A guilty self-portrait: Henry Green's pack my bag

Abstract

This essay argues that Henry Green's autobiographical Pack My Bag is not only a significant achievement in its own right, but also of great interest to readers intrigued by the varieties of modernism and theories of autobiography. Green, the most consciously experimental novelist of his time, wrote an autobiography that, in many ways, confounds expectations of the genre. While establishing himself as a victim of the impending Second World War, Green's text moves quickly to shame remembered, an obsessive rumination on guilt. This interplay between innocence and guilt is the structuring principle of Pack My Bag. © The Author, 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Cambridge Quarterly. All rights reserved.