Redefining the Boundaries of Historical Writing and Historical Imagination in Carolyn Steedman’s Master and Servant: Love and Labour in the English Industrial Age

Abstract

One of the dominant features of the late 20th and early 21st century academic debates on the nature of history is a curious form of radicalism both in the ranks of defenders of traditional approaches to history/historiography and eloquent champions of postmodern theories. These debates will provide the context for my reading of Steedman’s Master and Servant, which probes disciplinary boundaries of history and fiction in order to explore the unhistoricised ways of love and labour in 18th century industrial Yorkshire. As Steedman inhabits the position of both a professional historian, with all the ideological implications of that position, and Nelly Dean, a servant and narrator in Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, this paper will consider her approach to historical imagination in the light of deconstructionist genre of historical writing.