Masculine Dominance of Australianness in Australian Literature

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Masculine Dominance of Australianness in Australian Literature

Throughout the history of Australian writing, traditional stories and verses created images of Australia capturing the culture and the lifestyle like a photograph. Being a new settlement, Australia was at the time without cultural limitations to determine its direction. This freedom provided the authors a clean slate from which to build their stories and poems opposed to the traditions and conventions or viewpoints inherited from Britain. Without any predetermined direction or structured government influence, written media provided the conduit for the development of Australian culture. This essay will examine the images created in early literary works primarily through character analysis as much of the true essence of the culture could is reflected in their personality. This paper will argue that images and constructions of antiauthoritarianism, mateship and larrikinism found in these literary works provide a link to the development of an Australian image.  Examination of these three themes in respect to gender will show that masculinity continued to dominate the context of early poetry and prose and later novels with very little feminine influence. This essay will show that the image of Australianness is fundamentally masculine with little or no recognition of a feminine equivalent developed by a traditionally masculine literary society.  

Within Australian literature, the strength of the written story is in its ability to draw experiences of life through its characters, each different, yet all Australian. The characters created in Lawson’s poems, verses and stories represented a specific aspect of the Australian life, principally as experienced in the bush, itself a literary construct. Lawson had a belief in humanity, democracy and social justice and a compassion for the country, compelling his views of tragedy, humour, and drama representing the Australian way of life. This style and social influences created an image that many readers could relate to in their own lives. A.A. Phillips has suggested that writing “was not to tell a tale but to evoke the quality of Australian Living”. His view suggests that the written word was more than sentences and grammar, but a tool used to forge history and mould a country. Adam Lindsay Gordon wrote The Sick Stockrider in 1870, a verse that tells the story of a stockriders life as he nears death. This poem is more than a short story; it creates an image of how a stockman once lived, and a blueprint of Australian life in the bush.  As Banjo Paterson’s verse The Man from Snowy River portrays the romance of the stockrider with the chase of the brumby, it creates an image of the Australian male that is idolised as being what bush life could be like. Many readers see the characters in novels and poems as reflections of real life. This use of characterisation is the basis of image creation and the construction of themes such as; antiauthoritarianism, mateship and larrikinism, all themes of Australianness.

The characters found in early poems provided an insight into the lifestyle of convicts, gold miners, bushrangers and early settlers. Writers constructed images of lawlessness and antiauthoritarianism through masculine characterisation. Writers were generally men and they wrote about male convicts, male gold miners, and male bushrangers. This gender bias was common, as the women did not have equal standing or representation in society or literature. As men were the focus of the content of these verses and poems, the traits of the themes were typically masculine. In poems such as ‘The Female Transport’, ‘The Girl with the Black Velvet Band’, ‘The Old Bullock Dray’, ‘Gold Field Girls’ and ‘The Twentieth Century Girl’ the masculine story is dominant by means of sexist dialogue or the subservient role expected of the women. Women were not the focus of the work but were rather ancillary to a masculine viewpoint.

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The earlier Australian poems focused on the male convict who had little respect for gaolers and soldiers, as Frank the Poet reflects in his satire ‘A Convicts Tour of Hell’ This attitude towards authority continued into the gold fields with poets writing about the disagreements with the law and the attempts to circumnavigate them. ‘Licence Hunting’ provides an example of the gold fields and the unity created between men as they battled against the system. ‘Captain Bumbles Letter’, a sarcastic verse, portrays the distain for soldiers and lawmakers, demonstrating the lack of respect for the authorities. Bushrangers became yet another element ...

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