Women Reading 1936: A creative writer’s reading of Return to Coolami, Jungfrau, and The Australian Women’s Weekly by Helen Catherine Gildfind Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy April, 2012 School of Culture and Communication (Creative Writing) The University of Melbourne Produced on archival quality paper ii iii Abstract: This thesis focuses on three texts that were published in 1936: Dymphna Cusack’s novel Jungfrau, Eleanor Dark’s novel Return to Coolami, and that year’s fifty-two issues of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Cusack’s and Dark’s novels form part of today’s Australian feminist literary canon and are typically understood with the benefit of historical hindsight, especially in regards to their authors’ biographies. Furthermore, academics often turn back to these novels and writers in order to elaborate their own political and cultural agendas and theories. In this thesis, I argue that the original readers of these novels would never have read them in such ways and that such analyses, whilst fascinating and valuable, seldom discuss the problem of their own anachronism. In order to benefit my own and others’ reading and fiction writing practices, I wish to imagine what these novels meant to the audience for whom they were originally crafted. Influenced by New Historicism’s ‘anecdotal’ approach to history – where canonical literary texts are ‘defamiliarised’ through their juxtaposition against various contemporaneous, non-canonical texts – I use The Australian Women’s Weekly to create an original, evidence-based ‘window’ of insight into Australian life and culture in 1936. Within this context I speculate upon the ‘imaginative universes’ of Australian women in order to gain new insight into Dark’s and Cusack’s novels’ original meanings. In the first part of this thesis I discuss my methodology and analyse the novels’ original reception. In the second part of this thesis, I contemplate reading experiences from the past by reconstructing the ‘World of the Weekly in 1936’. Whilst I cannot claim to avoid anachronistic and subjective readings in this thesis, I have assiduously attempted to limit both by allowing the themes in the Weekly to lead my interpretations, by anchoring all of my interpretations in primary sources, and by exploring how my writerly movement between different rhetorical modes can expose and problematise the borders between the time-bound reader and the time-travelling text. iv v Declaration This is to certify that: (i) The thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD except where otherwise indicated, (ii) Due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, (iii) The thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. Signed: ……………………………… Date: ………………………………… vi vii Acknowledgments I’d like to thank Associate Professor Angela O’Brien for helping me establish the foundations of this research. I’d like to thank Dr Tony Birch and Associate Professor Kevin Brophy who offered feedback on this research and oversaw its progress. Thanks also to Dr Jessica Rose for her continual assistance with the administrative side of this project. And thanks to Grace Yee, fellow student and writer, for our many coffees together. This research could not have been enacted without the State Library of Victoria, who allowed me to spend one year reading the original, hardcopy Melbourne edition of The Australian Women’s Weekly from 1936: access to this precious material truly allowed me to enter the Weekly’s world. I’d also like to thank the State Library of N.S.W. and the National Library of Australia for archival access to Dark’s and Cusack’s papers. Thanks especially to Dr Jennifer Kloester for boxing me in the ears and kicking me over the finish line. Her generous support, feedback, encouragement and friendship has meant everything to me. Thanks to my family, for always being there, and thanks particularly to my fiercely intelligent and independent-thinking grandmother, Helen Josephene Speirits, who has always been ‘for the women’, and whose life has made mine – with all of its choices and opportunities – possible. Thanks most, and always, to Igor. A true friend and partner. viii ix Contents List of Abbreviations xiii List of Illustrations xv Introduction: Looking for ‘the present back then’ 1 Part One: Original Public Reception 27 Chapter One: Original Reception of Return to Coolami 29 Chapter Two: Original Reception of Jungfrau 55 Part Two: Reading in the World of the Weekly 79 Chapter Three: “What Women Are Doing” in 1936 83 Chapter Four: Modern Women are Amazons ? 109 Chapter Five: Modern Women are Career Women? 169 Chapter Six: Marriage is the ultimate career? 225 Chapter Seven: “For Young Wives and Mothers” 263 Conclusion 309 Appendix One: The story of Coolami’s publication 319 Appendix Two: Thematic Grouping of the Weekly’s Covers 331 x xi Appendix Three: The Weekly’s fiction 347 Bibliography 355 Extended Appendices (on CD) Appendix Four: The Berlin Olympics Appendix Five: Spanish Amazons Appendix Six: Russia Appendix Seven: ‘Wife versus Secretary’ Appendix Eight: Divorce Appendix Nine: Child Stars and Mothers of Excess Appendix Ten: The Dionne Quins xii xiii List of Abbreviations The following abbreviations have been used in references: NLA – National Library of Australia (Canberra) UP – University Press Weekly – The Australian Women’s Weekly Unless otherwise specified, I am referring to the Melbourne edition as it was the hardcopies of these that I studied. There are some differences between each State’s edition. The Sydney edition is the one which is microfilmed. The free novels have never been microfilmed and can be accessed in hardcopy at the State Library of Victoria. ‘STS’ – ‘So They Say’ (readers’ letters) ‘IJ’ – Tilly’s ‘Intimate Jottings’ ‘WWD’ – ‘What Women are Doing’ ‘HHN’ – John Davies, Barbara Bourchier, and Judy Bailey’s ‘Here’s Hot News from All the Studios’ ‘LA’ – Judy Bailey’s ‘London on the Air’ ‘CA!’ – John Davies’ ‘Calling Australia!’ ‘POV’ – Leslie Haylen’s ‘Points of View’ ‘LTIP’ – ‘Let’s Talk of Interesting People’ ‘MM’ – Rene’s ‘March of the Mode’ ‘FP’ – Jessie Tait’s ‘The Fashion Parade’ ‘MW’ – ‘The Movie World’ ‘NB’ – Leslie Haylen’s ‘New Books’ ‘HM’ – ‘Home Maker’ ‘FYWM’ – Mary Truby King’s ‘For Young Wives and Mothers’ ‘BB’ – Evelyn’s ‘The Body Beautiful’ ‘WPM’ – ‘What My Patients Ask Me’ by ‘A Doctor’ ‘SNL’ – ‘Some New Laughs’ J – D Cusack, Jungfrau, Penguin, Ringwood, 1989 (1936) C – E Dark, Return to Coolami, Collins (‘A Collins White Circle Pocket Novel’), London, c.1940s (1936) Note: For short stories and serials, I have only given the page number of the first page where the story appears: most short stories continue on throughout each issue; most serials continue on for 5 or 6 weeks. I have retained the Weekly’s style of punctuation (e.g. Mr. and Mrs. Smith) in quotations only. xiv xv List of Illustrations Figure 1: Collins’ cover for Return to Coolami 37 Figure 2: Macmillan’s cover for Return to Coolami 37 Figure 3: ‘Bee and Pat’ and ‘John Thackery and Pat’ 58 Figure 4: Unlabelled photo, Cusack Papers 59 Figure 5: The Bulletin’s cover for Jungfrau 60 Figure 6: Stewart Howard’s review of Jungfrau in the Weekly 64 Figure 7: ‘Enter --- 1936’ 81 Figure 8: ‘What Women are Doing’ 87 Figure 9: Sample of Page 2 ‘News’ 89 Figure 10: Sample of Page 3 ‘News’ 89 Figure 11: Short Stories 90 Figure 12: Serial 90 Figure 13: Free weekly novels 90 Figure 14: Jessie Tait’s and Petrov’s ‘The Fashion Parade’ 91 Figure 15: Rene’s ‘March of the Mode’ 91 Figure 16: The Weekly’s ‘Fashion Service’ 91 Figure 17: ‘Blondie’ 92 Figure 18: Photospreads 93 Figure 19: ‘So They Say’ 94 Figure 20: Tilly’s ‘Intimate Jottings’ 94 Figure 21: W.E.P.’s ‘In and Out of Society’ 95 Figure 22: ‘Miss 1936’ 95 Figure 23: ‘The Movie World’ 96 Figure 24: ‘Movie World’ feature articles 96 Figure 25: ‘Home Maker’ 97 Figure 26: ‘Best Recipe’ competition 97 Figure 27: Evelyn’s ‘Body Beautiful’ 97 Figure 28: Palmolive ad 99 Figure 29: Clements ad 100 Figure 30: Bidomak ad 100 Figure 31: Bile Beans ad 101 Figure 32: Kruschen Salts ad 101 Figure 33: Bonkora ad 101 Figure 34: Protex ad 102 Figure 35: A.M.P. ad 102 Figure 36: Aspro ad 102 Figure 37: Sydney Physical Institute ad 102 Figure 38: ‘Goddess of Sunshine and Surf’ 112 Figure 39: ‘Sports Girl’ 114 Figure 40: ‘Lure of Golf’ 114 Figure 41: ‘Our Attractive Outdoor Girls’ 116 Figure 42: Rosina Lawrence in ‘The Body Beautiful’ 117 Figure 43: Real Australian sportswomen 117 Figure 44: Enid Wilson, champion golfer 118 xvi Figure 45: Alfred J Briton ad 123 Figure 46: Coloseptic ad 128 Figure 47: All-Bran ad 128 Figure 48: ‘Speed Nymph’ 130 Figure 49: ‘Special Birthday Number’ 130 Figure 50: ‘Beware of These Men in Cars’ 131 Figure 51: Ford V8 ad 134 Figure 52: Vauxhall ad 134 Figure 53: ‘Some New Laughs’ 134 Figure 54: ‘Roper River Paradise’ 140 Figure 55: ‘Woman’s Grim Trek Outback’ 143 Figure 56: ‘Queen of the Cocos’ 149 Figure 57: Aloha’s World Tour 149 Figure 58: J Alcott’s ‘The Liner – She’s a Lady’ 154 Figure 59: ‘What is it About a Ship....?’ 154 Figure 60: ‘One Fine Day aboard a Cruiser’ 155 Figure 61: Weekly’s Travel Bureau ad 155 Figure 62: Edward marks new era 157 Figure 63: Flying women make Page 3 ‘News’ 157 Figure 64: Cream of Yeast ad 159 Figure 65: More flying women make Page 3 ‘News’ 161 Figure 66: Nancy Bird retains femininity 161 Figure 67: ‘Jean Batten’ 162 Figure 68: ‘This is Jean Batten’ 165 Figure 69: A ‘gracious sky lady’ 165