‘Love Is No Detective’: Germaine Greer and the Enigma Code

Abstract

This essay explores Germaine Greer’s search for herfather’s identity in Daddy, We Hardly Knew You. She representsher quest as a form of detective work, as shepainstakingly uncovers and exposes his lies, deceptions,and evasions, especially concerning his falsified background.Her story focuses as much on the process of investigation— her role as code cracker (corresponding toher father’s work on the “Enigma” code during WorldWar II) — as on the eventual results. As she learns more,her guilt for revealing what he had attempted to concealincreases; consequently the narrative focuses as much onher self-consciousness about her activity as upon his fabricationsand her eventual revelations. Her probing issubjected to an ethical scrutiny; it also raises a questionwhether the truth about another person can ever be fullyknown. Her relation with her mother, who discouragesthe quest, informs much of her narrative. At the sametime her ambivalence about her Australian identity, especiallyregarding a cultural reticence concerning invasionof privacy, creates an abiding difficulty for her, pittingstoical silence against the imperatives of inquiry. Ironically,we learn more about her own troubled identity thanthe father’s mysterious one, especially how the need torevise his misleading story endows her with a power shehad lacked during his lifetime.