Australian Literature

Conclusions, from last week

So why this book? (Clark and Division)
- Among the genres, this novel is primarily historical fiction, with a mystery thrown in. While the mystery is solved, some readers might find it "forced" or "contrived." But as an historical novel, it quite successfully opens our eyes to the plight of Japanese Americans interned during World War II, and more specifically focuses on the consequences of that incarceration as they attempted to re-build their lives, with little that they had once had.
- So, this is one of those historical events that's been forgotten, ignored, kept hidden.
- And this is a woman writer trying to find a voice from an emerging culture, like the Blacks from the South in America, like the Scottish when freed from British dominion, and like the Australians, throwing off the British legacy in favor of their own voice.

Conclusions, from last week

So why this book? (Clark and Division)
- Like writers from all emerging cultures, they struggle and may not be initially successful. But we need to listen to their voices and read their words, even if the voice is a bit angry and the language isn't quite polished.
- And we need to listen and to read particularly if they reveal a piece of our less glorious history that we'd rather forget. This is of course what Kate Grenville discovered with The Secret River and the history wars that erupted.
- And this is the voice of Black trainers and groomsmen that Geraldine Brooks wrote about in Horse (now officially a part of history in the Louisville museum, the Smithsonian and the D.C. National Museum of African American History and Culture )
- And it is the voice of Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife in Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet. Just as Shakespeare gave a name and a face to his lost son in the play Hamlet, so this novel gives the forgotten, unknown, and ignored Anne a name and a face.

So, why this novel? Resurrection Bay

Because this author, like many other Australian writers, is trying to give a name and a face to the indigenous inhabitants whose land was stolen and whose people were abused and slaughtered when the land was settled by Europeans, largely British.
It is an attempt at recognition, and reparation, cast in the guise of a mystery novel.
And it is recognition of the disadvantaged, of whatever ilk, whose lives are different but no less significant.
It is an attempt to widen our perspective on history and humanity, to include and acknowledge those who have been forgotten, overlooked, stereotyped, or misrepresented in traditional literature. And, bias or not, I give considerable credit to women authors for providing this alternative perspective on history, and humanity, through the literature they write.
All of the Australian authors and novels we've read and discussed throw light on this complex literary tradition.

Salt Creek, Lucy Treloar

As genre, it's an historical novel, set during the 1850s and 1860s in Australia, and tangentially in England.
And like much of Australian literature, its setting is important, even crucial; more than a backdrop, it is a critical element in the novel, a character that is essential to the plot and theme of the novel.
Specifically, Salt Creek is set in the Coorong, western Australia, now a national park, but at that time home of the indigenous Ngarrindjeri (NU-ruhn-je-ree) people for thousands of years.
In the novel's central plot, Stanton Finch, with his family, attempts to cultivate this land, raise sheep, make cheese, all unsuccessfully, largely because he attempts to impose British agricultural practices on land unsuited for them.
Broadly speaking, this novel is about the imposition of the British perspective, not just to the natural world (plants and animals), but to social values, cultural norms, and religious beliefs.

Salt Creek, Lucy Treloar

It's a patriarchal system imposed on a land and a people not receptive to its dictates. Some members of the Finch family have a wider perspective about the relationship between whites and blacks, ownership of land, strict British rule. The narrow perspective fails and those who are more adaptable survive.
My breakout room question asked if this novel wasn't in fact an indictment of traditional British attitudes about gender roles, about race, about social class and culture, about religious beliefs, even about man's relationships to his environment, animal and plant life.
As an historical novel, this book also includes references to specific historical events to make its point. For example, it includes the story of entrepreneurs who believed oil was located in the Coorong and drilled Australia's first oil well in 1892. They were unsuccessful; the "oil" was in fact a flammable, compacted vegetable substance (known as 'coorongite').

Salt Creek, Lucy Treloar

Salt Creek, to prove its point, also includes elements of the "true crime" genre, popular in Australia, perhaps because of its "convict" past.
For example, one of the integral plot points involves the Travellers' Rest Inn, proprietors William and Catherine Robinson, and Malachi Martin and his murder victims.
Just before he turned 13, Martin was charged with theft while working at a post office in Encounter Bay. He was tried but found not guilty.
Six days later, his mother Mary died drowning in a pond near the family farm. Although witnesses had not questioned her state of mind, the inquest found that she had committed suicide “while laboring under temporary insanity" due to distress over her son's criminal trial. Her death was made even more tragic because she was heavily pregnant at the time.

Malachy (Malachi) Martin

A few years later, Martin moved near the Coorong, working as a mail coach driver. While living in the area, he became friends with William and Catherine Robinson who ran the Traveller’s Rest; it was later believed that Catherine and Martin were having an affair.
On June 14, 1856, William Robinson's body was discovered with his throat cut. Martin was a suspect, but never charged with his murder. Several weeks later, he moved to Sydney before returning to South Australia and marrying Catherine on June 23, 1858.
In February 1862, a young woman named Jane Macmanamin, working at Traveller’s Rest, disappeared. Although Martin stated she had moved away on a whim, in April 1862, Jane's sister, who had stayed in contact with her, sent a letter to the Adelaide police, suspicious because she had not heard from Jane in some time.

Malachy (Malachi) Martin

The Wellington police were investigating when on May 29 a Ngarrindjeri local, "Micky,“ told police that a fellow Ngarrindjeri (NU-ruhn-je-ree) named Itawanie had found Jane's body partially buried in a wombat hole about half a mile north of Martin's house.
In June 1862, Martin was charged with her murder, tried, found guilty, and hanged at the Adelaide Gaol; he may have been Australia's first serial killer

The Maria (ABC news)

When the Maria, a passenger ship, foundered miles off the southeast coast in 1840, the story that followed became one of the darkest and most controversial events in South Australian maritime history.
The crew and 26 passengers boarded the Irish-built brigantine Maria under Captain William Smith and left Port Adelaide on June 26, 1840, bound for Hobart. Neither they not the ship reached their destination.
In late July, newspapers reported that "a massacre site" had been found along the Coorong coastline.
Reports began to circulate that Maria passengers and crew had been murdered by natives after abandoning their foundering ship.
A group of men set off from Adelaide to investigate and brought back horrible stories of finding "legs, arms and parts of bodies partially covered with sand and strewn in all directions," and described a trail of native footprints leading from the scene.

The Maria (ABC news)

They also brought back wedding rings, allegedly found on the slain bodies of two female passengers, and said they had found local natives in possession of blankets and, tellingly, one wearing a sailor's jacket.
A horrified public demanded action, Governor George Gawler sent a team on horseback to investigate, and instructed Major Thomas O'Halloran, leader of the expedition, to explain to the blacks "the nature of your conduct . . . and you will deliberately and formally cause sentence of death to be executed by shooting or hanging" when their guilt was determined. On August 25, two native men were hanged near the graves of their alleged victims.
A huge outcry followed the hangings, with newspapers in Australia and overseas claiming the reaction had been disproportionate.

The Maria (ABC news)

Late Ngarrindjeri elder Tom Trevorrow spoke about the Maria tragedy in 2003, saying the story was well known among his elders. That story said that sailors in the group "kept looking at the young girls, and kept trying to sexually interfere with them.“ It was not the way of the Ngarrindjeri(NU-ruhn-je-ree) people, and the sailors were sternly warned the offence was punishable by death under their law.
It is believed sometime after the incident, a violent fight erupted, and the survivors of the Maria were all killed. Mr. Trevorrow said Ngarrindjeri people had carried out their law. "They would have had no idea of repercussions that were coming," he said.

Conclusions

So, in Salt Creek, we see:
Interest in "true crime" stories, popular from the beginning of Australian literature, and still popular. We could speculate that Australia's origins sparked this interest.
Strong conflict between British colonists and native tribes, with the British attempting to impose their standards and failing to recognize or acknowledge the cultures of the indigenous peoples.
The environment is as much challenge as any individual, even more so.

The Secret River, Kate Grenville

Background Secret River (Wikipedia)
The Secret River started out as Grenville's desire to understand the history of her ancestor Solomon Wiseman, who settled on the Hawkesbury River at the area now known as Wisemans Ferry. Her research was triggered by her taking part in the 28 May 2000 Reconciliation Walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge during which she realised that she didn't know much about the early interactions between the settlers and the Aboriginal people.
Initially intended to be a work of non-fiction about Wiseman, the book eventually became a fictional work based on her research but not specifically about Wiseman himself. The novel took five years and twenty drafts to complete; ultimately she did write a non-fiction account of Wiseman's specific history.
The novel is dedicated to the Aboriginal people of Australia and received a positive response from many. Grenville has said "they recognise that the book is my act of acknowledgement, my way of saying: this is how I'm sorry".
Background Secret River (Wikipedia)
- However, this novel sparked "the history wars," a debate about the role of writers in interpreting the nation's history.
- Australian academic Mark McKenna published an article criticizing novelists, and Grenville in particular, for trying to write history. He singled out Grenville for her comment that she stood on a step ladder looking out over the academic wars on the interpretation of history. McKenna took this comment to mean that Grenville considered herself superior to academic historians, The national newspapers and media gave the issue wide coverage, and Grenville came under attack. Historian Inga Clendinnen published an even more vitriolic attack on Grenville in an article in the Quarterly Essay (Issue 23), which was also notable for its failure to provide sources for its accusations.
- Grenville explained that she did not mean that she stood above the academic debate, just that she stood outside of it as an interested observer of the academic debate over the interpretation of Australia's history.

Controversy surrounding The Secret River

Grenville stated that she does not write history; she takes real events and weaves a story around them. She believes that historical novels give people who are not inclined to read historical tomes a chance to think about history.
Grenville believes that the academic historians were motivated by two factors: 1) They resent that the public pays more attention to novelists than to historians; 2) The 'publish or die' atmosphere that dominates academia pushes academics to seek out media attention to raise their profile and thus improve their chances of receiving funding for their work and for their universities.
The Secret River is a modern Australian classic—a critically acclaimed bestseller. It won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the NSW Premier's Award in 2006 and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin and the Man Booker Prizes.

Historians on The Secret River (ABC, Feb. 13, 2013)

It's the most studied work of Australian fiction on the secondary school curriculum.
The Secret River is the fictional story of a London boatman called William Thornhill who's convicted of theft and transported with his young family to Sydney. They eventually settle along the Hawkesbury River but the land is already inhabited by the Dharug people. Thornhill's dream of a home for his family comes at a terrible cost.
When the book was adapted for the theater, Ann McGrath, Professor of History and Director of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the Australian National University, wrote the program notes for the play. She said there's nothing secret about the history of the early settlement of the Hawkesbury.

Historians on The Secret River (ABC, Feb. 13, 2013)

"It was written about by [Governor Lachlan] Macquarie, it was written about by the soldiers, it was written about by the First Fleet arrivals," she told the theatre audience. "It's very much in the documents and easy to see and I think this is a bit of a problem with the Australian, especially the white Australian, sensibility—that we think this history of Aboriginal/white conflict was somehow secret. Well it wasn't."
Dr. Jeanine Leane, a Wiradjuri woman and a post-doctoral fellow at the ANU's Australian Centre for Indigenous History, believes the story breaks some new ground in "settler fiction" but is disappointed it doesn't break more stereotypes, especially in the depiction of sexual relationships between white settlers and Aboriginal women.
She also ascribes the appeal of The Secret River to the way in which it gives a human face to the story of early white settlement and a deeper insight into the experiences of the indigenous people of the time.

Historians on The Secret River (ABC, Feb. 13, 2013)

Dr Martin Thomas, an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the ANU School of History and an honorary associate professor at the University of Sydney, said that the popularity of The Secret River is a reflection of the search for "our national DNA."
" . . . there's this idea of the foundational narrative—our beginnings as a nation—and so Sydney or the Hawkesbury, they're very iconic places to focus on. . . . "

From "History and Fiction"

The expression ‘History Wars’ appears for the first time in the United States in 1994 when the Smithsonian Institute of Washington decided to put on an exhibition on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
There was a controversial debate on how to represent such a historical event. The organizers chose to exhibit the Enola Gay – the aeroplane which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima – in a less celebrative and more ‘thoughtful’ way inviting the visitors themselves to judge the moral legitimacy of the use of this terrible weapon and, in so doing, they elicited a great deal of harsh criticism being accused of offending the honour of the nation.
Scholars, critics, historians, journalists and politicians publicly discussed what Jurgen Habermas had defined as one of the most controversial cases of ‘public use of history’, staging what was later to be called the ‘History Wars’.

From "History and Fiction"

Forging national mythologies has, therefore, always been an important creative moment for Australian writers. The need to establish a link between European roots and the native Aboriginal community, a more positive link than that offered by testimonies of dispossession and genocide, has become even stronger as a result of the awareness of the brutality perpetrated by whites on Australian Aborigines.
From here stems the desire to reveal a past that is ‘other’, to explore realities on the fringe of conventional accounts, to unhinge ‘imperialistic’ misappropriations of Australian history, restoring significance to ‘forgotten’ presences and facts.

From "History and Fiction"

What Kate Grenville seems to suggest is that the violence perpetrated on the indigenous peoples, at the moment of contact between colonizers and Aborigines, can be read as a consequence of a complete breakdown in communication.
The land, not only source of material life but also spiritual life for the Aboriginal people, represents for Europeans, by contrast, an asset that one could claim as an exclusive possession.
If, on the one hand, the native peoples are unable to understand the value and meaning of borders, fences and barriers erected by the whites as signs of ownership and control, on the other, in the perception of the white man the Aboriginal communities, mainly nomadic, had no sense of belonging to the place.

From "History and Fiction"

The collision between the two cultures is not, then, to be considered exclusively as a simple quarrel between rival groups which try to take possession of the same piece of land; it is, on the contrary, the result of a mutual narrow-mindedness, of a paralyzing incapacity to enter into contact with each other.
In the light of the dramatic and bloody crushing and the driving out of the indigenous peoples by the first colonizers, the novel offers a difficult and profound reflection on the way the continent was colonized.
In other words, Grenville provides a different perspective on this history and particularly a different perspective on the native aborigines, whose culture and values the original British colonizers did not see.

A Town Like Alice

Interestingly, Nevil Shute also was a victim of the "history wars," to some degree. He said that on the publication of this book, he expected to be accused of falsifying history, especially in regard to the march and death of the homeless women prisoners. I shall be told that nothing of the sort ever happened in Malaya, and this is true. It happened in Sumatra.
After the conquest of Malaya in 1942, the Japanese invaded Sumatra and quickly took the island. A party of about 80 Dutch women and children were collected in the vicinity of Padang. The local Japanese commander was reluctant to assume responsibility for these women and, to solve his problem, marched them out of his area; so began a trek all around Sumatra which lasted for two and a half years. At the end of this vast journey less than 30 of them were still alive.
NOTE: published in 1950, this novel pre-dates the others, just following WWII.

A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute

Shute explained:
- In 1949, he met Mr. and Mrs. J. G. Geysel-Vonck at Palembang in Sumatra. Mrs. Geysel had been a member of that party. When she was taken prisoner, she was a slight, pretty girl of twenty-one, recently married; she had a baby six months old, and a very robust sense of humour. In the years that followed, Mrs. Geysel marched over 1200 miles carrying her baby, in circumstances similar to those which I have described. She emerged from this fantastic ordeal undaunted, and with her son fit and well.
- I do not think that I have ever before turned to real life for an incident in one of my novels. If I have done so now it is because I have been unable to resist the appeal of this true story, and because I want to pay what tribute is within my power to the most gallant lady I have ever met.

A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute

Shute is another author rescuing stories from history that might otherwise have been forgotten.
Although the women, particularly Jean, is the heroine of this novel, later versions, specifically the mini-series, made Joe the hero.
Shute based the character of Joe Harman on Herbert James "Ringer" Edwards, whom Shute met in 1948 at a station in Queensland. An Australian veteran of the Malayan campaign, Edward had been crucified for 63 hours by Japanese soldiers on the Burma Railway. He escaped execution a second time, when his "last meal" of chicken and beer could not be obtained.
Crucifixion (or Haritsuke) was a form of punishment or torture that the Japanese sometimes used against prisoners during the war.

A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute

The structure of the novel:
- Although the protagonists of this novel are Jean Paget and Joe Harman, primarily Jean, Shute employs Noel Strahan as the narrator. He knows the story primarily through letters and conversations with Jean, and later with Joe, but he's not much of a character in the story.
- In fact, in literary terms, this is a first-person peripheral narrator.
- Other examples include Aki in Clark and Division, Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby and Dr. Watson, storyteller in the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.
- In more modern novels, this first person narrator becomes unreliable, but that's not the case here.

A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute

In this novel, at least 5 cultures are represented.
British—particularly the British women with Jean on the march.
- Many of the women initially follow their British traditions, expecting beds and tea, wearing corsets and shoes. Jean is adaptable, wears a sarong, creates a blouse from her dress, and abandons her shoes.
Japanese—officers who order them about and soldiers who accompany them
- Mixed response. Although most Japanese treat the characters as war prisoners, the occasional Japanese soldier takes pity, like the guard who accompanies them.
Malayans—particularly the villagers who offer the women housing and food
- They are humane, offering the women food and shelter when treated with respect. Jean later goes back to build a well for the Malayan community that had assisted them.
- Indigenous people—the aborigines who work on the cattle stations. NOTE: acknowledged in the novel but not highlighted
- Australians—Joe and his mates in the outback, as well as various townspeople and station owners
  - Again, somewhat mixed. Small town Aussies are accommodating, but distant to Jean, who is British and therefore represents the social structure they want to escape.
  - Particularly in the mini-series of the 1980s, the Australian men are the heroes.

A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute

Thirty years after the publication of the novel, the Australians produced a mini-series based on or adapted from this novel. It was an enormous success.
Several critics or literary theorists see the mini-series as important in the development of the Australian literary voice. In fact, one wrote that the mini-series "contributed to the development of national mythology during the 1980s."
They also cite:
- treatment of the native population, as well as other cultures
- the meaning of the outback, "as the source of Australian national identity, particularly of a certain rugged, individualist masculinity.
- And that is the theme that pervades much Australian literature in the years following—the rugged, masculine hero with little respect for authority figures, especially law enforcement, perhaps attributable to the country's "convict" past. (Ned Kelly, by Peter Carey, won the Booker)

The Dry, Jane Harper

Jane Harper is of course among the modern novelists and represents, among other things, the rise of the woman author in the mystery genre. And Australian women writers, in mystery and true crime genres, write a tougher, harder, more austere novel than their British or American counterparts.
They are a little more in the tradition of the hard-boiled detective, but then the Australian landscape also figures prominently, primarily with Jane Harper who writes from the outback.

Australian Literary History: Specifically mystery and crime novels

Patrick White, 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature
- Press Release:
- “for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature.” The award was not based on a single novel but on seven.
- The earliest masterly work is:
- The Aunt’s Story about a lonely, unmarried, Australian woman’s life during experiences that extend also to Europe and America.
- The Tree of Man, an epically broad and psychologically discerning account of Australian social development through two people’s long life together, and struggle against outward and inward difficulties.
- Voss shows another aspect of Australia in which a fanatical explorer in the country’s interior meets his fate: an intensive character study against the background of the fascinating Australian wilds.

Patrick White, 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature

Riders in the Chariot is a sacrificial drama, tense, yet with an everyday setting, in the midst of current Australian reality, from contrasting viewpoints.
The Solid Mandala gives a double portrait of two brothers in which the sterile, rational brother is set against the fertile, intuitive one, who is almost a fool in the eyes of the world.
White’s last two books are among his greatest feats
The Vivisector is the imaginary biography of an artist, in which a whole life is disclosed in a relentless scrutiny of motives and springs to action.
The Eye of the Storm places an old, dying woman in the center of a narrative which revolves around, and encloses, the whole of her environment, past and present, until we have come to share an entire life panorama, in which everyone is on a decisive dramatic footing with the old lady.

Patrick White, 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature

Other Australian authors worth noting include:
Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds, 1977, is Australia's highest selling novel and at 30 million copies sold by 2009 one of the biggest selling novels of all time.
Peter Carey has won the Miles Franklin Award three times—for Jack Maggs in 1998, for Oscar and Lucinda in 1989, and for Bliss in 1981. He has twice won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction with Oscar and Lucinda and 2001's True History of the Kelly Gang.
Other notable writers to have emerged since the 1970s include David Malouf, Helen Garner, Janette Turner Hospital, Marion Halligan, Susan Johnson, Christopher Koch, Alex Miller, Shirley Hazzard, Gerald Murnane, Brenda Walker, Rod Jones, Jane Harper, and others.

Patrick White, 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature

Most notably:
- Kate Grenville, The Secret River, for which she won the Commonwealth Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Also Sarah Thornhill, A Room Full of Leaves
- Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, 2014 Booker Prize. Described by sources as "one of the greatest living novelists" and "the finest Australian novelist of his generation." Flanagan is also an ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, to which he donated his $40,000 prize money on winning the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Prize in 2014.
- Tim Winton. Cloud Street, one of four novels for which he won the Miles Franklin Award.

Australian Literary History—early years

It is hardly surprising that when fiction began to be produced in this new country, crime and its consequences were a major theme.
These early "convict" novels tended to focus either on the harshly convicted person who suffers under the judicial system, or the man who escapes and runs free—the model for the mythic bushranger. In the early days of the British settlement of Australia, bushrangers were escaped convicts who used the bush to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term had evolved to refer to those who took up "robbery under arms" as a way of life, using the bush as their base.
Not surprisingly, these novels were, to quote one writer, "masculinist" and anti-authority, especially British. Australian novels are still "masculinist" and anti-authority, especially anti-British.
NOTE: For the information in this and subsequent slides, I would cite specifically Stephen Knight, "Australian Crime Fiction," The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature, among other sources.

Australian Literary History—early years

That said, these writers also filled their stories with "stirring ideals" and tried to accurately record the vernacular language of the common Australian.
They also gave valuable insights into the penal colonies which helped form the country, as well as the early rural settlements.
For example, see Candace Fox's novel Crimson Lake about a wrongly accused ex-cop turned detective and his partner, a convicted murderer.
Although historically only a small proportion of Australia's population have lived outside the major cities, many of its most distinctive stories and legends originate in the outback, in the drovers and squatters and people of the barren, dusty plains.
Much Australian writing focuses on the land and on people living in the bush, on rural farms or stations, in the outback, an environment bristling with life. It can be threatening and alienating, but is also beautiful.