‘Tell me what makes life worth living’: The role of authorial subjectivity in addressing gaps and silences in women’s life narratives in biofiction

This thesis comprises Civil Savages, a biofiction novel, and a complementary exegesis that contextualises and investigates the creative choices made in the novel. Civil Savages is inspired by the lives of Scottish writer, Naomi Mitchison, and English explorer, Zita Baker. The exegesis discusses the concerns of biofiction scholarship, focusing specifically on the question of truth in biofiction, biofiction’s role in examining gaps and silences in women’s life narratives, and the projection of authorial subjectivity, arguing that the latter is the guiding impetus that shapes the writing of a biofiction novel. This research adds to the field of existing studies on Mitchison, by offering a new understanding of her life narrative through a fictional imagining of the experiences documented in her life writing and brings the life narrative of Baker into the scholarly discourse.