• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Osaka Keidai Ronshu, Vol. 60 No. 5 January 2010 215 The origin of Australian romance: My Brilliant Career and “Joe Wilson’s Courtship”. Shuji Narita Although the first Australiannovel, Henry Savery’s Quintus Servinton, was published in 1830, the Australian literary scene was relatively neitherrobust nor attracted much critical at- tention. Since theearliest settlers were primarily British, it is often said that Australian litera- ture grew out of English literary traditions. However, the writers who later were recognised as representative Australians did not appear until 1890s. During this period, Australian writers often wrote so called “Bush stories”, struggling to establish Australian identity, so that conven- tional romantic fiction seemed to be going out of the main stream. Nevertheless, Henry Lawson and Miles Franklin are twoof the writers from the period who wrote romantic fiction. Both Lawson’s “Joe Wilson’s Courtship” and Franklin’s My Brilliant Career are among twoof theearliest works of romantic fiction in Australia, and there is evidence thatthey display both conventional and unique Australian aspects. In England, where romantic fictionhas always been a very popular branch of literature, 1890s is nearly theend of the Victorian period. The long Victoriannovels were gradually giving way to shorter fictions. Thomas Hardy wasstill actively writing romantic novels which were set in the countryside, but he stopped writing novels after the publication of Jude the Obscure in 1895. After this, romance grew less popular among many new genres, such as adventure, detective fiction, and science fiction. In terms of the development offiction, Australia is more comparable to America. America of course has a longer literary history than Australia, and America’s first literary upheaval was ap- proximately half a century before that of Australia, around 1850s. Richard Ruland and Malcolm Bradbury in their From Puritanism to Postmodernism termed this period “American Naissance”, rather than Renaissance, since this was not a rebirth butthe very beginning the whole thing. American writers from this period are said to have been largely influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and his transcendentalism. Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Walt Whitman all published works during this period. Hawthorne was probably the first American to attract much critical attentions overseas, and was known to be a romance writer. If 1850s were “American Naissance”, 1890sshould be called “Australian Naissance”. Many writers who later became to be considered “classic” are from this period, including Henry Lawson, “Banjo” Paterson, Miles Franklin and Joseph Furphy. John Barnes calls Lawson “the most Australian of Australian writers” (2), and today, he is probably regarded as the most rep- resentative Australian writer. Franklin, on the other hand, was perhaps the first female author to write romantic novels which later became classic. 216 Osaka Keidai Ronshu, Vol. 60 No. 5 Lawson’sshort stories are intended to be a “yarn”, in a casual oral style in which one ad- dresses more than one in the audience. He wrote about many scenes of the bush. Some of Lawson’sstories are descriptive “sketches”, rather thanhaving a well-constructed plot. Geoffrey Dutton inhis The Literature of Australia convincingly argues that Lawson’sseries of “Joe Wilson” stories are “as close as Lawson ever came to the scope of a novel”, and “are per- haps the height of his achievement” (167). “Joe Wilson’s Courtship”, together with “Telling Mrs. Baker”, “Brighten’s Sister-in-law” and “A Double Buggy at Lahey’s Creek”, form a literary mode called ‘discontinuous narrative’; they are loosely connected and the same characters ap- pearrepeatedly. They all have the theme of marriage, but not all are romance stories in the strict sense. Of all these, “Joe Wilson’s Courtship” most obviously deals with romantic love. Thisstory is “orally” told to youngsters as a reflection of Joe Wilson’s “happiest days”, whenhe looks back a time manyyears past. It is a heart-warming story and is overwhelmingly sentimental and emotional. Structurally speaking, asshort as it is, Lawson does not hurry to begin the main thread of narrative. Before Joe really begins the “story”, he spends a lot of time building a foun- dation which is not directly related to the main thread. The plot itself is very simple. Joe meets Mary where he obtains a temporary work. Jack, Joe’s mate, sets up things for them to fall in love. They find they likeeach other anddecide to get married before they have to go in separate directions. There are hardly any complications. The reader, or supposedly listeners, would know the tale would end happily, since Joe tells them in the beginning : “But, looking back, I didn’t do so badly after all. I never told you about the days I courted Mary” (252). So it is notthe plotthat makes “Joe Wilson’s Courtship” so pleasing to read. It is the characterisation of Joe and Mary that makes the story so emotional. Despite Joe’s evaluation that he “was reckoned wild”, he is one type of idealised Australian bushman. Thoughhe isshy, awkward, uncouth, he is good-natured and brave. He lacks the traditional masculine image of machismoor macho man, and thinks he “was born for a poet” (251), thoughhe wrote poetry only once, “I think that evening was the only time I ever wrote poetry down on a piece of paper” (264). Writing poetry symbolises Joe’s introversion and clumsiness with women. His shyness and clumsiness is apparent from his words and behaviour, and he goes out of his ways to stress these qualities to his listeners. When Mary offers Joe and Jack a cup of tea, flustered Joe accidentally kicks a cask-hoop and it hits hisshin and he stumbles. Hearing Mary’s kind words, his loses his composure: I was aboutthe reddest shy lanky fool of a Bushman ...when I took the tray my hands shook so that a lot of tea wasspilt into the saucers. I embarrassed her too, like the damned fool I was ....I got away from the window in as much of a hurry as if Jackhad cut his leg with a chisel and fainted, and I was running with whisky for him....feeling like a man feels whenhe’s just made an ass of himself in public. (257) Joe repeatedly says that he isshy, “I was alwaysshy with women ....whenever a girl took any notice of me I took it for granted that she was only playing with me” (253), “I didn’t know The origin of Australian romance: My Brilliant Career and “Joe Wilson’s Courtship”. 217 anything about women yet”, “I reckoned it was just going to a hopeless, heart breaking, stand- far-off-and-worship affair, as far as I was concerned” (259). He needs to be told by Jack what to do with Mary. When clothes-line broke and Mary’s clothes went down to the grass, Joe thinks nothing of it until Jack tells him, “Go and help her, you capitalidiot !” (260). His mate Jack complements just Joe lacks; he is an embodiment of Australian mateship. He is a clear antithesis to Joe; Jack is what Joe is not, anddoes what Joe does not do. Jack “did all the talking” (255) and is not shy and is “afraid of no woman” (253). Joe speaks of Jack’s way of setting things up behind : “He [ Jack] had aquiet way of working youup a thing, that made you wantto hit him sometimes” (256), “Then a thought struck me. I oughtto have known Jack well enough to have thought of it before” (258). He disappears from the narrative for good, as soon as he gets the two together after the dance night. Mary is also idealised from a male point of view. She is a typical man’s image of what a girl oughtto be like in the bush, rather than a woman’s image of what she likes to be like. First of all, the visualimage of woman carries much weight ; Mary is petite, and presented as a cute, pretty girl. In terms of characterisation, she is of innocent, chaste, home-oriented nature, sub- servientto male dominance. She never does anything rebellious, or anything to stand out from society, or from other women. When Joe first encounters Mary, he falls for her outward ap- pearance: I saw a little girl, rather plump, with a complexion like a New England or Blue Mountain girl, or a girl from Tasmania or from Gippsland in Victoria ....She had the biggest and brightest eyes I’d seen round there, darkhazel eyes ...bright as a ‘possum’s. No wonder they called her “‘Possum”. I forgot at once that Mrs. Jack Barnes was the prettiest girlin the district. (255) Similarly, Joe himself believes that his appearance is importantto attract Mary’s attention and tries to put his best foot forward : “I felt a sort of comfortable satisfaction in the factthat I was onhorseback : most Bushmen look better onhorseback” (255), “I squared up my shoulders and put my heels together and put as much style as I could into the work” (256). The implication of Mary’s naivety and innocence is well illustrated in the clothes hanging scene. Joe witnesses Mary’s clumsy way of trying to hold clothes up by the line: She had the broken end of the line and was trying to hold some of the clothes off the ground, as if she could pull an inch with the heavy wet sheets and table-cloths and things on it, or as if it woulddo any good if she did. Butthat’s the way with women－especially little women .... (260) Another example of Mary’s innocence is herrefusing to let Joe help : “Oh, those things are not readyyet ...they are not rinsed” (260).

Load more

  9

Copy Link