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Fact and fancy in history and biography: the case of Greenstockings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2009

Richard C. Davis
Richard C. Davis
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada
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Abstract

Greenstockings was the name that the members of Sir John Franklin's first Arctic Land Expedition gave to a young Dene woman during their winter residence at Fort Enterprise in 1820–21. All the officers' journals remark on her physical beauty, a reputed beauty that subsequently put her at the centre of numerous rumours and accounts. Historians know little about her other than her physical attractiveness and her age, although Greenstockings might have borne a child to one of Franklin's officers, and male jealousy over her might have put the expedition at serious risk. In spite of the paucity of factual information, Greenstockings has been cast as a central character in a poem by Franklin's first wife and in an award-winning book by Canadian novelist Rudy Wiebe. These and other pieces of information show the way that different perspectives can allow for different representations of historical figures.

Type
Articles
Information
Polar Record , Volume 37 , Issue 200 , January 2001 , pp. 5 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

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