Biography as microscope or kaleidoscope? The case of ‘power’ in Hannah Cullwick's relationship with Arthur Munby

Abstract

The conventional model of biography is a linear ‘jigsaw’ one: the more information about the subject you collect, the closer to ‘the truth’—the ‘whole picture’—about them you get. In my own biographic practice in relation to Hannah Cullwick this model has been totally inappropriate and would entail missing out from ‘the biography’ many of the salient factors which help us to understand this complex woman and her equally complex relationship with Arthur Munby. This model also denies the often uncomfortable but always interesting fact that ‘biography’ and ‘autobiography’ are inseparable dimensions of basically the same experience. I may be ‘the biographer’ of Hannah Cullwick, but this biography has necessarily become a part of my autobiography. Effectively, in order to ‘write biography’ I have had to deal in the currency of ‘intellectual autobiography.’ A more appropriate metaphor to describe my biographic practice is to see biography as a kaleidoscope: each time you look you see something rather different; perhaps composed of the same elements but in a new configuration. I use the idea of ‘intellectual autobiography’ as the means of describing this still happening process of looking again and seeing differently. Effectively, then, I describe an existing and living relationship between me, Hannah, and Munby: I am a part of the (historical?) process I am concerned with; and its relationships encompass and engage me probably as much as either of the other two participants in them.