is explored via the fractured mental and emotional state of the protagonist, Brid. The novel integrates folklore and myth with elements of magic realism, a parody of neo-Victorianism and a feminist reading of existing records. By tracing the outline of what has been untold a writer of historical fiction may define and imagine the lives of people from another era and enable a reader to feel what it was like to live in that time. The writer may further present an alternative account of historical events and thereby question the accuracy of the official version.
Imagining untold history: A critical commentary on Women in White
Ryan, S. (Author). 2024
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy