Reading about different ways of studying history in this class has helped to inform me about my own prejudices, and helped to give me tools to more effectively analyse the sources that I am using. While trying to understand the relationship that Aunt May shared with her sister, reading Jocelyn Bartkevicus’s “The Person to Whom Things Happened,” and Paul Ricoeur’s “The Reality of the Past,” helped me to understand the complexity of the past’s existence in the writer’s present. Both authors have pointed to the nature of memoir, and autobiography, and as Ricoeur argues, any kind of historical text, as having an element of fictionality[1]. When I applied this to my reading of Aunt May’s diary, it pushed me to search for records that would support my theory of Aunt May’s closeness with her sister Lilian, instead of relying completely on Aunt May’s account, which may have had an element of nostalgic fondness to it. As Lynn Abrams outlines in her chapter “Memory” in Oral History Theory, “autobiographical memory is, in simple terms, the events of one’s life as they are personally reconstructed in the mind (rather than faithfully recalled) … we use memories in a number of ways: to explain an event to others, to illustrate our personal place in an event, as a guide to subsequent behaviour, and as a means of reassurance.”[2] These aspects of autobiographical writing can all be applied to A. May Henry’s memory. Henry’s memoir recollects her childhood, probably for her family’s sake, it places her during important events like the First and Second World Wars, and it likely reassures her, as she wrote it not long after her sister’s passing. Because of the fallibility of an individual’s memory of their own lives, and my own desire to create cohesion where there might be none, I have tried to approach the sparser parts of Henry’s memoir skeptically, by searching for supporting evidence on the nature of Henry and Lilian’s relationship. Although I have found some supporting evidence, this search was only partly successful, therefore, I have not been able to arrive at a conclusive theory about the closeness of their relationship.
My interpretation of Charlotte Whitton’s biography, another source that is integral to my research, has been informed by my study of Nick Salvatore’s “Biography and Social History: and Intimate Relationship.” In this article, Salvatore argues that a good biography, “if done well, sheds light far beyond any individual, even if it does not always reach into every corner of social life.”[3] This is what I hoped to achieve with my research paper by studying a variety of examples of women’s cohabitation, and connecting it to larger trends in my period’s social life. Although sometimes there was not a strong connection between my research on romantic friendship and Boston marriage with my research on female cohabitation, I wanted to show that the less common aspects of early twentieth century social life were still reflective of larger social norms. Because I was aware of this discrepancy, I reflected on the importance that studying a Boston marriage had in the study of history generally. My conclusion is that although the concept of the Boston marriage was a social aberration, people’s reaction to it reflects the ideals of society. Since romantic friendships and Boston marriages were largely accepted until the 1920s, we can better understand the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s social opinion on female sexuality and friendship. Like Lois W. Banner defends in her article “Biography as History,” biography, “individuals influence historical development,”[4] then so too, does an small social phenomenon. Just as the study of one person’s life can inform about history beyond that individual, so can the study of a small group of people. Even though those who engaged in Boston marriages were not a part of the dominant social ideal, their presence points to social prejudices nonetheless.
Finally, to all aspects of my research I have tried to bring an awareness of my desire to create a depoliticized narrative. Alexander Freund’s article “Under Storytelling’s Spell? Oral History in a Neoliberal Age” highlights the way stories are told currently: in a depoliticized, and widely consumable format. Because of this article, I am more aware of my likelihood to be not only attracted to the “confessional story”, but also my likelihood to present myself (on my eportfolio), or my research in a similarly individualistic and depoliticized manner undercutting the “epistemological, methodological, ethical and political aims of oral history,”[5] Reading this article was an “aha” moment for me as it is so relevant to the stories that I hear in my day to day life, which have a strong impact on me. This article reminded me to analyse what larger social elements were responsible for the trends that I was studying in women’s cohabitation, and it reminded me to always place them within the larger context. Although Boston marriages were a fascinating social phenomenon, they were not terribly deviant from dominant social conventions.

 

[1] Paul Ricoeur, “The Reality of the Past,” Time and Narrative (Volume 3), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988: 142-156.

[2] Lynn Abrams, “Memory,” in Oral History Theory, (New York: Routeledge, 2010), 78-195.

[3] Nick Salvatore, “Biography and Social History: An Intimate Relationship,” Labour History, no. 87 (2004): 187-192. 10.2307/27516005

[4] Lois W. Banner, “Biography as History,” American Historical Review, vol. 133, no 4 (2009): 582. http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=7c9bbff0-4987-4236-8eab-77c9f44af805%40sessionmgr120&vid=4&hid=120

[5] Alexander Freund, “Under Storytelling’s Spell?: Oral History in a Neoliberal Age,” Oral History Review, 42, no. 1(2015): 96-132, doi: 10.1093/ohr/ohv002.