Henry Lawson and His Image of Australia

Shivani Verma Assistant Professor Lovely Professional University, Punjab

Henry Lawson, often known as Australia’s ‘greatest writer’, is one of the best known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period in Australia. He played a significant role in developing

Australian form of short story. His poetry reflects Lawson’s relationship with nineteenth century Australian attitude that influenced cultural history of Australia. Lawson through his works, attempted to depict accurate representation of rural Australian experience. This revealed his serious interest in the rural life of bush workers and in rural culture of Australia. One when perceives Lawson as a national celebrity, as he himself claimed to be the ‘voice of Australia’, one needs to view his reputation not only in a private, but also as public memories. The text, City Bushman by Christopher Lee, which I’ve referred to, for this paper, traces engagements between this public and private, that is, between local and the national without surrendering the particularities of the one to the universal dream of the other. It is interesting to see how Lee relates Lawson’s image of rural landscape and bushman to memories of his mother’s narrated stories he heard in his childhood. The rural characters and their description narrated by his mother as memories of her childhood makes him relate to the images of rural Australia depicted by Lawson in his works. Not only these images of public and private coincided, but they also helped in bridging the gap between rural and urban class, by making urban people aware of the rural side. Also, Lawson’s constant emphasis on the superiority of the rural cultural values and traditions was somewhat similar to Lee’s own mother thoughts, as he says , “my mother often telling stories which suggested that her children’s urban experiences could not compare for richness with those of her own rural childhood. There were stories about freedom in a natural environment and the convivial friendships of a rural society.” There were certain high positive values associated with rural people. One of them is their sense of community and belonging, which one can find in Lawson’s works as idea of ‘mateship’. This quality was considered valuable because country people, perhaps were more used to isolation. This is probably the reason why they valued people and a sense of community. Drover’s wife by

Lawson depicts this isolation and hardships one had to face in isolation. That’s the reason why rural people

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© 2019 JETIR January 2019, Volume 6, Issue 1 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) understood importance of people around them. The description of the memories of his grandfather as gives as, “Grand-dad’s large head, short-cropped hair” is identical to the images of countrymen as Lawson depicts.

Lee gives insight of his grandfather’s life in country as calls it to be very similar to that of the lifestyle of rural folk, depicted by Lawson in his works. He says, “he used to sit on the verandah in the outskirts of

Ipswich and look across the road and beyond the local tip in much the same way as Lawson’s bush characters looked towards a distant horizon of blue hills.”

Lee could relate, not only to his own grandfather’s characteristics to those of Lawson depiction, but also he felt that the depiction of bush women by Lawson in his stories was very similar to his memories of his grandmother. Lawson perceived rural women as ‘strong’ and ‘dedicated’ ones, who could very well cope up in harsh landscapes and situations. He describes her grandmother as ‘small but strong and independent person’ which is identical to the characteristics of bush women in short stories like Drover’s Wife. In the introduction of the book City Bushman, Christopher Lee also refers to an incident of the funeral of his grandfather’s death. Here he describes an old bushman present in the funeral as an archetypal, rural tall bushman with a ‘bushman’s hat’ in his ‘rough hands’ and ‘a rugged weather-beaten face’, same as one can find in Lawson’s poetries and short stories. He also emphasizes upon the emotions one mate has for his other mate. These emotions are intense and there is a specific way in which rural men expressed their emotions boldly, without hiding it under certain pretensions, as he says , “He was quietly but not ashamedly weeping in the back pew.” These emotions can be interpreted as a revelation of a strong bond that bushmen shared.

This public display of grief, Lee understood as “an affirmation of my grandmother by the rural culture with which I associated both her and my grandfather.” There is certain emotional consolation the rural community offers to its one of the member in the times of grief. This quality is special in Lawson’s rural landscape and its people and this is where the major difference lies in rural and urban setting. This specific emotional bond usually lacks in urban cities, where people are busy in their machine like emotionless lives. They are so busy in lifestyle under the influence of industrialization and mechanic development that they have no emotional bonds and a sense of community to offer. Thus, Lee in his book, intimately associates Henry Lawson with the personal memories of his family.

Along with the changes that gradually took place in Australia, there appeared changes in people’s perception towards Lawson’s works too. As the political culture of Australia developed, Lawson’s reputation

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© 2019 JETIR January 2019, Volume 6, Issue 1 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) of being the voice of rural Australia began to be seen as a product of tensions between metropolitan and local cultures of Australia. After the gold rush, as Australia developed with prosperity, there began a rapid metropolitan expansion in Australia. As a result of this, there occurred a significant change in attitude to the rural imaginary. As the perception and attitude of people changed for bush culture, with the rise of bourgeois culture, Lawson’s works came under attack. The New Left, the neo-liberals, feminists and multiculturalists, post structuralists and postcolonialists were some of the critiques, as mentioned by Lee, of Lawson’s imaginary Australia. With the coming of new politics, people’s perceptions associated with traditional stories and tales changed. They began to realise the underlying racial and gender bias of the rural legends, associated specially with those of Henry Lawson. The use of identity politics by Australian government, in reference to indigenous communities and migrants, brought a kind of enthusiasm among people for the idea of globalisation. So the image of Australia, in particular rural Australia, which Lawson held in his mind and described in his work, now changed along the contemporary political culture of Australia. There emerged critiques of Lawson, for being associated to rural mythology that propagated putatively outdated, racist ideology. Rural mythology, that Henry Lawson claimed to represent as national cultural heritage, was rejected by urban people. It was rather seen as the cause of ‘social and economic crisis’ of rural Australia.

Christopher Lee, on the other hand asserts that a sophisticated use of ‘Lawson’s legacy’ has the power to critique the metropolitan ways and lifestyle, even better than a caricature.

As a working class colonial writer, Lawson not only wanted to earn a literary reputation, but also desired to mould the social and political will of his readers. At the end of the nineteenth century, political situation in Australia began to ferment in Australian colonies. This time is also associated with the early development of Lawson’s writings. So one can also connect the beginning of early literary career of Lawson with the beginning of politics in Australia. He began his career with the poem A Song of Republic in which he expressed his condemnation of society divided on the basis of class. As he writes:

‘Sons of the South, awake! arise!

Sons of the South, and do.

Banish from under your bonny skies

Those old-world errors and wrongs and lies

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That belongs to your sons and you.

Here, Lawson expresses his condemnation against the new emerging middle-class society. The attitude of

Lawson against middle class can also be compared to the attitude of W.B. Yeats towards emerging bourgeois class of Ireland. Both the writers held an unsatisfactory, negative attitude towards the new middle class, which was a product of industrialization in their countries. Both seemed this new class as a threat to the traditional, cultural values of their countries. However, at the end, both of them had to face the reality which was far from the idealistic rural image they held in their imagination.

Sydney Bulletin played a significant role in shaping the idea of nationality in Australians. It developed the idea of a common united nation. This bulletin stood against capitalism and class distinction, also propagated equalitarianism among Australians. However, it is very important to understand that the idea of a united nation, which the bulletin delivered was only of a White Australia, a place that had no place in it, for the coloured natives and people from other indigenous communities. Misogyny and racism is very well relevant in the following Bulletin editorial in the late 1180s:

“By the term Australian we mean not those who have been merely born in Australia. All white men who come to these shores-with a clean record-and who leave behind them the memory of the class-distinctions and the religious differences of the old world; all men who place the happiness, the prosperity, the advancement of their adopted country before the interests of Imperialism are Australian. In this regard all men who leave the tyrant-ridden lands of Europe for freedom of speech and right of personal liberty are

Australians before they set foot on the ship which brings them hither. Those who fly from an odious military conscription; those who leave their fatherland because they cannot swallow the worm-eaten lie of the divine right of kings to murder peasants, are Australian by instinct- Australians and Republican are synonymous.

No nigger, no Chinaman, no lascar, no kanaka, no purveyor of cheap coloured labour, is an Australian.”

The Bulletin was socialist and republic, but at the same time was, racist and misogynist, and propagated hatred for coloured people in Australia. It is important as well as ironic to see how a native person born in

Australia, a land which originally belonged to him, is not entitled of being called as an Australian. One can assert that the Bulletin, which called for the establishment of a united nation, was xenophobic at the same

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© 2019 JETIR January 2019, Volume 6, Issue 1 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) time. It asserted superiority of whites, and was based on the idea of oppression of already prevalent indigenous cultures. It, in a way, glorified the invasion by whites, into a land that originally belonged to black aboriginals. Not only the whites oppressed them, but also snatched away their rights over their own land. Association of Henry Lawson with such a Bulletin, as his first poem A Song of the Republic was published in the bulletin, brought criticism to his works, and at several times he got a reputation of being a propagator of racist rural mythology, through his texts.

Lawson believed, that a bond of sympathy between rural and urban section of a country is necessary for a true democracy to be established. The plea for this bond of sympathy can be seen in his poems, Cant and Dirt of Labour Literature, a Word in Season and The City and the Bush. It is important to see this change in Lawson’s attitude towards urban society. With the changing politics in Australian society,

Lawson’s obsession for superiority of rural Australia, now changed into a new understanding of a relation based upon respect and sympathy between rural and urban section. This understanding of a need for bond, can also be understood as a result of Lane’s idea of Unionism, upon Lawson. Lane’s novel the workingman’s Paradise invoked class consciousness of the rural and working class. Also, at the same time, it promoted socialism and unionism. As Lee says. “this class-based political project was to be the unifying and concentrating power of Lawson’s poetry and prose, for the following decade.” Lawson’s presented a critique of romantic view of rural Australia, which actually concealed the struggles rural people faced in their real life. He believed that depicting bush life through romantic perception would idealise rural lifestyle and hide the everyday struggles bush people face. The romantic framework through which writers represented rural workers and idealised their image by asserting their superiority due to their struggles in everyday life, in a way restricted them from any kind of political action. They raised them on a pedestal, which will make rural people to take pride in their lifestyle, rather than taking a political stand to make their lives better. Also, idealization of rural lifestyle, created a kind of separation of urban and rural workers, which further led to a regional opposition. This opposition posed a threat to socialist project to unite the working classes.

According to Lawson, for a true unionism to be achieved, it is necessary for writers to abandon popular romantic representations, so that the realistic struggles of rural section can be communicated to urban

Australians. Lawson’s short story, The Union buries its Dead represents a pointed rejection of union propaganda about the resilience of mateship and class solidarity. So, to work as a democratic and republic country, there was a need for familiarity between urban and rural. From this, it is evident that Lawson JETIRDX06012 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org 76

© 2019 JETIR January 2019, Volume 6, Issue 1 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) believed in realism and through his works, he attempted to showcase the reality. He believed in experience rather than imagination. His literature was politically motivated, and insisted upon representation of social life realistically. As a writer, he prompted to serve as a guide to community attitudes, and through his work he wanted to bring about a social reform. His verses and proses include some of his most famous stories like

The Bush Undertaker, The Drover’s Wife and The Union Buries its Dead. All of these are examples of his bush writings and deal with the harshness of rural life style and the ways in which rural people survive through them. Throughout these stories, there is a constant call for a nurturing sympathy between the city and the bush that was to prove powerful in the development of an imagined community crucial to nation building. As an emerging writer, Lawson was praised for his realistic depictions of rural subjects. A.G.

Stephens, the literary editor of Bulletin sensed the significance of Lawson’s small book of verses and proses.

He encouraged its attempt to establish the young writer with a particular type of reputation. Lawson’s depictions were approved because he was believed to have an authentic experience of the subject he dealt with. One of the reviewer said about Lawson:

“No poet has cared to ‘hold he mirror up to nature’ in the drought-stricken regions of Australia, and to give the reflections as faithfully as Lawson has done. We should be thankful that this bold self-reliance, his honesty, and contempt for conventionality, enabled him to break away from the traditions which bound the poet to consider the bush as a land of romance, and to give us in so attractive a form what is really a page of our history.”

A.G. Stephens divided the work of Lawson into two categories- optimistic, which he approved of, and pessimistic, of which he did not approve. The optimistic rural poems were objective, masculine and

Australian , while the pessimistic political poems were subjective, feminine and personal. Here, it is important as well as ironic to see the underlying patriarchy inside Austrialian society, where Australianness was exclusively associated with masculinity, and ideas such as ‘mateship’ was limited only to males, depicting male bond with each other. For the so called pessimistic poems Lawson created, A.G. Stephens blamed Lawson’s lack of culture and education. It is necessary to understand Lawson’s literary and

Australian reputation as a product of the market for colonial literary production as well as his social and familial predicaments. There were a lot of questions raised on Lawson’s artistic reputation towards which he strived and achieved. As a poorly educated working-class colonial writer, he lacked the degree he required

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© 2019 JETIR January 2019, Volume 6, Issue 1 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) for cultural approval. By many critics, Australia was perceived as a young, happy country and Lawson was criticised for portraying it ‘through the distorting glass of his own moody mind.’ His viewpoint was called as belated. The new Australian poetry thrived on hope, rather than pain. The new literature was said to be living in future, rather than cherishing the nostalgia of past. The editor of magazine Australia, Fred Davidson, even went to say that Lawson was not the great writer that some claim him to have been. His outlook on life was too narrow. He saw- not the things that really matter, but the mean and petty things, and he used his talent to give these mean and petty things a mischievous prominence. According to him, Australia seen through

Lawson’s eyes, as described in his writings, would be a very good place from which to keep away. Apart from all this criticism and lacks, it would not be wrong to say that Lawson has emerged as an authentic

Australian writer and this reputation of him was largely based upon his popularity, rather than concern of high culture. This fact was well relevant in his funeral, as lee explains, “the public political ruckus that surrounded the handling of his funeral, and the associated memorial movement, ensured that his fame waxed in interesting ways in the years between the wars.” Melleuish calls Henry Lawson as the ‘voice of the bush’ and ‘bush is the heart of Australia.’ So, the close association of popularity with Australianness can’t be denied, also it would not be wrong to say that Lawson was, in a way, successful in establishing his own image of an archetypal, mythologised Australian.

References

 City Bushman, Henry Lawson and the Australian Imagination , Christopher Lee

 Wilkies, The Eighteen Nineties, Australian Literary Criticism

 Melleuish, Cultural Liberalism in Australia

 Christopher Lee, Sinister Signs of Professionalism

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