2. Norah’s Story: Writing History from the Inside

Chapter 2: Norah’s Story: Writing History ‘from the Inside’, situates Norah’s story in the context of historical research on women, sex and romance in WW2. The evidence – from studies in Europe, the US and Australia – is that young women were rejecting the domestic drudgery and self-sacrifice of their mothers’ generation, opting instead to pursue glamour, romance and erotic adventure. I ask where Norah ‘fits’ into this so-called ‘sex revolution’ and ‘morals revolt’ of the 1940s. I then explore the uniqueness of her diaries – historical sources written by a working-class girl -- as well as the problems they present as non-discursive ‘ordinary’ pocket diaries, of little interest to historians or official archives. I discuss the significance of family history in enabling access to hidden histories, and, exploring the competing claims of history and fiction regarding the pursuit of ‘truth’, I argue for the importance for historians to combine rigorous research with more creative methodologies if we are ever to move beyond a one-sided archive, an ‘outside’ story of a life, and put marginalised stories into the historical record.