Exploring Myths in Womens Narratives: Italian and German Immigrant Women in Vancouver, 1947-1961

Abstract

O NE OF THE MAIN objectives of this paper is to challenge the existing dichotomy in historical writing between objective and subjective experiences. By subjectivity we mean people s dreams, fantasies, desires, hopes, expectations, fears, anxieties, and emotions. Until recently, historians have concerned themselves with amassing facts about past realities. The underlying claim has been that historians can reconstruct the past in an objective, and therefore true, way. Such an approach obscures the fact that people s perceptions of reality are in fact all we can recover of the past. For this reason, Elizabeth Tonkin refers to history as the of pastness. In order to examine these perceptions, we must pay attention to the ways in which they are articulated. By analysing how historical actors make sense of the events they experienced, we can gain a fuller portrait of how history is shaped both by events and emotions. Historians' quest for Truth has led them to argue that myths are false and, therefore, negligible representations of the past. But myths, both in content and form, shape people s perceptions of reality. Myths, then, are just as real and true as are ostensibly objective accounts of the past. By looking at the form and content of myths, we can uncover people's subjectivity and the roles that subjectivity has played in history. In order to re-introduce subjectivity as a significant force, historians must collapse the distinction between history and myth, and treat myth as an integral part of history.