inof on Joan Makes History :: essays research papers

What were after, of course, is stories, and we know that archives is bulging with beauties. Having found them, we then proceed to fiddle with them to make them the expression we want them to be, rather than the way they re solelyy were. We keep up it wrong, willfully and knowingly. barely perhaps you could say that the very flagrency of our "getting it wrong" points to the fact that all stories even the history "story" are made. They go for an agenda, even if its an unconscious one. Perhaps there are many ways to get it right. The interesting parts of history are probably always whats not there. My admit special area of interest ab proscribed whats not in history is the women. As you would all know, by and thumping theyre sadly absent from the historical record. However, Im successful to be the recipientcustodian, even, if that doesnt sound too grandioseof a rich oral history handed down from my mother, who got it from her mother and so on back down the line. Shes told me family stories from every generation since our family maiden came to Australiain the form of our wicked convict ancestor solomon Wiseman, in 1806. Sol is supposed to pay off murdered his wife, and turned his daughterpregnant to the riding-masterout of the house to starve. (But perhaps, the novelist in me thinks, she didnt starve , but went on to have, well, a story) There was "Uncle Willie with the red hair" who was "killed by falling off a supply when he was eighteen and broke his mothers heart." There was her own mother, in bonk with a Catholic boya love as unthinkable as between a Montagu and a Capulet and was compel to marry a good Protestant boy. You should see the look on her face in the wedding photos.This oral history, handed down in a series of formalised anecdotes from mother to daughter, leaving rich areas for system in between is, I suspect, one of the things thats made me a novelist.http//www.nla.gov.au/events/history/papers/Kate_Gren ville%20.htmlSOUL-SEARCHING about our past is the new literary fashion. It is the period in which the breast-beaters, the moral Pharisees, are driven to tell us how, unlike their predecessors, they have political and moral virtue. The Aborigines, women and ordinary people have become the goodies, and all those who ignored them in their books or their teaching have become the baddies. The winds of change are blowing over the ancient continent.