Antipodean Victoriana: History and Fiction in Annamarie Jagose’s Slow Water

Abstract

Annamarie Jagose's novel Slow Water (2003) is a work of historical fiction set in nineteenth-century New Zealand and peopled with historical figures, including the disgraced missionary William Yate. Although the tribulations of Mr Yate comprise a relatively minor historical event, a footnote to mainstream history, his story is one that has recently garnered attention. This article analyses Jagose's novel through a neo-Victorian frame and in terms of its engagement with history, arguing that Slow Water constitutes a rewriting of Yate's story to highlight a history of sexuality that intersects with a history of settlement and empire.

Archival Utopics: Annamarie Jagose's Slow Water

“…Frances Kelly refers to Slow Water's "maintenance of historical accuracy," while noting that this is hardly the novel's most significant achievement. 11 Lydia Wevers, while suggesting that the novel "does not brand itself as 'historical,'" admires the "meticulous attention" the novel pays to documentary sources. 12 Novels operate according to very different discursive logics to those which organise historical exposition, however, and little attention is given, beyond these passing references, to the specific uses to which this material is put in the novel.…”