The Whalebone Theatre

Content Warning: The section of the guide contains descriptions of wartime violence and anti-gay bias.

Quinn uses the theme of playacting and role-playing to explore many issues of creativity, identity, and societal pressure. The text investigates the blurred lines between the authentic self and constructed personas and delves into the functions that such playacting serves throughout the characters’ lives. With this understated philosophical approach, the author distinguishes between the roles that society wants the characters to fulfill and the roles they choose for themselves.

To this end, theatricality informs the novel’s content and its structure, for the narrative’s construction as a five-act play implicitly frames these historically realistic events as a staged drama. Likewise, the childhoods of the Seagrave children are also inextricably linked to plays and acting as they dress in costumes and put on elaborate stage plays together. Within this context, Cristabel’s construction of The Whalebone Theatre showcases her resilience and resourcefulness. Disinherited, with few possessions to call her own, Cristabel creates a creative space from the rotting body of the whale. As the Seagrave children grow and mature, the narratives that they act out “overlay the geography of their lives” (125), becoming more real to them than the events around them.