The Gothic As Transgressive Mode of Representation in Australian Women's Historical Fiction
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Gothic as Transgressive Mode of Representation in Australian Women’s Historical Fiction by Gabrielle A Ryan MA, PGDip, Grad. Cert., BA Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Deakin University March 2018 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There have been a lot of people who have helped and supported me to make this thesis, and specifically the novel Voice of the Shadows, the best it can be. I would like to thank the first readers of my novel, who gave me invaluable feedback on early drafts: my parents, Elizabeth and Peter Ryan, and my colleague and friend Helen Withycombe, all of whom read the novel multiple times. I also want to thank later readers who added their thoughtful feedback – Claire Flynn, Bec Harris, Mark Kavenagh, and my sister Claire Nightingale. The novel is much better for their generous time, honesty and wisdom. I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Antonia Pont who has known exactly where, and how far, to push me. I appreciate her insightful feedback on the novel and the exegesis both, and the conversations over coffee that have really crystallised my thoughts. Her clear pinpointing of where and how things weren’t working has been so helpful, and my thesis is a much better work because of it. I would like to thank my grandmother, Sheilah Hamilton, from whom I first heard the story of the Brownout Strangler who killed women to get their voices. I would like, also, to thank the Wheeler Centre where I work, for so many things. For the inspiring conversations I have listened to from the back of the Performance Space and other venues, over the past five years – so many of these have infused my work. For the wonderful colleagues and friends who have been interested in, and supportive of, my work and study, and who are always asking about it, and who I know will be ready to have a celebratory drink with me now that it is done. For creating and fostering a community of writers in Melbourne that is so welcoming and supportive – for this I’d also like to thank Writers Victoria. And finally I would like to thank my family: my parents Elizabeth and Peter, my sisters Claire and Bec, and my partner Scooter. Thank you for being there, always. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .............................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 2 NOVEL: Voice of the Shadows ........................................................................................... 9 Chapter 1: Realism and the Politics of Representation in Historical Fiction ................ 286 Chapter 2: Representing Women: Constructing Femininity and Womanhood in Australian Fiction ........................................................................................................... 320 Chapter 3: Representing Aboriginal Characters: Engaging with the Contested Australian Past ............................................................................................................... 341 Chapter 4: Representing Queerness: Creating and Dismantling the Gothic in Voice of the Shadows ................................................................................................................... 367 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 381 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 385 ABSTRACT This thesis will attempt to address the question of whether the Gothic is still useful as a transgressive mode of representation in Australian women’s historical fiction. It will do so via the practice-led work of a novel accompanied by exegesis. The novel, Voice of the Shadows, is a full-length work of historical fiction set in Melbourne in 1942, during World War 2. It uses as background the story of the Brownout Murders, where an American GI named Edward Leonski killed three women in the space of fifteen days. He was arrested and confessed that he killed these women ‘to get their voices’. The protagonist is Alice Jenkins, a working-class girl inspired by real- life journalist Pat Jarrett, who covered the Leonski court martial because, as her editor said, there were no men around to do the job. In the novel, she has a fledgling relationship with one of the three women, just before the latter is murdered by Leonski. The exegesis examines fraught areas of representation at issue in the novel and the process of writing it. It charts a history of affinity between women’s writing, historical fiction, and the Gothic, as explored in the writing of contemporary scholars such as Diana Wallace and Anne Stevens. These scholars have focused on this primarily in the British context. My thesis brings it into an Australian post(?)colonial context, exploring the construction and representation of racial, sexual and gender identities in relation to the Gothic and Australian colonial history. It explores the tension of the Gothic: that although it has a transgressive power and has been used by marginalised people to ‘write back’ against their marginalisation, it also reinforces these marginalising structures through an inherent conservatism. In my thesis, I explore whether it is still a useful mode, given this conservatism, or whether we are entering a post-Gothic world. Over four chapters, I discuss the representation of women, Aboriginal characters, and queer women, using examples from Australian fiction. In choosing these examples, I have focused on historical novels by Australian women, set in Australia, with women protagonists. Overall, the thesis examines how creative writers may engage with the Gothic and dismantle it, in order to subvert traditional re-impositions of patriarchal heteronormative endings. The exegesis seeks to advance practice- led knowledge in relation to the challenges posed by the theoretical questions above, specifically in relation to practices of representation in the field of post-Gothic, women’s queer writing and the settler context. 1 INTRODUCTION The Gothic has been used as a transgressive mode of writing since its beginning in the late eighteenth century, particularly by women writers. Women have found that this characteristically otherworldly, ghostly, shadowy mode of storytelling and representation has particularly suited their stories, which were traditionally excluded from the more corporeal, embodied, ‘realism’ that was the usual domain of men. They have used it to ‘write back’ against this exclusion, to write from the margins, to write their own histories and experiences. The act of ‘writing back’ is discussed often in this thesis and refers to writers using historical fiction to look back and redress the ways the past has been misrepresented, addressing omissions as well as errors. Fiction can do this by uncovering ‘lost subjectivities’ but it can also go beyond that and create ‘multi-layered texts that can incorporate, and hold in tension, multiple perspectives’ (Mitchell & Parsons 2013 p.6). The Gothic is one mode that historical novelists have used to do this. And yet the Gothic, even with this transgressive impetus, is also inherently conservative (Jackson 1981, p.96; Althans 2010, p.12): since although it challenges the dominant ideology, it usually ceases to displace it, and the structures it seeks to subvert are still secure at the end. In this thesis, through a novel and exegesis, I will explore the ways in which the Gothic has been successful as a transgressive mode of writing, and the ways in which it often fails. I will explore this in relation to representation of women, Aboriginal and queer characters in historical novels by Australian women. I will consider the possibilities for the Gothic in a postmodern world, and I will ultimately seek to address whether the Gothic is still useful as a transgressive mode of representation in historical novels by Australian women. The Gothic, like other genres, is a mode that is difficult to define. It tends to be described by its most common characteristics, rather than any totalising definition. This might be a listing of recognisable symbolic images, such as crumbling castles, fog, secret letters, hidden passages, flickering candles, confined women, ghosts, vampires and the supernatural. It is usually 2 characterised as having something to do with fear. It usually bears some relationship to the past, or the haunting of the present by the past. It is usually transgressive, challenging, unsettling. It is also decidedly anti-realist (Wallace 2013, p.1). In chapter one I will look at what it means to be anti- realist – I will consider what ‘realism’ is, and what values it can espouse and uphold, for what purposes. I will look at where the Gothic intersects with and undermines ‘realism’ and discuss some other ‘anti-realist’ modes and new ways of configuring ‘realism’. For the purposes of this thesis, I am using the word ‘Gothic’ broadly to include anything that is otherworldly: it can include certain types of fantasy, science fiction, and speculative fiction, and I will use examples from all of these genres, and more. I have chosen to focus on Australian women’s historical novels. As mentioned above and elaborated on in this exegesis, there is an affinity between women writers, historical fiction and the Gothic that goes back a number of centuries. Contemporary scholars such as Diana Wallace