Disparate Images:

Literary Heroism and the ‘Work vs. Life’ Topos in Contemporary Biofictions about Victorian Authors

Abstract

Contemporary biofictional representations of famous public figures, as any biographical undertaking, can variously be located between the two poles of hagiography and demythologisation. In the case of author fictions, such positionings are in part determined by the question of how the subject’s life is depicted in relation to his/her work. This paper explores the ties between work and private life envisioned in neo-Victorian biofictions about Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Patricia K. Davis’s novel A Midnight Carol (1999) and Laura Fish’s novel Strange Music (2008) offer positive depictions of their biographees, which are grounded in a vision of a harmonious work-life correspondence. By contrast, Margaret Forster’s acclaimed novel Lady’s Maid (1990) and Sebastian Barry’s drama Andersen’s English (2010) represent a particular type of authorial ‘dethroning’ which centres on what we have called the ‘work vs. life’ topos: the chasm between the moral values conveyed through the historical author’s works and his/her private conduct.