Peter Carey's Ned Kelly 1855-1880

CHAPTER FIVE AN OUTLAW IN FICTIONAL BIOGRAPHY: PETER CAREY’S NED KELLY 1855-1880 Strength of voice and clarity of context Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang is an outspoken book. The strength of its feeling comes from the way in which Carey draws the reader into the world of a Catholic Irish family in a Protestant, rural area of Victorian Australia by means of a totally credible rendering of the voice of Ned Kelly (1855-1880). Full account is given of the historical and cultural background of the ‘Kelly Rebellion’. Carey tells the story of an individual; but, as the title indicates, the focus is not just on one man. The first-person narrative tells how the Kelly Gang came into being as a social phenomenon, how the men were pushed so far that they outlawed themselves and came together behind Kelly’s name, with a degree of support from their families and the wider community, and then depicts their own horror-laden realization that there was probably no way back into society after that decision. The importance of the value of truth in the narrative is indicated by the inclusion of ‘true’ in the title. Carey convinces because he portrays Kelly in a series of classic tropes (that of Oedipus, the peon farmer who will be oppressed no longer, the virgin lover, and the rebel leader).1 These tropes are timeless and are present in the myths of most cultures in one form or another: they are constantly referred to in films and in popular literature. Carey touches upon this superstructure of the imagination in 1 This list of personae is adapted from the comments on the back cover of the book: ‘Carey gives us Ned Kelly as orphan, as Oedipus, as horse thief, farmer, bushranger, reformer, bank-robber, police-killer and, finally, as his country’s beloved Robin Hood.’ Carey concentrates and then defuses the Oedipal struggle by inventing the character of Mary Hearn, Kelly’s wife, as an alternative centre of influence to Ellen Kelly. 152 Outsider Biographies his creation of Kelly’s perceiving consciousness in action and this is one reason why the book was received with such acclaim.2 Kelly’s coming to writing In this analysis the focus will be on a sub-discourse more frequently than the tropes just mentioned because of its presence throughout the text, but one that has only been mentioned briefly and occasionally in the critical reception of the book.3 It is the discourse of literariness, and an account of how Kelly became an author and reader. This book certainly tells the story of the rise and demise of the Kelly Gang; but it also puts special emphasis on the discovery by the protagonist’s perceiving consciousness of reading and writing. This aspect is so important that the greater part of the book can be seen in terms of the protagonist’s evolution towards being a writer.4 These references to reading and writing are self-reflexive in the sense that they highlight aspects of the first-person narrative itself. They are frequent, occurring for the first time when Ned Kelly, the first-person narrator, refers to himself as ‘the boy’.5 By making this reference he turns himself into a character in a story told by himself. We shall analyse the knowing references to his own future, to things that the Kelly who is speaking or writing could not have known at the time, which invoke and use a dramatic irony dependent on a finished version of his narrative.6 Then there are the occasions on which Kelly 2 Commonwealth Writers Prize 2001 and Booker Prize 2001. 3 Alfred Knopf (Random House), Carey’s US publisher, provides an online guide for reading groups studying Carey’s book. The twelfth (of fourteen) questions for discussion is: ‘What aspects of Kelly’s writing, as Carey represents it, seem most distinctive? How is his writing regarded by others in the novel?’ Available at www.randomhouse.com (accessed 30 March 2010). 4 It should be mentioned that Ned Kelly (1854-80) did indeed leave a few remarkable texts. The only one which is authenticated as being written in his own hand is the 1870 letter to Sergeant James Babington (Victoria Public Record Office: VPRS 937 Unit 272). However, the most famous text by far is the ‘Jerilderie Letter’ (1879), an account and defence of his actions of nine years up to its publication date. The letter was dictated to Joe Byrne (1856-80), one of the Kelly Gang; it is held in the Australian Manuscripts Collection of the State Library of Victoria (MS 13361) and can be found online at http://www.nedkellysworld.com.au/history/letter.html (accessed April 2013). 5 Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang, 77. 6 Ibid., 89. .

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