Outing Auntie Cal: War stories, hidden histories, and family conversations

Abstract

This personal essay focuses on my great-aunt, Caroline Wise, a New Zealand World War I army nurse. I tell her story, created from family memories and family history research as well as from contextual historical materials. I then describe the conversations that ensued when I suggested to my family that our Auntie Cal was probably lesbian. ‘Maiden aunts’, remembered fondly by many of my generation, were common in the first half of the twentieth century. Feminist writing about the history of women’s sexualities in that era is useful for throwing light on their lives, and so I describe the scholarly work I have utilised in trying to understand Auntie Cal. However, feminist scholarship on historical sexuality has not necessarily had much influence on the way families understand their own histories and so trying to ‘out’ a member of the family tree, in the absence of overwhelming evidence, is bound to provide an interesting family history journey.