East Tennessee State University Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University Electronic Theses and Dissertations Student Works 5-2010 Black and White on Black: Whiteness and Masculinity in the Works of Three Australian Writers - Thomas Keneally, Colin Thiele, and Patrick White. Matthew sI rael Byrge East Tennessee State University Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.etsu.edu/etd Part of the Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, and the Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons Recommended Citation Byrge, Matthew Israel, "Black and White on Black: Whiteness and Masculinity in the Works of Three Australian Writers - Thomas Keneally, Colin Thiele, and Patrick White." (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1717. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1717 This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Works at Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. 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Black and White on Black: Whiteness and Masculinity in the Works of Three Australian Writers—Thomas Keneally, Colin Thiele, and Patrick White ________________________ A thesis presented to the faculty of the Department of English East Tennessee State University In partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Masters of Arts in English ________________________ by Matthew Israel Byrge May 2010 ________________________ Dr. Donald Ray Johnson, Director Dr. Phyllis Ann Thompson Dr. Karen Ruth Kornweibel Dr. Katherine Weiss Keywords: Aborigine(s), Australia, whiteness, masculinity, race studies, post-colonialism ABSTRACT Black and White on Black: Whiteness and Masculinity in the Works of Three Australian Writers— Thomas Keneally, Colin Thiele, and Patrick White by Matthew Israel Byrge White depictions of Aborigines in literature have generally been culturally biased. In this study I explore four depictions of Indigenous Australians by white Australian writers. Thomas Keneally’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972) depicts a half-caste Aborigine’s attempt to enter white society in a racially-antipathetic world that precipitates his ruin. Children’s author Colin Thiele develops friendships between white and Aboriginal children in frightening and dangerous landscapes in both Storm Boy (1963) and Fire in the Stone (1973). Nobel laureate Patrick White sets A Fringe of Leaves (1976) in a world in which Ellen Roxburgh’s quest for freedom comes only through her captivity by the Aborigines. I use whiteness and masculinity studies as theoretical frameworks in my analysis of these depictions. As invisibility and ordinariness are endemic to white and masculine actions, interrogating these ideological constructions aids in facilitating a better awareness of the racialized stereotypes that exist in Indigenous representations. 2 CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………... 2 DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………… 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………… 6 QUOTATIONS……………………………………………………………………………... 10 Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….. 11 2. DUALITY AND PLACE IN THOMAS KENEALLY’S THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH ……………………………………………………… 41 3. LIVING AMONG ‘SAVAGES’: CONFRONTING RACIAL STEREOTYPES IN CAPTIVITY—PATRICK WHITE’S A FRINGE OF LEAVES …………. 88 4. ‘BITS OF COLOUR’: RACE RELATIONS IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE— COLIN THIELE’S FIRE IN THE STONE AND STORM BOY ……………... 131 5. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………... 175 WORKS CITED……………………………………………………………………………… 187 NOTES……………………………………………………………………………………….. 199 VITA...………………………………………………………………………………………... 204 3 ©Copyright 2010 Matthew Israel Byrge All Rights Reserved 4 DEDICATION For the Aborigine and Torres-Strait Islander peoples of Australia who inspired this study; and to my greatest mentor, Dr. Phyllis Ann Thompson, who has been a confidante and my most ardent supporter during my academic career. 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people I want to recognize for their help on my proJect. First and foremost, I want to extend a special thanks to my thesis director, Dr. Donald Ray Johnson, whose faith in me and agreeing to help me with my scholarship was a tremendous honor. Dr. Johnson is one of the most brilliant people I have been fortunate enough to know in my university career. He is also a painstaking editor. From my first experiences with Dr. Johnson as an undergraduate, I have come to understand and appreciate his New Critical approach to poetry. I have often said that Dr. Johnson is a poetry guru, as in my estimation there is absolutely no one as knowledgeable of poems and the function of words. I hope to use some of what I have been taught by Dr. Johnson in my own classes in the future. I further acknowledge my thesis committee: Dr. Phyllis Ann Thompson, Dr. Karen Ruth Kornweibel, and Dr. Katharine Weiss. All of my committee members have spent many days reading my work, as long as it was, and provided excellent feedback. I credit their guidance and faith in me to be the main reason I kept trudging along and did not stop asking questions or trying to improve in my writing. I feel that in my selection of a thesis committee, I chose some of the most gifted professors at ETSU. Dr. Thompson is a children’s literature specialist and eighteenth century scholar who has spent a tremendous amount of time answering my questions and advising me on my articulation of ideas and approaches in writing. Her advice on the Colin Thiele chapter was especially significant. Dr. Kornweibel has an immense knowledge of race studies and was important in the formation of my introduction as well as the theories I used in this study. She always allowed me to discuss my ideas with her in order to better articulate the weighty issues I was exploring. Dr. Weiss is an accomplished modern scholar with an excellent background in postcolonial studies as well as a 6 wonderful editor. She was an amazing professor in all of her classes that I was fortunate enough to be enrolled in as an undergraduate and graduate student. My thesis would have never been successful without the kindness of my mentors in Australia. I want to especially acknowledge Dr. Anne Brewster, Senior Lecturer in the School for English, Media, and Performing Arts at New South Wales University in Sydney, Australia. My initial plans for this proJect would have had me undertake two dissertations’ worth of material, but Dr. Brewster helped me to decide what was most beneficial, encouraged me in theoretical frameworks, and gave me a list of critics to examine. She helped me to further narrow the scope and focus of my proJect. Dr. Brewster met with me at her office in the Webster Building at the University of New South Wales, taking time out of her busy schedule and introduced me to some of the graduate students she supervises as well as her colleague, Dr. Elizabeth McMahon, a Patrick White scholar and the Immediate Past President of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. Dr. Brewster also hosted me in Wollongong as I attended the ASAL conference with her, which has been one of the highlights of my career in academia. Dr. Brewster’s own work with Aboriginal life-narratives and whiteness studies are extremely valuable to my own research and the field at large. A brilliant scholar, Dr. Brewster’s work receives world-wide acclaim and recognition. A special thanks, as well, to the participants and organizers of the ASAL conference at the University of Wollongong, especially, Dr. Elizabeth McMahon, who graciously allowed a wide-eyed American graduate student to sit in on their conference and engage in conversation with some of his biggest heroes in the field of Australian literature. Many of these critics’ work, including John Beston, Dr. Elizabeth Webby, Dr. Anne Brewster, and Dr. Graham Huggan, appear in this study. I would further like to recognize and give a special thanks to Dr. Robert Van Krieken and Dr. Virginia Watson who 7 gave their permissions for me to cite their article, “From Miscegenation to Assimilation: Rationalities of Child Removal in Australian Colonial Administration.” There are a few others at my university who provided valuable encouragement and help in making my proJect so successful. I want to acknowledge the East Tennessee State University English Department and chair Dr. Judith Slagle for allowing my intense intellectual passion for literary studies to flourish in my time at ETSU. I want to mention Dr. Jill Leroy-Frazier, Associate Professor of Cross Inter-Disciplinary Studies, who read my work and took time to guide me in my use of the theoretical framework for my proJect. Her immense knowledge of whiteness studies was very helpful for a greater contextual understanding of the issues I wanted to draw attention to in this work. Thanks, as well, to Dr. Shawna Lichtenwalner for allowing me to use part of my thesis as coursework for her Methods of Research class. I want to acknowledge Dr. David Elliott, who also served as a reader for me and always supported me and shared my love for literature. I want to commend the Sherrod Library Interlibrary loan department at ETSU and Ms. Kelly Hensley, especially, for their unending assistance in helping me obtain a large portion of my research. I want to extend my love and admiration to my mother, Ms. Shirley Chestine Byrge, who endured my long absence in the summer 2008 while I was traveling abroad in Australia. My mother gave me tremendous encouragement to pursue my dreams and sent me much needed money at various times while I was away. And to my late father and beloved grandmother, the Reverend Donnie Hugh Byrge and Ms. Birdie Aline Byrge, who encouraged me always to pursue my greatest passions in life, one of which was to further my education. They instilled in me the belief that everyone is equal. Their moral lessons are largely responsible for my feeling of association and admiration to the many marginalized voices in the world such as the ones 8 represented in this study.