Narrating the Woman Artist: Gender and Genre in Biographical Fiction

In the past two decades, biographical novels about historical women artists such as Clara Schumann, Frida Kahlo, and Sylvia Plath have enjoyed remarkable popularity but little scholarly attention. Taking studies of biography from the perspective of gender theory as her starting point, literary scholar Julia Lajta-Novak investigates the relation between gender and genre in such biographical novels, focusing on representations of femininity. Gender and genre intertwined Authors of biographical novels consciously depart from the known facts about the historical individuals life. Depending on the particular aspects they wish to foreground (for example, love relationships, personal development, etc.) they adopt conventions of other genres (such as historical romance novel, Bildungsroman, etc.) so as to fill gaps in the biographical records or to re-write certain events in the protagonists lives. As such, they create images of actual lives that depart from the historical facts or that are coloured by the genre conventions applied. This interference of other genres frequently places the protagonist in a gender role that owes more to these genres conventions than to the historical records. In Priya Parmars novel Exit the Actress, for instance, the life of 17th-century actress Nell Gwyn revolves around shopping, finding Mr Right, and discussing her men troubles with her gay best friend Teddy which is hardly supported by biographical evidence but chimes in well with the conventions of chick lit novels such as Bridget Joness Diary. Biographical fiction, gender, and cultural memory Just like biographies, biographical novels contribute to cultural memory: they influence which historical individuals and events a society remembers collectively, whose life stories are perceived as significant and worth telling. However, a key insight of historical fiction research that historical novels tell us more about the time in which they were written than that in which they are set applies to biographical novels as well. Lajta-Novak therefore also reads biographical novels about historical women artists as a reflection of contemporary ideas about what matters in women artists lives, and in womens lives more generally.

The project examined the contribution of biographical fiction to the discursive construction of gender identities. For this purpose it drew on central concepts and debates from gender-theoretically informed studies of biography and developed them in light of current scholarship in biofiction studies, historical fiction studies, cultural memory studies, and celebrity studies. The resulting publications shed light on gender as a variable in biofictional narratives, including biographical motion pictures. Famous artists such as Clara Wieck Schumann, for instance, have given rise to veritable biomyths that are constantly expanding while they are reproduced and altered by new tellings. When the protagonist is one half of a renowned musical couple, this relationship tends to take centre stage in biofictions in ways that are often revealing with regard to the gender norms at the time of the narrative's production. A comparison of filmic treatments of Wieck Schumann reveals not only how each film speaks to specific norms of femininity by appropriating and developing particular facets of the Schumann myth, but also how the shifts in Clara Schumann's cinematic representation are refracted through the changing conventions and possibilities of their medium. Thus, the 1947 Hollywood biopic Song of Love can be related to the genre of the "women's picture" and conservative efforts of re-gendering postwar society, whereas the sexualized depiction of the 1983 film "Frühlingssinfonie" can be read as a response to the increasing popularity of erotic and soft sex films in mainstream cinema. While some insights generated by this project are specific to women artists and the famous and creative life, others speak to the gender dynamics of biofiction more generally. The volume Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction (2022) addresses the ethics of biofictions that set out to recover or reclaim "lost" or marginalised lives; the gendered appropriation of famous lives; the representation of agency in gendered terms; and the exemplary function of biofictions as a bridge between narrative constructions of self and other that also helps to make certain gender identities culturally visible (for instance, biofictions about trans or intersex individuals). The volume assesses the critical, revisionist and deconstructive potential of biographical fictions while acknowledging the effects of cliché, gender norms and established narratives in the texts under investigation.