Inside the Mask: the lives and lies of Harry Bensley. A creative-critical investigation into truth, gender and ethics in non-fiction narrative writing.

Abstract

This thesis creatively and critically explores the ambiguous terrain between fact and fiction, truth and lies, and past and present in nontraditional autobiographical writing. My creative text, Inside the Mask, explores the real-life Edwardian fraudster and walker Harry Bensley, who created his own masculinist myth. Through auto/bio/fiction and psychogeography, the narrator examines the effect Bensley’s actions and false narrative had on his wives. She learns how history and memory are recreated through the lens of self, discovering the effect of false narratives in her own life. In recognising which narratives were imposed upon her and which were self-imposed, she can reclaim her sense of self. The critical commentary contextualises Inside the Mask within the tradition of nontraditional autobiographical narrative forms by female writers. I examine the first English Language autobiography by Margery Kempe, whose unorthodox life, pilgrimages, and text demonstrate fierce opposition to the gendered narratives imposed upon her. My next subject, Mary Wollstonecraft flouted patriarchal conventions through her walking, marital status, and writing, creating what would now be known as ‘autofiction’ and ‘psychogeography’. Considering the work of contemporary author Julie Myerson, whose autobiographical texts trouble ethical and genre boundaries, I investigate negative reactions to women’s autobiographical writing about motherhood and explore how she and other female authors respond. Throughout, and particularly in Chapter Four, I interrogate my research practice and the ethics of writing about others. By examining ‘competing’ stories, ‘true’ stories, and stories submerged, subverted, or falsified by familial, patriarchal or other influences in nontraditional autobiographic writing, this creative-critical thesis offers an original contribution to current literary discourse on the permeable boundaries of fact and fiction, truth and lies, and past and present in autobiographical forms