University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2012 Hitchhiking: the travelling female body Vivienne Plumb University of Wollongong Recommended Citation Plumb, Vivienne, Hitchhiking: the travelling female body, Doctorate of Creative Arts thesis, School of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, 2012. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/3913 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Hitchhiking: the travelling female body A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree Doctorate of Creative Arts from UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG by Vivienne Plumb M.A. B.A. (Victoria University, N.Z.) School of Creative Arts, Faculty of Law, Humanities & the Arts. 2012 i CERTIFICATION I, Vivienne Plumb, declare that this thesis, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Creative Arts, in the Faculty of Creative Arts, School of Journalism and Creative Writing, University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. The document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. Vivienne Plumb November 30th, 2012. ii Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the support of my friends and family throughout the period of time that I have worked on my thesis; and to acknowledge Professor Robyn Longhurst and her work on space and place, and I would also like to express sincerest thanks to my academic supervisor, Dr Shady Cosgrove, Sub Dean in the Creative Arts Faculty. Finally, I would like to thank the staff of the Faculty of Creative Arts, in particular Olena Cullen, Teaching and Learning Manager, Creative Arts Faculty, who has always had time to help with any problems. Publication acknowledgments: Why My Mother Never Hitchhiked: published in Landfall 224: Home + Building (N.Z.) Mortdale: published in Ika : Volume 1, Manukau Institute of Technology (N.Z.) The Acquisition: published in Southerly Volume 56, issue 3 (Australia) iii ABSTRACT: Hitchhiking: the travelling female body. Hitchhiking: the travelling female body is comprised of two parts: a collection of short fiction, The Glove Box and Other Stories, and an accompanying exegesis. The Glove Box and Other Stories: is a collection of fifteen stories of various lengths. These fictions are thematically connected via concepts of women and hitchhiking which exist in varied forms throughout the stories. Internal, subtle links of character and relationship have been interwoven into the narratives to create an overall world where the fictions are positioned. The exegesis: examines the role of women hitchhiking within a literary context. The literature review is concerned with representations of women hitchhikers from biblical representations to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (2000). The methodology explores post-structuralist studies of the female body, and of feminist geography (female bodies in places and spaces), specifically focusing on the hitchhiking (female) body. Of particular interest is the work of Elizabeth Grosz (Volatile Bodies, and Time Travels) and Robyn Longhurst (Space, Place, and Sex, and Bodies - Exploring fluid boundaries). Inside this theoretical framework prominent themes emerge, especially the construction of the female body as a site of risk in public (exterior) spaces; the examination of a vehicle or other transport as an enclosed (interior) space with reference to similar enclosures of intimacy and alterity; and the freedom of the female body to peripatetically traverse the (Australian) landscape. This methodology is applied to three literary case studies. The first is Kylie Tennant’s Australian novel, The Battlers (1941). This narrative focuses on hitchhiking in a historical context (the unemployed during the 1930s Depression). The second case study is Robyn Davidson’s Tracks (1980). This contains a predominant theme that relates to the female body traversing the cartographical (Australian) landscape ‘on the road’ and ‘hitched’ to camel transport. The third and final case study is that of my own creative fiction, The Glove Box and Other Stories. As mentioned above, it explores themes of women hitchhiking that relate specifically to the prominent points used in the theoretical framework. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Hitchhiking: the travelling female body The Glove Box and other stories ………….1 The Glove Box…………………………….2 Why My Mother Never Hitchhiked……….22 Sixty Photos……………………………….34 Efharisto…………………………………...47 Spooky Gurl……………………………….61 Mortdale…………………………………...67 The Blouse………………………………...75 Sampler……………………………………93 A High White Ceiling…………………….103 Out West………………………………….117 Onkaparinga……………………………...141 The Acquisition…………………………..152 Floorplan…………………………………171 Forthcoming……………………………...201 Dangerous and Deep Undertow………….239 Exegesis………………………………….249 Introduction………………………………250 Contextualisation…………………………259 Methodology………………………..........275 Case Study: The Battlers, Kylie Tennant...289 Case Study: Tracks, Robyn Davidson…...300 Case Study: ‘The Glove Box and Other Stories’, Vivienne Plumb…312 v Conclusion……………………………….333 Works Cited……………………………...339 General Bibliography…………………….344 The Glove Box and Other Stories a collection of fifteen pieces of fiction 2 The Glove Box If I’m walking and see a button I will pick it up. They seem to me to be friendly, useful things. Buttons aren’t cheap anymore. I don’t mind where it’s come from, I’ll pick it up. I don’t know if a man would ever stoop to pick up a lost button. I’ve seen men pick up nails and screws, but not buttons. Yesterday I saw a large green one lying on the pavement outside a theatre in the city. The matinee ballet crowd was spilling out onto the street and because of that I have to admit I was too embarrassed to retrieve the green button. Sometimes you discover them in changing rooms. Once I found a large black coat button in the public library. You find them everywhere. Mother of pearl, plastic, wood, metal, white, beige, purple. They used to be made out of bone and glass. They don’t do that any more, and if they do, they are expensive. My sister took a photo of me with my outstretched palm, presenting some of the buttons I have found. In that photo I am looking down towards my hand and the buttons in my hand. My sister thought it an immense joke to pose this picture, on the other hand she was deadly serious. She was taking a lot of photos at that stage, towards the beginning of the end. She had a small Olympus that her husband, Larry, had given her. My theory is, she was making a kind of archive for herself. In return I took a snapshot of her in the backyard of the semi-detached I lived in at that time. That was in Surrey Crescent. Her head is tilted back a little. She appears thoughtful, sombre. 3 My father was born in Casino, N.S.W. After leaving that regional town in his late teens he severed all ties with his birthplace. He came from a large family. His brother, the uncle I liked the most, was the one who showed up now and then needing a bed. He was known as Uncle Whitey. I don’t know what that was an abbreviation of. My sister claimed it was abbreviated from the name ‘Whitethorn’. When we were children we didn’t know that Whitey spent a lot of his time on the road, moving around the country areas, hitching lifts and working seasonal jobs, and often ending up in the city during winter, which is when he would come and stay with us for a few weeks. My mother insisted he was never to stay more than that. Whenever he turned up on our doorstep he would make sure he had presents for everyone. For my mother he always brought two dozen country eggs. She would complain about this present after he left, saying it wasn’t a personal gift but an impersonal one. My sister, Caro, and I roared with laughter, we didn’t understand what she meant, although we loved the sound of the word impersonal. We just loved the way our mother talked. In a family photograph of us at the dinner table, Whitey’s back and left part of his body have just been caught. My mother, standing to one side of him, is busy serving up the roast vegetables. My aunt, at the opposite end of the table is wearing a blue muumuu-type frock and I am seated next to her, my head bowed over the plate, spoon in hand. I would be about six years old in the photo. Whitey’s mouth is half open. He was always a great talker. Caro, my only sibling, has left the table. Her chair is vacant, her plate is empty and a half-drunk glass of milk stands next to her clean plate. My father is at the other end of the table carving the meat. I don’t know who took this photograph. Whitey is looking quite suave, he certainly could be charming. He 4 could talk his way out of a paper bag, even talk his way around my mother. After he left our house he would stay with the other aunts and uncles, working his way through his winter cycle. He never married, never had any children of his own. When I was older it eventually dawned on me that Whitey had been a bit of an alcoholic. This wasn’t discussed when were children. This was why my mother refused to allow him to stay for very long, she detested the way he drank. I don’t know where he was when he died. He died of cancer. He’d stopped coming to stay with us, maybe he had found a partner. The family preferred not to talk about him, he was viewed as a total failure.