The Eliza Fraser Story and Constructions of Gender, Race and Class in Australian Culture
1991; Springer International Publishing; Volume: 17; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0311-4198
Autores Tópico(s)Australian History and Society
ResumoIntroductionEliza was the first white woman to encounter Aborigines on the present continent of Australia and to tell her tale. Her narratives, embellished by nineteenth century myths of white racial superiority, and of native savagery and cannibalism, fostered the British imperial presence and nourished the mission movement in nineteenth century Australia, that double onslaught on Christianity and civilisation (Evans and Walker 1), the effects of which are only beginning to be acknowledged by white Australians today. This paper will examine twentieth century reconstructions of the Eliza story, particularly those which have entered Australian cultural mythology through Patrick White's novel A Fringe of Leaves (1976), and the Fraser series of paintings, drawn by Sidney Nolan in three periods from 1947 to 1963. In another place I have examined nineteenth century sources of the story and the historical dynamics of Empire, colonialism, racism and sexism, alluding only briefly to their contemporary effects (Schaffer 1990). The initial version of this Paper was written as a result of a request, while on study leave in France, to relate A Fringe of Leaves to the central concerns of my study, women and the Bush (1988), which examines masculine-feminine representations within the discourses of Australian national identity (Schaffer 1989). The present version extends that analysis in the light of issues raised at the Woman/Australia/Theory conference.I. Patrick White's Novel: A Fringe of LeavesWhen I first read Patrick White's novel A Fringe of Leaves (1976) some years ago I was interested in the incredible story of hardship and survival of a woman in the Australian bush. This so-called historical novel tells the story of the 1836 shipwreck off what is now the Queensland coast, the captivity(1) and death of its crew members among the Aborigines and the story of the heroine's, Mrs. Ellen Roxburgh, sole survival and eventual escape with Jack Chance, an escaped convict with whom she shares a final bush idyll before returning to Sydney and, eventually, London society. The novel has received widespread critical acclaim by critics in Australia and abroad. Apart from, or in addition to, the so-called historical dimensions of the novel, it has been interpreted as one of many in the White canon which presents the solitary individual in search of an ultimate insight through his or her confrontation with the terrifying metaphysical geography of the mind, soul and spirit. In the case of A Fringe of Leaves, that individual is the simple, sensual Cornish girl, Ellen Gluyas, who marries Austin Roxburgh, a sickly but mannered gentleman, and is seemingly transformed into a genteel lady by his efforts and those of his mother, Her time with the Aborigines, which culminates in an act of cannibalism in which she participates and which she views as sacramental, leads her back, to use a Jungian template, to the dark, instinctual side of her nature.During that first reading I was concerned about and a little distrustful of the assumptions underlying White's telling of the tale - a tale which pits nature against civilisation, the instinctual self against the social self, the woman, her Aboriginal captors and her convict rescuer against colonial white society, the city against the bush. I was also keen to know more about the actual events on which the novel is based.A novel is not history and this novel, in particular, takes only its barest cues from history. Nonetheless, the canon of scholarship surrounding the novel and its treatment by many commentators draw attention to the parallels between the historical event and its fictional representation. Although Patrick White's novel makes no pretence of being an historical reconstruction, one of the things it shares in common with other representations of the originating event is that it, like the historical narratives, fictional accounts and artistic representations that preceded it as well as the film, novel and reconstructed histories which have come in its wake, all mythologise the woman and place her in service to a larger cause - be it Christianity, colonialism, patriarchy, Australian nationalism, modernist humanism or the prurient interests of a modern film-viewing public. …
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