This article focuses on the hybrid novel and the construction of identity, particularly using Queen of Beauty by Paula Morris as an example. Specifically, the importance of the novel’s use of narrative embedding to the novel’s hybrid structure; the hybrid narrative structure, in turn, is central to Queen of Beauty’s focus on Virginia’s hybrid identity. The hybrid nature of the novel, which is founded on narrative embedding–is critical to the development of the lead character Virginia’s growing awareness of her own hybrid identity. Morris brings together different embedded narratives together in a hybrid form that provides a complex history of Virginia’s Māori and Pākehā family. The structure of the novel provides for the progression of Virginia’s character development and how her hybrid identity is enhanced through the embedded stories that make it up. The embedded forms draw upon both oral storytelling tradition–connected to the idea of whakapapa–and the western frame of reference that places emphasis on written sources, such that both are part of Virginia’s heritage and context.

Introduction

Hybridity is a term that describes the complexity of being multiple things. The word hybrid first recalls animals such as the mythical chimera, or perhaps hybrid vehicles, something that is a combination of multiple things. The term hybrid can mean ‘a person whose background is a blend of two diverse cultures or traditions’ or something ‘heterogeneous in origin or composition’, such as a hybrid of styles (Merriam-Webster 2022). In reference to literature, a hybrid is described as a work built out of multiplicity (Antonetta 2015). But how does hybrid literature, in a form such as a novel, explain the complexity of hybrid identity and family history? In an Aotearoa New Zealand context, an example of a hybrid novel is Queen of Beauty by Paula Morris (Ngāti Whātua, Ngāti Wai), as a novel composed of stories and family history, all connected to a central figure, Virginia Seton.

Methodology

This study examines Queen of Beauty through past analyses of the novel, along with literature on hybrid identity, narrative embedding and hybrid form. The hybrid strategy that will be focused on is that of narrative embedding or intertextuality, which is fundamental to Queen of Beauty. Specifically, the structural role of storytelling in Queen of Beauty–the hybrid nature of this novel, which is founded on narrative embedding–is critical to the development of Virginia’s growing awareness of her own hybrid identity. The revelation and construction of the hybridity of Virginia’s identity is a function of the novel’s structural choices. Like the structure of the novel, Virginia’s identity is both composed of and a function of story, which illustrates the complexity and multi-dimensional nature of identity. The structure of the novel provides for the progression of Virginia’s character development and how her hybrid identity is enhanced through the embedded stories that make it up. The embedded stories not only reveal aspects of the different parts of her identity, but they also enact the communal nature of storytelling that is part of her Māori identity–connected to the idea of whakapapa–suggesting to Virginia the importance of storytelling to her sense of self. These embedded stories are all connected to Virginia, rooted in the socio-cultural life of her ancestors, and juxtaposed to show the difference of different elements of her hybrid identity and experience. To accommodate these varied parts, Queen of Beauty offers a structure that shifts and weaves, both among time periods, storytelling methods, and perspectives. The structure of the novel provides for the progression of Virginia’s character development and how her hybrid identity is enhanced through the embedded stories that make it up.

Hybridity and narrative embedding

Hybrid literature is a genre that takes ‘features from multiple parents or genres’, mixing them to create a new entity (Sulak 2015a, p. xxi–xii). This multiplicity could be multiple stories and forms within the one novel. Changing cultural attitudes and technological growth has driven a recent artistic drive towards hybridity, which has led to a ‘revaluing of the rich potential of the margins, cultural cross-overs and blending’ (Antonetta 2015, p. xxvi). This can be seen in films such as those written and directed by Wes Anderson, and in popular novels such as Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, which uses multiple voices, historical documents, and prose to make up the novel. These works are often described as experimental. They ‘combine, transform, and subvert’ conventions of sub-genres, employing narrative strategies that ‘imitate the organising principles’ of other art forms, such as painting, music, and film (Galster 2005, p. 227). Although hybrid genres innovate and contribute to the development of novel forms, ‘little sustained effort has been made to discuss’ them (2005, p. 227).

Within the genre of the fiction novel, a strategy for creating a hybrid form is narrative embedding. Queen of Beauty is a hybrid form because it uses narrative embedding to both intentionally and organically bring together different viewpoints and devices to make up the novel. Narrative embedding or story-within-story is a literary technique where stories are told within an overarching story. Intertextuality, a form of narrative embedding, ‘refers to a complex interaction of texts’ where elements can be put into relation with the text’s meaning (Rapaport 83-84). Narrative embedding allows the novelist to extend the novel to include elements that ‘propagate experiential frames’ beyond the ‘immediate sphere of interaction’ and ‘create a complex novel world’ (Herman 2016, p. 359, 371). Queen of Beauty incorporates ‘literary and non-literary discourses,’ such as non-fiction extracts about nineteenth century New Orleans, a fictional fairy tale, extracts from newspaper articles, and many stories from multiple characters across time and location. These extracts are ‘imported’ into the narrative structure to give a complex picture of Virginia’s identity, which is itself, as I will discuss and as other critics have noted, a hybrid one.

Queen of Beauty

In Queen of Beauty, Virginia Seton is a New Zealander living in New Orleans and working as an author’s researcher. She returns to New Zealand for her sister Julia’s wedding, where she explores her familial and cultural identity–as a New Zealander living abroad, with both Māori and Pākehā lineages–after being absent from her home country for a long period. The novel is broken up into distinct parts, all written in third person and present tense, shifting frequently in perspective. These parts are composed of stories of Virginia and her family members, including now deceased relatives in Auckland and Northland decades ago. In order, the parts centre on Virginia’s life and research in New Orleans, her family at her grandparent’s house in 1960s Auckland when Virginia was a child, Virginia and her family in 1996 Auckland, her grandfather and family in 1920s Northland, and finally the 1996 family wedding and Virginia’s return to New Orleans. To accommodate these varied parts, Queen of Beauty offers a structure that shifts and weaves, both among time periods and perspectives. It combines stories happening at different times and places, often moving within chapters to a character’s past or childhood locations. The novel uses a variety of cultural references and embedded stories to express Virginia’s identity. Morris brings together different forms, multiple stories, embedded extracts, and viewpoints across the history of the family that meld to create a hybrid form. Together, these provide the complex story of Virginia’s Māori and Pākehā family. For example, the section ‘Glasgow Street 1969’ focuses on the Ponsonby family home where Virginia is a child staying with her grandparents. Her grandparents are retired, and a picture is created of Virginia’s whānau of that era through each character’s own revealed story-within-story: John and Mary’s connection with their house in Ponsonby and its history in John’s ledger, Mary’s Northland whānau through a phone call with her sister, John’s sister Hattie at the card game, and Virginia’s aunt June’s experience of adopting out a child in Sydney years before. Through these embedded narratives a complex image of her family in 1969 is developed. The section ‘(Whakatangi) 1922’ expands on her grandparents’ past, providing another layer which explains Virginia’s family identity, with Virginia then searching into their past and discovering his grandfather’s first wife, Alice, and the story of her death after an abortion. The examples show the interaction between story and Virginia’s actions in the novel, providing a context for Virginia’s identity made up of both a Pākehā and Māori heritage. This interaction between the stories that describe her family’s past, and the sections set in 1996 when she returns to New Zealand for her sister’s wedding describe her present, thus not only revealing that Virginia’s identity is a hybrid one but show how she as a character comes to terms with this to make changes to her life at the conclusion of the novel. Stuart Hall writes that identity is made sense of in relation to ‘the space where cultures meet and collide,’ a place of ‘diversity, of hybridity and difference’ to suggest a ‘plural, yet partial and unstable identity constantly producing and reproducing itself … in a continuous state of tension, renewal, and flux’ (qtd. in Oliver 2014, p. 88). Thus, the hybridity of the novel’s structure suggests the complexity of Virginia’s identity and the ways that she is ‘caught’ between traditions, cultures and ‘home’ locations of New Orleans and Auckland.

Given Virginia’s dual lives in New Zealand and the United States, her Māori and Pākehā family histories, the focus on stories–both family and fictional–and the shifts in perspectives, it is little surprise that the three critics who have given Queen of Beauty its longest treatment focus in various ways on the central role of identity in the novel, particularly what it suggests about the hybrid nature of identity in contemporary life. Michaela Moura-Kocoglu discusses Queen of Beauty in the context of identity discourses, and how indigenous ethnic groups retain their culture and traditions when hybridisation through globalisation occurs. Moura-Kocoglu mentions that Virginia’s decision to research her own family history, both Māori and Pākehā, while visiting New Zealand reinforces her ‘syncretistic and hybrid identity’ (2009, p. 227). As her research is based on oral accounts, it is sympathetic to the ‘concept of whakapapa, the recital of Māori genealogy’ (Moura-Kocoglu 2009, p. 227). Moura-Kocoglu notes that only when Virginia is confronted with her own and her family’s memories is she able to embrace her own hybrid identity as both Māori and Pākehā (2009, p. 225).

In Reading Paula Morris in the Heart of Nepantla, Ann Pistacchi discusses self-identity in Queen of Beauty in the context of ‘nepantla,’ a term borrowed from scholar Gloria Anzaldua, which she defines as the bridge between worlds and place between boundaries, in this case between Māori and Pākehā identity. Pistacchi argues that this is the location in which characters in Queen of Beautylive, in a ‘continually shifting sense of place and home’ (2007, p. 100).

Ekaterina Mitchell also turns to identity in her thesis. Mitchell’s argument is that through Virginia’s mobility between New Orleans and Auckland, the novel merges Māori and settler mobility narratives as a ‘nexus between the two ancestral stories’ and a ‘mobiliser of cultural stories that relate both to New Zealand and wider history’ (2018, p. 26). Mitchell argues that an important feature of Queen of Beauty is the inclusion of secondary texts in the form of accounts of Virginia’s family that create ‘an intricate collage of narrative’ (2018, p. 55). This collage of secondary texts illustrates the personal experience of the characters within the novel. Mitchell writes that within Māori culture, ‘stories connect worlds and beings together’, locating Virginia ‘within a field of cultural influences, providing the ground of identity upon which she builds her life’ (2018, p. 53).

Like these critics, my approach focuses on Virginia’s identity, but differs by focusing on an area which has been touched on by Mitchell in her reference to the ‘collage of narrative’ but has not been discussed in detail. I will argue that the revelation and construction of the hybridity of Virginia’s identity is a function of the novel’s structural choices. Specifically, I will argue the importance of the novel’s use of narrative embedding to the novel’s hybrid structure; the hybrid narrative structure, in turn, is central to Queen of Beauty’s focus on Virginia’s hybrid identity.

Hybrid structure and narrative embedding

Queen of Beauty’s structure is non-linear, told in fragmented sections that shift abruptly across time and location, revealing different character perspectives, embedded stories, and texts. Craig Santos Perez observes that a hybridised structure allows for the weaving together of ‘orality and textuality, the traditional and the contemporary, external documents and internal emotions, indigenous and colonial languages, communal storytelling and individual authorship, the experimental and the lyrical, the fragment and the whole’ (2015, p. 343). Queen of Beauty weaves embedded oral and communal storytelling from family members, excerpts from Virginia’s notes, parts of history books, newspaper articles, a ledger, historical court documents, a Māori legend, a fairy tale novel, and accounts of many characters’ perspectives. The effect of this narrative embedding is to make it multi-layered, building a structure of historical intelligence, and a ‘coherent history of objects, places and situations’ (Herman 2016, p. 368). This gives an intricate and intimate knowledge of Queen of Beauty’s world and a complex picture of the family across time. The sections of Queen of Beauty frequently shift from in time and location as well as between characters that are sparsely, if at all, mentioned in other sections of the novel. These parts can seem at first isolated and disconnected from each other but ultimately weave together a story around the central character, Virginia. They speak in imaginary conversation with each other, producing a more comprehensive understanding that would otherwise be inaccessible through reading a text in isolation (Pistacchi 2007, p. 106).

An example of narrative embedding within Queen of Beauty is when Virginia’s sister Julia walks down the aisle at her wedding to the song ‘Where Sheep May Safely Graze’, which is said by Virginia’s maternal grandmother Mrs Croft to have been played on the piano by Virginia’s paternal grandmother, Mary (Morris 2002, p. 224). This is understood more comprehensively because earlier in the novel there was a portion of the section ‘Glasgow Street, 1969’ written from Mary’s perspective as she played the piano and remembered songs and dances from her past. This section, in turn, itself contains an example of narrative embedding, bracketed in the middle of a conversation to give context and history:

The bracketed information embedded in this scene is an intertextual reference in the form of a 1920s newspaper article, reporting a community event where Mary is named under her maiden name, prior to meeting Virginia’s grandfather. The excerpt suggests that the reported has sentimental value to Mary, contrasting this with her daughter’s indifference and ignorance of the song’s significance as she turns away during the conversation. In the later wedding scene, then, Mary’s perspective is accessible because of this embedded story within the hybrid structure. The section of the novel that the wedding takes place in is also titled: ‘Where Sheep May Safely Graze’, adding another layer that cross-references back to other sections of the novel. Another intertextual reference is that the song is from a Bach cantata that has a long history of being played at weddings in Europe and the United Kingdom. This references the transplant of the music and culture of Britain and Europe to the settler context of Aotearoa New Zealand. The English lyrics reference a pastoral scene depicting sheep that are watched over by a shepherd. This cantata is played within a dance, as a regular activity participated in by a Northland community made up of both Māori and Pākehā, as discovered through the novel, as well as at the wedding.

It is apparent that narrative embedding will be important to the novel’s structure from the beginning. The novel starts with an oral family story:

It soon becomes clear that Virginia is telling this story to her employer, Margaret, a New Orleans novelist. This is an oral storytelling, as an embedded story. Virginia’s job is to do research and provide ‘fodder’ for Margaret, who can rearrange and transform it for her stories of New Orleans. Virginia provides both local and family stories, many connected with cross-cultural encounters in either New Orleans or New Zealand, stripping them of details so that they can be used for their generic qualities. The story of the life-saving event on the SS Kawau is touched on or retold in various forms throughout the novel. We later learn that Virginia’s grandfather, John, is the unnamed hero. We hear the story through a newspaper article in a section of the novel that takes place when John is an older man in 1969 Ponsonby. We hear it again when Virginia finds the life-saving medals before she returns to New Orleans well after his death. We find out that the reason for John’s presence on the voyage was the death of his first wife in the section ‘(Whakatangi) 1922’, and we hear the story as gossip at a 1990s wedding, where Virginia’s mother, Heather, tells Virginia of ‘your Grandad Seton, having another wife before your Granny’ (Morris 2002, p. 170). Heather herself had overheard this from Auntie Hattie at Virginia’s grandmother’s funeral many years previously. We read the story of the life-saving event from John’s perspective in a part of the novel where he is a newlywed and then a new widower in 1922. The section that tells John’s perspective connects with the telling of his first wife’s death through the word ‘(Going)’ throughout (Morris 2002, pp. 199–200, 207–208).

The SS Kawau story, in its many forms, is an example of both intentional and organic hybridity within the novel. A literary critic who is frequently referenced on the topic of hybridity is Mikhail Bahktin, who defined language as a hybrid form, and literature, particularly the novel, to be ‘a form that allows writers to blend distinct and often opposing social languages’ (qtd. in Grassian 2003, p. 2). He wrote that the novel is an ‘archetypal hybrid form through which to analyse culture and society’ because its ‘power consists in its ability to engulf and ingest all other genres’ (qtd. in Grassian 2003, p. 3). Hybrid literature ‘draws widely from literary and non-literary discourses, adapting them to its specific historical and formal needs and often importing them unchanged into its own narrative structure’ (Galster 2005, p. 227). This hybridity within literature, according to Bahktin may be created consciously or unconsciously by the author. A writer may intentionally ‘yoke together’ different viewpoints and devices (Grassian 2003, p. 3), bringing different elements together to reform as ‘meaning making vessels’ within one form (Bahktin qtd. in Antonetta 2015, p. xxix). On the other hand, hybridity may happen organically ‘because cultures, as well as art forms, cross over, meld, unthinkingly appropriate from one another’, with ‘meaning making modes’ not echoing one another but ‘remoulding’ (Bahktin qtd. in Antonetta 2015, p. xxix–xxxi). Within Queen of Beauty, hybridity is used intentionally in the many retellings of this story through different perspectives and narrative forms that reveal the full picture from many perspectives across the novel. Organically, these sections show the hybridity of normal life, including multiple perspectives and forms as Virginia would hear, read, or be exposed to the stories through the narrative timeline. This one story, told in many versions of story-within-story, is a key example of the way that embedded forms (newspaper articles, a letter, stories within stories) are imported within the novel’s hybridised structure, following Virginia’s journey of self-actualisation.

Virginia’s identity as a function of narrative

Like the structure of the novel, Virginia’s identity is composed of story, which illustrates the complexity and multi-dimensional nature of identity, something that influences Virginia as the novel progresses. The importance of story to Virginia is demonstrated initially in her employment in researching the details of story for Margaret, and it develops as she has stories shared with her by various family members throughout the novel. The novel not only places an emphasis on this storytelling interest, but it is also through embedded stories that the development of Virginia’s hybrid identity progresses. People with hybrid identity ‘straddle the boundaries between social categories and combine resources from both in their identities’ (Lam 2020, p. 837). Heeni Collins developed the concept of ‘Ngā Tangata Awarua’, meaning ‘either the flowing of two rivers, a corridor or passage’, therefore including dual Māori and Pākehā heritage, and the possible ‘discomfort … of being in-between’ or in transition (Collins qtd. Webber 2008, p. 27). These two rivers are two different cultures and values systems that exist together in hybrid identity. Virginia’s identity is both Māori on her father’s side and Pākehā on her mother’s side: Māori identity being ‘a social concept based on descent from the indigenous people of Aotearoa’ (Webber 2008, p. 15), and Pākehā identity denoting ‘non-Māori’, ‘deriving their identity primarily from their New Zealand location and experience, rather than from the countries from which their ancestors emigrated’ (King qtd. Webber 2008, p. 18).

Virginia is, at the start of the novel, disconnected from aspects of both her Māori and Pākehā identity in New Orleans. Evidence for this is the first section ‘At the Quadroon Ball,’ which focuses on Virginia’s life in New Orleans, barely mentioning her life in New Zealand, from which she has disconnected herself. This disconnect is confirmed by a conversation that Virginia later overhears about herself at Julia’s wedding: ‘Then she just swanned off to the States … And that’s the last anyone’s seen of her till now’ (Morris 2002, p. 233). In New Orleans Virginia does not have to be confronted with the label of Māori or Pākehā or attached identity politics. Virginia is packed up, ready to move on and ‘poised in transition’ but without a purpose. At this point, according to Moura-Kocoglu, Virginia is unable to decide about her perception of home or identity, searching for herself overseas but unable to embrace her identity without reflecting on or confronting her heritage. On returning to New Zealand, she connects with the ‘two rivers’ of her heritage and confront what these mean to her identity. Awanui Te Huia writes that ‘claiming a Māori identity depends on a range of identity markers, such as knowledge of whakapapa, Te Reo Māori, visible features and being ‘seen’ in Māori contexts such as marae and maintaining relationships’ (2015, p. 18). Virginia does not seem to speak fluent Te Reo or connect with her Māori heritage on a language-based level. Rather her connection with her Māori identity is through whānau relationships and whakapapa, with narrative and storytelling being key to her character’s identity throughout the novel. As the embedded stories within the novel are told, the implications of the narratives for the identity she has avoided engaging become more apparent. Specifically, the stories within Queen of Beauty act to explain where members of Virginia’s family have come from, defining their own identities, traditions, relationships, and perspectives to communicate the complexity of identity.

Virginia expresses an awareness of her own hybrid identity, albeit in uncertain terms, in a discussion at the wedding: ‘you mean about coming back, or about being Māori or Pākehā? I’m not sure about the first, and as for the second, I don’t think it’s a choice, really. I’m both’ (Morris 2002, p. 228). This ‘multiple response’ to identity captures ‘the complexity of personal ethnic space’, particularly for those who are exposed to the ‘cultural environs of both parents’ (Webber 2008, p. 22). Virginia’s return to New Zealand illustrates her ‘discomfort … of being in-between’ (Collins qtd. Webber 2008, p. 27), and the novel tells of her transition through having to encounter this. Antonetta argues that ‘narrative hybridity is increasingly used to depict the dislocation of the subjective ‘I’ in the experience of familial bonds’ (2015, p. xvi). For example, in 1996 when out for dinner with her ex-boyfriend, Richard, Virginia has an emotional response to seeing her family’s Ponsonby house again. She gets angry and tries to jump the fence, telling Richard ‘I haven’t got time. I’m leaving the country in two weeks … I need to see it now’ (Morris 2002, p. 247). She then gets upset, crying while sitting in a gutter. This house is the centre of the narrative around her experience of her Māori grandmother and Pākehā grandfather, who make up much of the narrative across time around her ‘two rivers’ of heritage. In this scene Virginia has an urgency about visiting the house, telling Richard that he doesn’t ‘understand a bloody thing, and you can’t be bothered trying’ (Morris 2002, p. 247). Here Virginia refers to Richard’s lack of understanding around the complexity of emotions to being back in Auckland and encountering familial stories in a historical and cultural context that she has a role within.

Performing whakapapa

The structure of Queen of Beauty reflects the concept of whakapapa, which layers multiple stories to tell the story of Virginia, to show and to perform how her personal identity is developed with the hybrid space of the novel. Historically, ‘Māori as an oral culture has used storying to pass on generations of whakapapa, traditions and history’ (Webber 2008, p. 116). Whakapapa is a ‘genealogy’ that is a ‘taxonomic framework’ mapping relationships so that ‘mythology, legend, history, knowledge, custom, philosophies and spiritualities are organised, preserved and transmitted from one generation to the next’ (Taonui n.d.). Whakapapa ‘insinuates a set of relationships with the living and departed, and the individual and their environment in a wider sense of the meaning’ (Te Huia 2015, p. 19) and does so as a process of ‘laying one thing upon another’ (Apirana Ngata qtd in Taonui n.d.). Throughout Queen of Beauty, Virginia’s ancestors and whānau live through story, performing the complexity of the family or whakapapa by interweaving within a form that takes many voices to make one whole novel. In Indigenising Intertextuality, Matthew Hayward writes of the ‘communal storyteller’, a voice that is interwoven with the thoughts and impressions of characters. This ‘communal storyteller’ does not attain ‘such prominence as to imply the identity of a distinct character, narrating all the other voices in the novel’ but narrates events at a remove, ‘essentially adding another layer to the text’ (2018, p. 100). This voice is part of an ‘open process that is enacted communally’, and an oral mode that is ‘multiple, a telling of tales told also elsewhere’ (Hayward 2018, pp. 100–101). Queen of Beauty uses a shifting third person subjective point of view between sections to provide the perspective of multiple characters, rather than a narrator who is a distinct character or an omniscient perspective. This voice can thus be seen to perform the multitude of voices, that converse by means of embedded stories. This is reflected in the structure of Queen of Beauty, with layers of multiple stories, to show and to perform how Virginia’s personal identity is developed.

Within the novel, stories of differing viewpoints, cultures and backgrounds are placed next to each other. For example, within the section called ‘Where Sheep May Safely Graze’, Uncle Tahu, from her paternal side, tells Virginia how after investigation at the coroner’s the family found the truth about his grandmother being killed in a housefire:

Uncle Tahu then tells Virginia about his father who ‘never knew who he was’, as he was raised by his Māori grandparents and then ran away from home when he was a teenager. He tells Virginia of the negotiations for his father’s burial, where Uncle Tahu had to make the ‘choice for him’ since ‘he didn’t know who he was’, whether to bury him at the marae or at the Church of England cemetery (Morris 2002, p. 238). Uncle Tahu’s identity is said to be that of a negotiator, ‘at work, at home. You know that’ (Morris 2002, p. 238), but also that of a proud Māori, indicated by his talk of his stepmother being ‘hit’ with the realisation that ‘she’d married a Māori’ with ‘all of us with our brown faces’ (Morris 2002, p. 239). This embedded story is an entire section of dialogue from Uncle Tahu, excluding anything that Virginia has said, but with answers to her presumed questions inserted in. It concludes with Uncle Tahu changing the subject, looking for Virginia’s brother and saying he is ‘ready for my solo’ at the wedding. Directly after this story, we hear the thoughts of Margery, Virginia’s maternal grandmother, and her reflection on Julia’s wedding: Margery’s reflection on the way she was brought up leads into thoughts of her daughter Heather’s parenting and how Virginia got her name, from a poster of a yellow haired film star heroine ‘pretending to be Indian’, named Queen of Beauty by the Navajo people. This poster is something that would be deemed to be appropriation and inappropriate in the present. Margery thinks Heather would never admit this was what she named Virginia after, as ‘old ladies weren’t the only ones who liked to forget things’ (Morris 2002, p. 241). These two stories are placed next to each other within the novel as if in conversation with each other, showing two contrasting characters who are from different cultural backgrounds, appearing to have little in common. Yet both are related to Virginia, and their stories share the same space within the novel. Their stories are both themselves about hybrid and shifting identity: the Māori-Pākehā ‘negotiation’ of ‘old Tahu’ the ‘Wairarapa Māori’ (Morris 2002, p. 229), preceding the hybrid Scottish-Pākehā identity of Margery, who is negotiating her own upbringing and societal standards against that of her hybrid Māori-Pākehā grandchildren. That she states that in her past ‘you knew who you were, and who everyone else was’ is in contrast with Uncle Tahu’s statement that his father ‘didn’t know who he was’. Both stories suggest an ambiguity to self-identity by raising questions of who they–and those around them–are. That these stories are placed side by side suggest the novel performs a hybrid space, offering a ‘moment of transit’ where ‘space and time cross to produce figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion’ (Grassian 2003, p. 3). The novel brings together stories like these, contrasting identities, time periods and locations, within the same space to connect different experiences to address questions of identity and disparity. Queen of Beauty thus juxtaposes the stories of Virginia’s Māori and Pākehā ancestors throughout the novel. The device of embedded stories shows the ‘power of narrative to reanimate minds no longer living’, where ‘stories can make past experiences, hopes and feelings … live on in those same places in the present moment of telling’ (Herman 2016, p. 373). Stories contain historical intelligence, information about social issues and reflect deep and intimate perceptions, relationships, and attitudes, showing how people and cultures think (Lenore Keeshig Tobias qtd. in Pistacchi ‘Any Dead Bodies’ 2008, p. 63). These stories do not favour Māori stories, or Pākehā stories, but tell both, intertwining these in a way that allow the possibility of ‘new fused identities’ (Te Huia 2015, p. 20). The stories explain how parts that make up Virginia’s identity function and negotiate Virginia’s identity in who she is and who she wants to be. Throughout Queen of Beauty, Virginia’s ancestors live through story, performing the complexity of family by interweaving within a form that takes many voices to make one whole novel.

Hybrid space and Virginia’s character progression

In this hybrid space, where cultures meet and issues of identity are raised, Virginia questions the ideas and identities inherited from her family, culture, and experience. In stories throughout the novel there are narrative experiences of colonialism, social inequality, oppressions, and conflicts, which collect in the space of the novel. None of the embedded stories are made out to be right or wrong within the novel; rather Virginia becomes increasingly aware these stories need to be told in their own context, without appropriation or alteration. Bhabha writes that the hybrid space lies between the ‘binaries of colonialism and resistance’, with hybrid literature ‘simultaneously repeating and exceeding colonial representations of difference, deconstructing the binary of self and other’ (qtd. in Stouck 2010, p. 91). The conversation that the embedded stories hold within the hybrid novel are important in illustrating these differences and roles in Virginia’s hybrid identity.

Virginia’s increasing awareness and emotional connection with story contributes to her progression as a character, and this occurs as embedded stories are shared through the course of the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Virginia shares stories with employer, Margaret, a New Orleans novelist. This is in her time of voluntary disconnect with her family and Aotearoa New Zealand identity. Virginia provides both local and family stories to her employer, many connected with cross-cultural encounters in either New Orleans or New Zealand, sanitising them by stripping them of details so that they can be used for their generic qualities. These stories are part of the character development that takes place for Virginia. In reference to Wordsworth’s The Ruined Cottage, Herman writes that embedded narrative enables character transformation into a character who knows about history and gains a felt appreciation of the experiences of others, which ‘resides in the system of analogical relations binding the framing and framed tales’ (2016, p. 370). Throughout Queen of Beauty there are narrative experiences of colonialism, social inequality, oppressions, and conflicts. Examples of these include stories of how her family’s Northland land was sold (Morris 2002, p. 263), how a grandmother died after a housefire after not receiving medical care (2002, p. 237) and the bones on the beach that had been there ‘when the settlers arrived … untouched’ from a ‘massacre years before–raiders, slaughtered during their victory feast and left there’ (2002, p. 112). Virginia becomes aware of the context and personal connection of the stories that she is telling or hearing and that they need to be told in their own context, without appropriation or alteration. She asks her father if, in hindsight, it is ok that she gave the stories to Margaret. She says ‘I know it’s too late and all, but … I guess I’m feeling guilty about it’ (Morris 2002, p. 267). This motivates her to make changes on her return to New Orleans. She becomes resolute: ‘She needn’t give Margaret another story, another thought, another idea, another reference, another hour of her time’ (Morris 2002, p. 268). As the novel concludes with Virginia’s return to New Orleans, her actions show that her time in New Zealand has changed her. She resigns, telling Arthur that the stories she has been giving ‘are much, much bigger than anything Margaret Dean O’Clare ever did with them’ (2002, p. 302). She then sets off on her own adventure with Arthur. Arthur is a character who is portrayed as picky and protective of both rare and interesting books, but also of local history and knowledge which Virginia comes to him for as a source. This is how Virginia comes to see stories through the course of the novel, becoming more protective of them and their true context as sources of experience and knowledge. In these actions she rejects her role in sanitising stories, as now she sees herself, and with that her whakapapa, within them. The novel concludes with Virginia telling Arthur a story-within-story, one about her grandfather’s grandmother travelling from Britain to New Zealand, and the grandmother’s desire for her descendants to remember:

In the end, having embraced her own hybridity–in a novel whose hybridity, via embedded narrative, performs the function of storytelling to identity–she has a stronger relationship with her living family, a greater understanding of her ancestors, and the confidence to be able to tell story. This confidence is in relation to her personal life, in sharing with her love interest Arthur as they go on a road trip that she has initiated after being previously shy in personal interactions (Morris 2002, p. 308). It is also professional, shown through her resigning from working with Margaret to potentially write her own stories (Morris 2002, p. 304). Virginia’s character development is seen to be progressed as the stories that make up her hybrid identity are told through the novel. Paul Meredith states that ‘emergent hybrid identities’ who have recognised their own hybridity have a significant positive contribution to make to grow the ‘knowledge capacity and negotiate’ the cultural divide (1999, p. 14). This is something that Virginia offers at the end of the novel, the ability and willingness to share stories of both cultures in their true forms, as a hybrid identity able to speak from both sides.

Conclusion

The hybrid structure of the novel Queen of Beauty plays a critical role in the development of the themes of hybrid identity in the novel and to Virginia’s growing awareness of her own identity and the important role stories play in her identity. The hybrid structure enables the novel to be a nexus of voices and ancestral stories, showing a range of perspectives through stories which move in a fragmented structure. It allows for multiple cultural approaches to be connected within one novel. This hybridised structure becomes a hybrid space of Māori and Pākehā stories, which together make up Virginia’s hybrid identity. The novel performs this through the weaving of many voices and interactions which contribute to the progression of Virginia’s acceptance of her hybrid identity. These stories show her ancestral heritage on both sides, her whakapapa through past generations and across the locations where they have lived. They encourage Virginia to seek out the truth which can be told through her family and local stories. On her return to New Orleans from New Zealand, she therefore takes a surer resolution than previously, embracing the ability to tell her own stories and direct her own future.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).