Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the University of Iceland Research Fund for their support for this project.
1Arctic exploration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was widely regarded as a particularly manly pursuit and has been predominantly narrated as the efforts of white European and North American men striving to conquer icy regions (Dodds, 2018, p. 53). During the so‑called Heroic Age of polar exploration, these ambitious forays into unknown territory often ended in tragedy, costing the lives of many explorers, famously exemplified by the Franklin expedition of 1845. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the quest to reach the North Pole had moreover turned into a race between different explorers. These desolate and freezing regions were perceived as perfect settings for testing masculine mettle, ideal mythic sites for men to demonstrate “superhuman feats” (Bloom, 1993, p. 6). Arctic exploration ideologies were therefore heavily gendered. Consequently, while women participated in Arctic ventures in various ways, their contributions have tended to be overlooked, marginalised or excluded from narratives of Arctic exploration.
2Today, historical novels are pivotal in revising and questioning dominant historical and cultural narratives. A notable example that focuses on Arctic exploration is Stef Penney’s Under a Pole Star (2016). Penney’s novel is mostly set in the late nineteenth century and offers a decidedly revisionist and subversive view of Arctic exploration through the portrayal of Flora Mackie, a fictional female Arctic explorer and daughter of a Dundee whaling captain. The novel explores a late period in the history of Scottish Greenland whaling, from the early 1880s onwards, when the trade was already declining due to overhunting, as well as fictionalising interactions between whalers and Inuit in north-west Greenland. Beyond its specifically Scottish historical context and central love story, the novel focuses on the masculinity-infused and competitive nature of British and American Arctic exploration at that time. Most importantly, Penney’s portrayal of Flora Mackie and her role as the leader of Arctic expeditions destabilizes and subverts traditional notions of Arctic exploration as a male domain, and through this feminist lens, it exposes skewed power dynamics, racist ideas and exploitative colonialist biases in European and American engagement with the Arctic and its native people.
3The following analysis will examine how Penney’s novel subverts traditional gender roles and critiques the masculinised narrative of Arctic exploration. By focusing on Flora Mackie’s portrayal, her interactions with the Arctic environment, and her relationships with both the Inuit and other explorers, the study will highlight the feminist themes that challenge historical biases. Additionally, the analysis will explore the novel’s depiction of the ambitions, rivalries and ethical dilemmas faced by Arctic explorers, providing a comprehensive understanding of the complex dynamics at play.
4In his 2018 study, Klaus Dodds states that the “conquest of ice and cold is overwhelmingly narrated as a story of white European and North American men striving and struggling to master cold places” (p. 53). The prevailing culture was that of “polar masculinity”, as nineteenth-century Arctic exploration was “male-dominated” (Lyle, cited by Reeploeg, 2017, p. 35; David, 2000, p. 76). Gender roles were clearly defined, with British male explorers seen as heroes battling inhospitable and hazardous natural conditions in the North while women and children waited at home (David, 2000, pp. 109–10). Manliness was the “lifeblood” of Arctic campaigns, infusing explorers’ narratives and animating the writings of their supporters (Robinson, 2006, p. 4). The masculine nature of the Arctic venture also tied in with feelings of national superiority and patriotism, making exploring and mapping the Arctic “a self-conscious exercise in national masculine identity building” for the British (Hill, 2008, p. 3). British polar exploration accounts often became narratives of survival that “foregrounded the explorer’s embattled body while providing evidence of the resilience, ingenuity, and staunchness associated with British national character”, and these narratives tapped into a culture that glorified and allegorized “male participation in war and exploration” (Hill, 2008, pp. 6, 7). By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Arctic exploration had become a race to the North Pole between various European and North American explorers driven by the desire for “fame, money and pride” (Dodds, 2018, p. 61). Michael Robinson notes that the idea of standing at the North Pole expressed “something rare, perhaps lost, in the industrial age of the Western world: the essential, elemental qualities of manliness itself” (2015, p. 90). Amidst late-nineteenth century concerns that over-civilization (manifested in mechanization, the importance of urban culture and separation of people from nature) tended to emasculate men, explorers’ narratives showcased a move towards a new masculine ideal that emphasized their battles against nature and their reversion to “a more primitive lifestyle in the Arctic” (ibid., p. 94). Accordingly, the North Pole “represented a place of atavistic escape, a realm in which explorers abandoned civilized life in order to find the qualities of manliness that had been impeded and restrained by the industrial, urban world” (ibid., p. 95). Thus, nineteenth-century Arctic exploration and the race for the North Pole were fuelled by masculinity, heroic ambitions and patriotism, mixed with anxieties about men’s place in the world.
- 1 In fact, both these women saw themselves as explorers; as she reached the end of her trip down the (...)
5Ideas regarding exploring and conquering the cold, hazardous and inhospitable realm of the Arctic were also heavily gendered, with the Arctic often feminised as a space to be traversed, mapped and mastered by a masculine force. Heidi Hansson notes that the feminisation of uncharted land is common in exploration discourse, where the explorer is masculinised, embodying culture, while the land “is feminised and represents nature, to be mastered, controlled and subdued” (Hansson, 2007, pp. 78–9). Such gendering is sometimes complicated by the idea of the Arctic fighting back and “emasculating its conqueror” (Hansson, 2018, p. 46). Most Arctic explorers were men, while both white and indigenous women have in general “been considered either absent from or powerless on the landscape of Arctic adventure”, as Patricia Pierce Erikson wrote in 2009 (p. 102). There is still a marked absence of women in narratives of polar exploration, yet women participated in various aspects of Arctic exploration as explorers, assistants, agents, patrons, readers, and lecture attendees (Robinson, 2015, p. 104). Some women, like American Elizabeth Taylor (1856–1932), journeyed to places such as Alaska, Arctic Canada and Iceland, writing travel accounts about topics ranging from culture and folklore to flora and fauna (Reeploeg, 2017, p. 36). Others, like Robert Peary’s wife Josephine Diebitsch-Peary (1863–1955), travelled to the Arctic as their husbands’ supporters and companions (Hansson & Norberg, 2009, p. 16; Reeploeg, 2021, pp. 1064–5). It is known that Diebitsch-Peary wanted to be seen as a competent Arctic explorer (Reeploeg, 2021, p. 1064), and is now viewed as one by scholars like Ericson and Reeploeg (Reeploeg, 2021, Ericson, 2009, p. 102),1 yet white and indigenous women’s contributions to Arctic exploration and discovery still tend to be overlooked despite efforts by scholars to rectify this (see, for example, Reeploeg, 2017, Reeploeg, 2021, Hansson, 2007, and Hansson, 2009). For instance, Reeploeg points out that since the eighteenth century, women’s travel writing about the north has been “a powerful asset to the colonial endeavour” (Reeploeg, 2019, p. 184). Nevertheless, there remains a focus on “male historical actors in the North, and a dominant narrative that frames the Arctic frontier as a hypermasculine region” (Reeploeg, 2017, p. 35). In general, women in polar exploration have been represented as appendages to men (Lewander, 2009, p. 101), or simply been relegated to purely domestic roles regardless of their actual longings and ambitions. As a result, there is a marked gender bias in the grand narrative of Arctic exploration and travel.
6Historical novels today play a crucial role in revising and challenging dominant historical and cultural narratives. Diana Wallace demonstrates how women’s historical fiction since the early twentieth century has attempted to correct the male-centric view of history and re‑evaluate women’s relationship with it (Wallace, 2005, p. 3). Applying George Lukács’ theory on how individual lives are “historically conditioned” (Lukács, 1983, p. 24), Wallace argues that World War I and suffrage for women over thirty in 1918 marked a significant change, as the public consciousness of lived experiences within history started to include women for the first time (Wallace, 2005, p. 25). Following those changes, the historical novel gained new energy in women’s hands (ibid., p. 27), allowing female novelists to “invent or ‘re‑imagine’ […] the unrecorded lives of marginalised and subordinated people, especially women, […] and to shape narratives which [were] more appropriate to their experiences than those of conventional history” (ibid., p. 2). This movement gained further momentum with postmodernism, which challenged central grand narratives, as theorised by Jean‑Francois Lyotard (de Groot, 2019, p. 171). Writers of historical fiction increasingly explored identity, empire and gender using the tools of postmodernism (de Groot, 2019, p. 171). By the late twentieth century, revisionism was manifestly inherent in this effort, with writers attempting to “reconsider historical consensus and offer critique, or to include unaccustomed voices and agents in the historical account” (Brooker, 2015, p. 169). This revisionism has only grown stronger in historical fiction since then. In 2012, Katherine Cooper and Emma Short emphasised that contemporary historical novels show a heightened awareness “that history, by its very nature, is always already fictional, and that it is always subject to bias” (2012, p. 5). They argue that reimagining historical women’s lives in fiction is “a feminist intervention—a way of restoring female figures to their place in history” (ibid., p. 3). Reasserting the female figure becomes both a creative and political task, through which contemporary female authors of historical fiction “disrupt and fragment the discourse surrounding the historical female figure, removing the power from any one account to act as the definitive portrayal” (ibid., p. 14).
7Stef Penney’s 2016 historical novel Under a Pole Star is a recent example of such revisionist and “feminist intervention”. This sweeping Neo‑Victorian tale of ambition, survival and doomed love follows Flora Mackie and her American lover Jakob de Beyn through a dual narrative of both perspective and temporal setting. In 1948, while visiting an airbase in Gander, Newfoundland, the aging Flora reflects on her life as a young woman who led scientific expeditions to north‑west Greenland in the 1890s. Her story is juxtaposed with that of Jakob, who grows up in New York and is fascinated with ice from a young age. Their paths cross when their British and American expeditions meet in the North. Drawn to the Arctic for mostly different reasons, Flora and Jakob’s passionate love affair is ultimately cut short by tragedy, destroying their short‑lived happiness. Penney’s characters, including Flora’s villainous American rival Lester Armitage, are inspired by extensive research into nineteenth-century Arctic exploration, with some plot details based on historical records (Hoffman, 2017; Penney, 2021; Pereira, 2018).
- 2 On her webpage Penney states that she became more aware of being a feminist than ever before while (...)
8The marginalisation of women within the narrative of Arctic adventure was an important factor for Penney when writing Under a Pole Star. Her feminist stance is evident in her comments on nineteenth-century explorers’ obsession with “manliness”, and her choice of a female in the novel is a reaction against that: “I felt that I’d read enough books where women wait for men, or write to men while the men are off doing exciting things, and I was determined to write about a Victorian explorer who does it herself” (“Q&A with Stef Penney”).2 With no female Arctic explorers on whom she felt Flora could be modelled, Penney made careful plot choices to make Flora’s career viable:
It was a huge challenge. I felt at times as if I had undertaken a complex, intricate engineering project […] Flora had to have an unusual background with her whaler father, and then a particular set of skills, but she also needed a help [sic] from a powerful benefactress and then an amenable husband who would also then be (painfully) removed from the scene to allow her to get on with it. (Penney, 2021)
- 3 Archibald explains that, according to records, at least a dozen whaling masters took their wives wi (...)
9Flora comes to love the Arctic and its people after travelling to north‑west Greenland in the summer of 1883, aged twelve, with her father, Captain Mackie, aboard the whaler the Vega. She spends many summers and some winters up north in the following years, in effect growing up with Inuit children and coming to view Greenland as her home. Scottish whaling in the Arctic, a “distinctive Scottish trade” that boosted economic growth in northeast Scotland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Sanger, 2016, pp. 138, 19), provides a crucial historical backdrop. The city of Dundee was an important hub, as the best whaling ships came from there at the end of the nineteenth century (Archibald, 2013, p. 62). Under a Pole Star subversively portrays female intrusion into the male-dominated worlds of Greenland whalers and Arctic exploration—an environment described early in the novel as “the relentlessly masculine world of the north” (Penney, 2016, p. 13). Captain Mackie takes his daughter with him because he is left a widower, a plot detail which is a spin on certain historical facts (Penney, 2021). That is, the wives of nineteenth-century whaling captains (and even their children) sometimes accompanied their husbands to the Arctic. This was more common in New England, where about twenty percent of whaling wives chose to sail with their husbands (Schell, 2013, p. 139). In Scotland, several women are known to have also accompanied their husbands to the Arctic (Archibald, 2004, p. 122).3 In both cases, this would have “extended the bounds of the ‘women’s sphere’ into the masculine world of seafaring” (Fournier, 1995, p. 59).
10Overall, Flora’s character challenges the overly masculine world of Scottish Greenland whaling and Arctic exploration, while subverting Victorian gender roles. The late nineteenth-century setting is vital to Penney’s project, with the emergence of the New Woman during the Victorian fin de siècle and opportunities for women’s higher education. Despite social restrictions and expectations regarding women’s behaviour and occupation, things were slowly changing. Iris Melfort, Flora’s landlady, friend and benefactress, is an eccentric, a wealthy spinster, a lesbian, a vegetarian and a supporter of universal suffrage (Penney, 2016, p. 91), who strongly influences Flora during her university years in London. Iris, a New Woman, encourages Flora’s Arctic ambitions, introducing her to sponsors and her future husband, Freddie Athlone, whose desire to explore the Arctic makes Flora’s return there possible. Flora, like Iris, is unconventional for her time, irrevocably shaped by her adolescent years in the Arctic, where she freely associates with the Inuit, learns their language, and adopts some of their habits. However, as she matures, her father stops taking her with him on whaling trips due to the crew’s reactions, with Flora inciting their “sidelong glances, hungry looks and muttered comments” (ibid., p. 77). Her sex therefore hampers her ambitions and thwarts her desire to go north. Here, Flora feels devalued by her sex, pondering why she is primarily seen as a woman. Thus, she feels “diminished: as a young woman, she was less of a human being than she had been as a child,” with her skills (such as with the sextant and knowledge of the stars) that formerly made her feel equal to her friends on board the Vega now counting for nothing (ibid., pp. 77–8). These experiences shape her determination to overcome limitations and follow her ambitions. Importantly, she chooses to study meteorology at university, pursuing a career in science rather than more “feminine” ones according to Victorian standards, believing it to be the most likely profession to allow her to return north: “since all expeditions to the Arctic were more than anything at the mercy of the weather, she would make herself its adept” (ibid., p. 79).
11An additional element that paves the way for Flora to become an Arctic explorer is the media sensation created by journalist R. G. Whitfield, who writes of the “Snow Queen” who, as a young girl, “had spent more time in the Arctic than many explorers” (Penney, 2016, p. 80). Given the novel’s feminist and revisionist approach, it is significant that this nickname is given to Flora by a male journalist and that it remains with her for the rest of her life. Whitfield’s first impression of Flora underlines her daring and unconventional nature, markedly contrasting with his preconceived notions that “his Snow Queen [… will have] auburn tresses, dark eyes and a pliant yet rounded figure” (ibid., p. 80):
What did he see? A strapping girl, almost as tall as he. A direct gaze of winter grey. […] Not beautiful, no but … not unattractive, if she made a bit of effort. She did not comport herself as young ladies are expected to. She strode into the room like a challenge: a bold, angry element that might have damaging consequences. A wild young creature. (Ibid., pp. 80–1)
- 4 In stories published in 1844 and 1861.
- 5 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950).
- 6 The Golden Compass (1995).
12Whereas Whitfield’s initial ideas about the Snow Queen align with his notions of pliant and rounded femininity, Flora the Snow Queen represents both an actual and symbolic deviation from Victorian ideals of femininity. The nickname itself is fraught with meaning; Monika N. Jacobsson’s analysis of the Snow Queen in literature for young readers traces how figures from H. C. Andersen’s Snow Queen and Ice Maiden,4 through to C. S. Lewis’s White Witch5 and Philip Pullman’s Mrs Coulter,6 are presented as powerful and seductive villains who fear love and warmth, hence reinforcing “patriarchal gender ideologies” (2009, p. 189). Moreover, as Anka Ryall points out, it was common to see images of the North Pole “as an ice maiden waiting to be won by adventurous explorers” in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Ryall, 2015, p. 180). This reflects certain ideas about gender and traditional expectations of feminine attributes. Hansson states:
[…] the term Snow Queen and its variants Ice Queen and Ice Maiden have been applied in particular to women with social or sexual power. Although there is no automatic connection between this figure and the Arctic, a common narrative strategy in Snow Queen stories is to establish a link between cold weather conditions and emotional frozenness. (2020, p. 163)
13Such constructions perhaps reflect deep-seated masculine fear of independent and strong‑willed women who refuse to conform to patriarchal expectations. Indeed, in English, the epitaph of “snow queen” is used for women “accused of being ‘assertive’ or ‘unemotional’” (Dodds, 2018, p. 14). The moniker imposed by Whitfield on Flora (combined with his reaction on first meeting her) thus encourages readings of Flora as assertive and bold, as emotionally distant, yet sexually attractive, and as someone who challenges the strictly patriarchal values of the Victorian age. More specifically, she destabilises the manliness of the Arctic venture, as discussed in more detail below.
14Penney’s portrayal of Flora as a sexually driven woman, along with vivid descriptions of sex and female sexual pleasure in the novel, highlights her challenge to patriarchal Victorian norms. Flora’s first love interest, Mark Levinson, exemplifies male Victorian ideas on women’s supposed lack of sexual desire in comparison to men: “I don’t know what you feel, objectively. But there are certain undeniable, ah, differences … it’s agreed—by doctors” (Penney, 2016, p. 100). As Flora rightly points out, these are male doctors who do not understand women’s physical needs. In their discussion of sex and gender during the Victorian age, Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn explain:
The physicality and reproductive function of the female body and any desires it might harbour were causes of deep male anxieties. Normative sexuality revolved around reproduction, generating ideas of the female’s responsive duty and the male’s naturalized need rather than desire. Even within marriage female passion and sexual longing transgressed against codes of domestic sexuality. (2014, p. 163)
15The explicit sex scenes in Under a Pole Star are certainly meant to be subversive in feminist terms. Penney explains: “There have been so many ridiculous, phallocentric portrayals of sex in literature and film that it felt vital to counteract that narrative. This had to be a (very explicitly) clitorocentric approach” (2021). Flora’s sexual journey also parallels her Arctic explorations. Victorian women were not expected to navigate their bodies and sexual desires with such confidence, and the sex scenes, with their focus on the woman’s pleasure, do not depict acts seen as typical of Victorian sexual behaviour. Liz Jensen praises Penney for her portrayal of both the Arctic landscape and the sex scenes: “In applying the same forensic scrutiny and sensuality to a clitoris as she does to an icescape, she ensures that her erotic passages are emotionally engaging and psychologically plausible as well as exquisitely detailed” (2016). Sex scenes before meeting Jakob (unsatisfactory for Flora), with Mark (limited to touching) and her husband Freddie (who happens to have syphilis and subjects Flora to anal rape under the pretence of protecting her from infection, while his true motivation is to satisfy his own sexual needs), reflect Victorian expectations of women being submissive and focused on the man’s pleasure. Thus, Penney highlights how women’s sexual desires and needs have been ignored or suppressed by patriarchal strictures. Flora achieves sexual fulfilment and autonomy through her relationship with Jakob, whose previous sexual experiences have made him sensitive to both his own desires and hers. Flora’s (fulfilling) exploration of her sexuality mirrors her ventures into extreme geographical regions normally perceived as the sole domain of men. It is significant that as an older woman, Flora continues to pursue her desires, unabashedly enjoying multiple partners, manifested for instance when she is referred to as a “septuagenarian adulteress” (Penney, 2016, p. 230). This combination of exploration “adventure saga” and the “explicit account of sexual passion” is labelled as “daring” by Weissman, who notes how the motifs of exploration and discovery operate on different levels:
This is no gauzy romantic idyll; Lady Chatterley Goes to Greenland is more like it. Like the lady in that iconic erotic novel, Flora is discovering the country of the body for the first time, as her sexual experience so far has been either unconsummated or painful. (Weissman, 2017)
16Without question, the Arctic offers Flora an escape, where she feels at home in a social environment often overlooked in popular representations of the Arctic, as Hansson notes (2018, p. 54). Contrary to typical portrayals, Flora does not view the Arctic as “a place defined by strangeness and the unheimlich” (Moss, 2007). Instead, she finds it “a very practical place”, focused on survival, which “is the beginning and end of everything” and simplifies life (Penney, 2016, p. 238). She reflects on “the astonishing, carnal nature of the North” (ibid., p. 92), one of the key attractions of the Arctic for Flora. In the Arctic Flora is granted the freedom to be her true self without being restricted by the set gender roles of Victorian Britain. The Arctic, “with its stern, patient, endless light, is the only place she has felt free”, Flora reflects (ibid., p. 93). Mona Domosh explains that Victorian women travellers sought freedom in distant places from the strictures placed on them at home: “Growing up in worlds circumscribed by Victorian standards and expectations, their lives had been molded for them. Their freedom came from living in places removed from that circumscription” (1991, p. 98). In Flora’s case, the Arctic’s remoteness and extreme nature intensifies this sense of liberation, a quality of the region emphasised by Hansson: “as one of the last unknown places on the earth the Arctic strips away the visitor’s cultural constraints and certainties” (2018, p. 52). Importantly, Jakob de Beyn, Flora’s American lover, shares her sense of freedom and escape in the Arctic and is the only white man who respects her work, regardless of her gender. Unlike others, who assess Flora in line with the gender codes she is trying to escape from and view her leadership with suspicion, Jakob accepts her as she is.
17The multifaceted subversiveness of Penney’s Flora is most evident in her role as an explorer and leader of Arctic scientific expeditions. While it was still frowned upon for women to travel alone in the nineteenth century, they increasingly did so and many wrote travelogues or documented their journeys (Renk, 2020, p. 155). However, a woman exploring the Arctic would have been viewed far more negatively than one travelling to safer, more accessible regions such as some of the British colonies. In addition, Flora travels north in the capacity of a scientist, and through her meteorological examinations and mappings, she maps and makes sense of the Arctic, hence conquering it much like her male peers. Thus, Penney’s portrayal challenges and subverts traditional gendered notions of male subordination of Arctic (feminine) landscape.
18Flora’s role as an Arctic explorer therefore disrupts and challenges the notion of the Arctic as a masculine space, made especially evident in the reaction of her rival, Lester Armitage. Armitage, the novel’s villain, is a quintessentially masculine explorer who views Arctic exploration as a manly pursuit and is determined to secure his place in history at any cost. To him, the Arctic is a “proper country of men” (Penney, 2016, p. 528), making Flora’s presence “a kind of insult” (ibid., p. 235). Perceiving Flora as a threat to what he sees as the masculine stability of the Arctic venture, Armitage dismisses her as a liability, describing her expedition as a “very queer affair” and a “cheap stunt” unworthy of the men under her leadership:
I would have thought a woman would limit them too much. One would always have to be worrying, having to look out for her. One would be dreadfully slowed down. And the idea of a woman leading a group of men—it’s as ludicrous as a … an Eskimo leading a group of white men! It must be in name only—for the publicity, I imagine. (Ibid., p. 532)
19While Armitage’s comments clearly reveal racist attitudes, they also emphasise his fear that Flora’s leadership in the Arctic somehow diminishes his own achievements and ambitions. This implies that the Arctic venture appears less challenging if a woman can participate in it (“Q&A with Stef Penney”, 2016). This certainly threatens the heroic image of Arctic exploration that late nineteenth-century Arctic explorers aimed to project. The imaginary of Arctic exploration is that of a heroic, male‑dominated endeavour infused with national pride, as previously outlined. There is no space for women as leaders within this context and Flora is therefore seen as threatening the foundations of this grand façade. Armitage, despite being American, is no different from British explorers in this respect. In addition, he is portrayed as fiercely competitive, ambitious, and deceitful, fabricating a story about discovering a new island at Greenland’s northern limit that he names Dupree Land (Penney, 2016, p. 299). This is an important plot detail that contributes to conflicts hinted to be factors in Jakob’s disappearance and death, and thus the tragic loss of Flora’s beloved. Armitage is also driven by a desire to discover the North Pole and “bring it back for the United States of America” (ibid., p. 299), and shown to be willing to use unscrupulous means to hinder his competitors from getting there first. His devious and manipulative behaviour ultimately raises Flora’s and the reader’s suspicions about his possible involvement in Jakob’s death.
20Elements of Armitage’s character are reminiscent of the American explorer Robert Peary (1856–1920), known for the “muscular imagery” of his Arctic narratives that was typical of late nineteenth-century masculinity (Robinson, 2015, p. 94), and whose discovery of the North Pole remains disputed (see e.g. Bloom, 1993, pp. 15–56). In preparation for Under a Pole Star, Penney engaged in extensive research on Arctic exploration and the accounts written by historical explorers. She states that reading about such explorers as Frederick Cook and Peary, and about the “spectacle of male rivalry” over who was first to reach the North Pole (Bloom, 1993, p. 6), led her to consider “what sort of people explorers are, and why they might lie” (Hoffman, 2017). Penney comments on her fascination with ambition and its capacity to drive individuals to lie, suggesting that explorers like Peary, whom she describes as “incredibly dislikeable”, might have fabricated parts of their stories (ibid.). The crux of the book, she also explains, is rivalry (Pereira, 2018). Robinson’s discussion confirms her ideas: “Explorers […] maligned their rivals. They discredited the Arctic natives who helped them. They lied about their accomplishments” (2006, p. 7). Penney acknowledges that Armitage is “certainly inspired by Peary’s ambition, [but he] is not meant to be him” (Penney, 2021). In particular, the episodes in the novel detailing Armitage’s dealings with Inuit people are closely based on Peary’s treatment of them, notably his exploitative actions when bringing six Inuit from Smith Sound to New York in 1897 with the purpose of putting them on display in a museum as live specimens in return for payment. Shortly afterwards, all the Inuit fell ill with tuberculosis and four ended up dying of the disease. Eventually, one Inuk man returned to his homeland, while the youngest of the party, seven-year-old Minik, who was orphaned when his father died of the disease, remained in New York. The aftermath of these tragic deaths turned into a gruesome, exploitative scam involving the display in the American Museum of Natural History of the skeleton remains of all four who had died, as well as a fake burial to deceive Minik about what had actually happened to his father’s body. As demonstrated by Kenn Harper, Peary profited from bringing the Inuit to New York (2017, p. 91) while being more or less indifferent to their fates: “Where was Peary? From the time the Inuit had arrived in New York, he had never come to see them. Nor is there any record of him having inquired about their welfare” (ibid., p. 44). Indeed, Peary washed his hands of the whole business as he was too busy preparing his next expedition north (ibid., p. 45). His omission of these events in his account of the trip further illustrates his indifference (ibid., p. 47).
- 7 The injury occurs when Armitage employs a group of Inuit to help him move a meteorite and transport (...)
21Penney’s portrayal of Armitage’s treatment of a group of Inuit that he brings to New York closely mirrors the real events involving Robert Peary, as described above. This is conveyed through Jakob’s point of view, which shows his outrage at discovering what happened to the remains of one member of the group, his friend Ayakou. Visiting the Natural History Museum for the first time since Ayakou’s supposed funeral, he notices a new display, a skeleton with the description “Eskimo male, around thirty-five years old. North-West Greenland. Acd. 1896” (Penney, 2016, p. 428). Jakob recognises the damaged right leg bones, which had been badly broken and afterwards poorly healed; he is certain that he was present when this injury occurred7 and knows that he is looking at his friend Ayakou’s skeleton (ibid., p. 429). The ensuing confrontation with the museum’s assistant curator highlights the prevalent late nineteenth-century attitudes towards indigenous people:
“I was with Ayakou when […] his leg was broken in two places. […] that skeleton has the right leg broken in the exact same two places. That skeleton is Ayakou’s, isn’t it?”
White gapes at him, managing somehow to look shocked, ignorant and uninterested […]
“You and I were there, along with his wife Padloq, when we buried him in the garden. Can you explain that, Mr White?”
White gives him a tight smile. “I cannot comment on individual exhibits, Mr de Beyn. But the museum has the perfect right to mount its specimens in the way that best educates and informs—”
“He’s not a specimen! He’s a man you knew! His name is Ayakou. You knew his wife! You can’t just stick him in a case for people to gawk at! I thought you had a conscience—”
“You’re excited, Mr de Beyn. The tragic case of the Eskimos has been upsetting for everyone involved, myself included, and—”
Jakob finds himself on his feet, clenching his hands. “If your wife died tomorrow, would you send her body upstate, boil it in a vat until the flesh fell off her bones, then stick them in a case for everyone to look at?
“Mr de Beyn, that is . . . a . . . an outrageous . . . ! How dare you mention—”
“How dare I? How dare you do it! Apparently things like respect and consideration don’t matter to you! As long as it educates and informs!” (Ibid., pp. 430–1, italics original)
22White’s racist bias is made evident in his outrage at the idea of such treatment being applied to his wife, while seemingly accepting it being enacted on Inuit bodies; they are merely “individual exhibits” and “specimens”.
23Jakob and Flora are both portrayed as having genuine friendships with the Inuit and hold views which are largely free from racist and colonialist biases. Importantly, Flora’s approach to the Inuit distinguishes her from typical male explorers. Overall, the novel’s focus on the Inuit’s significant role in late nineteenth-century expeditions (being important guides, for instance) challenges the mainstream narrative. David notes that while representations of Inuit people were common in early nineteenth-century travel writing and illustrations by Arctic explorers like John Ross, they largely disappeared from later narratives, especially after the mid-nineteenth century, being much less frequently shown in pictorial representations alongside a shift in focus that foregrounded the explorer and the mission to get as far north as possible (2000, pp. 48–51). Francis Spufford emphasises this erasure, stating that the Inuit “belonged in descriptions of the region, in accounts of its natural history, studies of its folklore, word-paintings of its scenery. They did not belong in the stories of discovery and achievement” (2010, pp. 187–8). McCorristine maintains that it remains “still common for indigenous people to be written-out of expeditions, or appear only as background actors in a Eurocentric drama” (2018, p. 16).
24Penney’s novel builds on existing research which challenges traditional narratives, firstly by highlighting the Scottish whalers’ significant contact with the Inuit. As Edward J. Cowan states, the first “sustained contact between Inuit and Scots was probably a result of whaling” (2023, p. 173). Sources demonstrate a close relationship between Scottish whalers and the Inuit, as outlined in Archibald’s Whalehunters: Dundee and the Arctic Whalers. When whales became scarcer (due to overhunting), Greenlandmen often overwintered in the Arctic, leading to closer relationships with the Inuit (Archibald, 2004, p. 110). The Scots entertained the Inuit with music and dance, forming “close relationships” on both sides (ibid., p. 111). The whalers also became “friendly with the Inuit women, with many forming attachments that were more than just transitory” (ibid., p. 111). Dorothy Eber’s recounting of Inuit stories confirms these relationships as “very close”, with whalers and Inuit going “around together in good friendship” (Eber, 1989, p. 98). Consequently, the Inuit stories demonstrate that the Inuit “had happy memories of the Scottish whalers” (Archibald, 2013, p. 119). Archibald asserts that this relationship was a rare success story in the nineteenth century: “Men and women from vastly different cultures met and merged with friendship and mutual trust” (ibid., p. 128). Penney’s novel reflects this clearly by showing Flora’s deep friendships with the Inuit from her childhood, thereby providing an insider’s view of their society. In addition to the above, the novel reveals the uneven power dynamics in explorer-Inuit relationships. As Sarah Johnson states, Penney illustrates the Inuit’s “indispensable” hospitality to explorers (2017). Yet, while relying on Inuit knowledge and help to survive, this is hardly acknowledged by a character like Armitage. Additionally, Penney gives voice to “the Inuit women who bore children to many explorers”, whose stories are often overlooked (despite studies by scholars such as Archibald and Eber), as noted by Sara Wheeler (2016). These women bore children whose fathers “generally never saw the women again, and certainly never provided support for the children. Peary was one. In these pages, those women at last have a voice” (ibid.). As a result, the novel not only revises white women’s roles in Arctic exploration, but it also acknowledges the experiences of native women. Overall, as pointed out by Weissman, “Penney brings out the contrast between late Victorian mores and Inuit culture, as well as offering an emphatic indictment of the many ways so-called civilized people have abused indigenous populations” (2017). The critical stance taken on these issues is central to Penney’s deliberate revisionist treatment of Arctic exploration. Importantly, Penney states that “the parts of the book most closely modelled on history are the various trials the Inuit characters suffer at the hands of explorers” (Hoffman, 2017).
25The above factors work against the native stereotypes in travelling and explorer narratives of the nineteenth century where the Inuit were seen as primitive and barbaric (or romanticised) (David, 2000, p. 18). However, Flora’s engagement with the Arctic and its people is constrained by the historical context. Arctic exploration was a spectacle, with explorers expected to bring back items for public display, thereby generating funds for future expeditions. The Arctic was therefore seen as “a region to be brought home as a commodity for cultural consumption” (Lewis-Jones, 2017, p. 243). In fact, these expeditions were often “transformed into media events, sometimes from the very moment of setting out” (Hansson, 2018, p. 49). Explorers needed to please the public to secure funding for later trips. Consequently, Flora, operating within the patriarchal framework of the Arctic enterprise, resorts to stealing mummified remains of Inuit to take back for display in order to fund her work. As Penney notes, “no one comes out of it with completely clean hands” (Hoffman, 2017). Nevertheless, Flora’s approach is distinct from Armitage’s, as made evident in her feelings of guilt regarding the Inuit mummies; this is sharply contrasted with Armitage’s actions when he brings the Inuit group to New York. Both scenarios, however, clearly reflect the “real acts of colonial despoiling and grave-robbing which occurred in the 1890s” (McCorristine, 2018, p. 196).
26As seen above, through its revisionist and feminist focus, Stef Penney’s Under a Pole Star exemplifies a current trend in historical fiction that reimagines the past to highlight, address and rectify historical biases and erasures. In engaging with an important aspect of Scottish history, the Greenland whaling, the novel examines in some detail the interactions between Scottish whalers and the Arctic indigenous people, depicting their friendly, even intimate relations. Further, in reimagining nineteenth-century polar expeditions through the portrayal of her protagonist Flora Mackie, Penney offers a revisionist representation of Arctic exploration, challenging ideas of it having been male-dominated, while critiquing and subverting Victorian gender roles. The girl who so boldly strides into the room on meeting Whitfield the journalist does indeed turn out to be both challenging and unpredictable (Penney, 2016, pp. 80–1). Aspects of Flora’s character such as her unconventional and daring nature, along with vivid descriptions of her sexual encounters, underscore the novel’s feminist reinterpretation of Arctic exploration narratives and nineteenth-century attitudes towards women. However, the most vital aspect of Penney’s text is the portrayal of Flora’s scientific expeditions in north‑west Greenland, where she is pitted against Lester Armitage, whose villainous character showcases many of the negative attributes Penney observed among the Arctic explorers she read about in preparation for her novel, notably those of Robert Peary. Armitage’s blind ambition, exploitative actions, and indifference to the fates of the Inuit he brings with him to New York are contrasted with Flora’s respectful and friendly attitude towards them. At the same time, by showing that Flora’s actions are not exempt from moral scrutiny, Penney suggests that all Arctic explorers exploited and mistreated the Inuit, their culture and traditions, in one way or another.