Stranger in a Strange Land: The Franklin Expedition in Fiction and Narratives of Belonging

Few expeditions have captured public imagination globally like the 1845 Arctic expedition led by British Royal Navy officer John Franklin, which seemingly vanished while searching for a navigable sea route through the North American Arctic. Since the mid-1800s, the Franklin expedition's disappearance has inspired dozens of search expeditions and archaeological investigations, numerous books and documentaries, and many novels, television shows, theatrical plays, and songs. The popular allure of a historical mystery might seem straightforward. But how does this enduring fascination with the 'lost' Franklin expedition speak to the larger relationship between exploration and identity? This paper examines how Franklin's voyage has been used in the construction of dominant narratives of national identity, and the subversion or criticism of those narratives. First, it describes how Franklin's widow Jane Franklin and her associates used public memorials, exhibitions, and popular literature to reframe the expedition's failures as acts of national heroism in mid-nineteenth century Britain, as well as more recent efforts by Canadian political leaders such as Stephen Harper to fashion the voyage as a foundational part of Canadian history and sovereignty over the Arctic. The paper will then turn to analyzing two novels inspired by the explorer: Mordecai Richler’s Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) and Greer Macallister’s The Arctic Fury (2020). Both works use Franklin's exploits as vehicles for imagining more diverse narratives of exploration and skewering Western masculine, Christian ideals of heroism, incorporating the experiences of Jews (in the case of Richler’s novel) and women (in Macallister’s) into the history of exploration. Ultimately, the paper argues that while explorers have frequently been used to support dominant narratives of national belonging, creative fiction — as well as analysis produced by fans of this creative fiction — can be a powerful vehicle for expanding our understanding of the history of exploration.