The many lives of Douglas Mawson

Abstract

The Many Lives of Douglas Mawson, the first volume of this PhD, is a collection of non-fiction vignettes about the Mawson family. As an exploration of ‗the many lives of Douglas Mawson‘ from his public image as an explorer to his private roles as a husband and father, it considers the making and unmaking of myths surrounding a nationally iconic figure, and explores the impact of Mawson‘s legacy on family lives across generations. The work, which consists of a preface and seven chapters, deals with different themes that open onto Mawson‘s known and lesser-known histories. Inspired by objects and artefacts which have circulated over the years both within the family sphere and in the public domain, each chapter revolves around different material traces of Mawson‘s legacy: public ones, such as his hut which still stands at Commonwealth Bay, and private ones, such as family letters and portraits. -- Negotiating Biographical Boundaries, the second part of this thesis, considers the challenges, the constraints and the myriad decisions and considerations involved when writing about the lives of others. Chapter one is a discussion of Virginia Woolf‘s two essays, ‗The New Biography‘ and ‗The Art of Biography‘ which were pivotal in initiating a conversation about the perils and dilemmas of the genre, in particular the difficulties of how to treat facts and how to navigate the border between withholding and revealing information. In chapters two and three, through an analysis of a number of biographical works, including several by and about Woolf, I consider the ways in which life writers have negotiated the ‗biographical boundaries‘ of genre and form, of public and private, fact and fiction, detachment and involvement, and how far biography has evolved and in some cases departed from the ideals of ‗the new biography‘. In chapter four I look at the genre of ‗fictional biography‘ in which imaginative acts take precedence over facts, turning conventional biography on its head and unsettling notions of objectivity and truth in life writing. The exegesis includes but is not limited to discussion of biographies of Mawson published between 1977 and 2013. The writing of my thesis has coincided with the centenary of Mawson‘s Australasian Antarctic Expedition 1911-1914, during which time new works have been published and his heroic status has come under question. The studies of him discussed here represent a variety of biographical approaches and interpretations which raise different questions about the limits and possibilities of biography. In the final chapter I position my creative work in the field and discuss my own objectives and challenges in trying to portray the life of Douglas Mawson, and the lives that influenced and were a part of his.