Unveiling the Cultural Clash in Kate Grenville's the Secret River
International Journal of Research ISSN NO:2236-6124
Negotiating Culture: Unveiling the Cultural Clash in Kate Grenville’s The Secret River
Melba. G Ph.D. Research Scholar Reg. No: 18123164012033 Department of English & Centre for Research Scott Christian College (Autonomous), Nagercoil-629001 Affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Abishekapatti, Tirunelveli – 627 012. Tamil Nadu, India.
Dr. J. Chitta Assistant Professor of English Department of English & Centre for Research Scott Christian College (Autonomous), Nagercoil- 629001. Affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Abishekapatti, Tirunelveli – 627 012. Tamil Nadu, India.
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Abstract
Aboriginal culture in Australia has undergone tremendous changes due to the colonial supremacy of the colonisers. The native communities of Australia have unique and distinct culture. The colonial mission of the European countries has inflicted grave harm not only to the aboriginals but also to their culture. After colonization, the aboriginals undergo physical as well as psychological problems. They have the fear of losing not only their natural resources, their sources of livelihood but also their precious culture. Kate Grenville, a white Australian writer, projects the cultural heritage of the Australian aboriginals to the world. She shoulders the responsibility to spread the submerged culture of the aboriginals to the world. The present paper analyses the aboriginal culture and the indigenous people’s desire for national identity in contemporary Australia in Grenville’s The Secret River.
Key Words: Colonial supremacy, Colonization, Cultural heritage, National identity, Indigenous people.
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Negotiating Culture: Unveiling the Cultural Clash in Kate Grenville’s The Secret River
Culture refers the social behaviour, beliefs and norms found in a particular human society. It also reflects the lifestyle of a particular group of people. It differentiates one group of people from the other in terms of their attitudes, customs and beliefs. Cultural conflicts occur when the values and beliefs of others are not given due importance which results in cultural diversity and the domination of one culture over the other. The critic, Abdalla is of the view that when there is cultural clash, “the effect is dangerous in the sense that it creates a diversity between us and them, and this us and them mentality is dangerous in a multicultural society. It can shatter the fabric of any pluralistic society” (93). The clash in culture fails to bring uniqueness in the minds of the people despite of their affection towards their country. Countries like Africa, India and Australia are the crucible determinants of the clash of cultures. As these countries provide grounds for new employment, they are no longer unicultural.
Australian aboriginal culture includes a variety of practices and ceremonies. For more than fifty thousand years, before the arrival of the colonisers, the aboriginal culture is the only culture that existed in Australia. The aborigines are the group of tribes who live in the Australian land and the critic, Rickard points out the fact that, “tribe is an inappropriate word to describe an aboriginal community. There was no chieftain and the community come together infrequently and usually only for ceremonial purposes” (5). The aboriginals lead a unified life despite of their varied lifestyle, customs and traditions. The colonisers, who arrived in 1788, are not able to recognise the culture of the aborigines and thus the clash of culture began. The clash of the British and the Australian aboriginal cultures get affected in the Australian society. Australia is a land which epitomizes the theory of unity in diversity. As man is a social animal, the aboriginals love to mingle with their fellow human beings, but the white settlers want to set apart them from the aboriginal culture because they think the aboriginals are uncivilized. David Myers, the critic is of the view that the “contemporary Australian literature provides important insights into an Australian society that has changed rapidly and is still changing” (9). Grenville portrays the two cultures, especially the cultural conflicts experienced by the white settlers and the native aborigines due to their different lifestyles, language, views, values and land ownership. She has written The Secret River as an exemplary vehicle for conveying the cross-cultural perspectives. The aboriginal people of the New South Wales in The Secret River seemed to the original inhabitants of the Australian land. They live a harmonious life with nature and the land, but the peaceful life of the aboriginal people is destroyed by the white settlers who are obsessed with the mere possession of the Australian land.
The Secret River explores the reality of what has happened, when the Europeans colonised the Australian land which was already inhabited by the aboriginal people. The novel remains a chronicle of the experience of William Thornhill, who was transported as a thief from London to Australia in the early
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nineteenth century. Thornhill and his family claim an attractive area in Hawkesbury as their own but they show contempt over the existence of the aboriginal people, who are the original inhabitants of the Australian land. As a result of the misunderstanding, there arises a tension between the colonisers and the aboriginals, which leads to violence and blood massacres in Australia. The colonial supremacy and violence play a major role in Australia, to ruin the life of the natives and to disturb their ways of life. The colonisers’ greed for material wealth and land do not allow them to lead a happy life in Australia. The Europeans forget the fact they are not the natives of Australia but they are the transported convicts.
The issue of land ownership is the root of the cultural clash between the colonisers and the aborigines. The aborigines strongly believe in the policy of terra nullius, which means nobody’s land. They regard their land as sacred and is common to all the aborigines. They think that there is no need to divide their land because it can satisfy everyone’s hunger and thirst. Rickard opines,
For the aborigines the earth had always been there. It required no explanation. Myth interpreted the shape and appearance of the aborigines knew and inhabited. Rocks, trees, waterholes, animals, birds: such objects, intimately experienced were integrated through myth and ritual into a spiritual universe of extraordinary richness. (61)
The convicts, who lived in the midst of poverty in London see the Australian land as a source of only food, water and shelter. Their main intention is to become the owner of the land in Australia. They are of the view that if they own more land, they will be respected in the society and can even dominate over the other. They thought that the nomadic tradition of the aboriginals is the evidence of the lack of their intelligence and civilization. The reality is that the aboriginals are making use of their instinct knowledge to find the sources for their food, water and shelter from nature. They make temporary camps and took only the resources they need to live. They never want to spoil their land and natural resources.
The aboriginal people in Australia never distinguish themselves as rich and poor and have and have-nots among their clan. They regard everyone as equal, as the land is common to all, but the colonisers believe that the material-oriented life determines one’s position in a society. The aborigines, who are the original inhabitants of the land, mark no signs to indicate that the land belongs to them. The protagonist Thornhill is astonished to see the relationship of the aborigines to their land as “there were no signs that the blacks felt that the land belonged to them. They had no fences that said this is mine. No house that said, this is our home. There were no fields or flock that said, we have put the labour of our hands into this place” (River 93). The relationship between the aborigines and their land is inseparable. Unlike the aborigines, the transported convicts to the Australian land think that ownership over the land is more important than the land. The Britishers even go to the extent of naming the land with their names.
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The colonisers lead a material-oriented life in Australia. They want to be dominative and suppress the other. The one and only intention of Thornhill is to own a hundred acres of land so that he can be known as the wealthiest person in the Sydney Cove. He thinks of several ways to own a land in Australia and so he says “it would be another way to possess the place, to look down and think everything, I see, I own” (153). Thornhill represents the transported convicts; whose main intention is to own the lands in Australia. Also, he in his search for land thinks of the Australians as the wild vermin who distract his ways but he fails to understand the relationship between the aborigines and their land.
The Europeans misunderstand the land ownership policy of the aborigines and thus the conflict begins. The colonisers consider the semi-nomadic tradition of the aborigines is the result of their lack of civilization. The critic Peng points out that “the absence of the basic cultural background knowledge would be expected to cause breakdown in communication. Members within the same language-culture community in which they were brought up have been influenced by its cultural tradition” (165). The colonisers fail to understand that the aborigines have the real ability to get food, water and shelter without polluting and disturbing their land. The aborigines make temporary camps and live in a particular land until the natural resources are available to them. This nomadic lifestyle of the aborigines makes them to adapt and to live in all the regions and the climate of Australia in which the European settlers feel uncomfortable. Thornhill opines the lifestyle of the aborigines in the colony of New South Wales as “there was hardly a door, barely a wall, only a flap of bark, a screen of sticks and mud. There was no need of door, of wall” (River 3). He thinks that the camps and the rocks in which the aborigines live cannot afford any kind of protection and safety to his family and so he used to move from one place to others in search of houses. The thought of the aborigines as inferior makes the colonisers feel uncomfortable and make the colonisers to impose their own culture over the others, without giving any importance to the culture of the natives in Australia. Thornhill, the transported convict dreams of owning a hundred acres of land and a well-built house, in order to show his authority over the aborigines.
Hunting and gathering are the real occupation of the aborigines in Australia. The European settlers, are interested in agriculture and they are not able to tolerate the aborigines, collecting food from their traditional hunting grounds, without planting corns like them. The European settler, Thornhill believes in “a little luck and a great deal of hard work” (87) to get food in Australia. But he is not able to realise the work done by the aborigines as he expects the aborigines to follow the lifestyle of the white settlers. He thinks of the blacks as savages and feels that,
It’s them savages. Planting them things like you would taters. . . . the blacks did not plant things. They wandered about taking food as it came under their hand. They might grub things out of the dirt if they happened on them, or pick something off a bush as they passed. But, like children, they did not plant today so that they could eat tomorrow. It was why they were called savages. (141)
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The food habits and the lifestyle of the aborigines are totally different from that of the Europeans. They depend only on the natural resources available in their land. The Europeans cultivate the land because they think that cultivation leads to civilization. At the same time, the aboriginals, as they do not know about civilization, they follow the hunter-gatherer procedure in order to gather the fruits, vegetables and insects.
The white settlers consider the indigenous inhabitants of Australia as merely savages. Even though the aborigines lead a life, that is completely different from of that of the Europeans, they give more importance to familial relationship. Though they wander around without living in a particular house, they spent their rest time with their family. There is no chieftain for the aboriginals but they come together only for ceremonial purposes because their lifestyle is based on their family construct, which generally consists of a man, his wife and their children. They go for daily hunting and foraging with their family as a group. The entire society is united like a family in which each individual has a lucid knowledge of their responsibilities in the society. At the same time colonisers consider them only as savages and they think that, “It was true the blacks made no fields, and built no houses worth the name, roaming around with no thought for the morrow. It was true that they did not even know to cover their nakedness but sat with their bare arses on the dirt like dogs. In all these ways they were nothing but savages “(229). The colonisers never spent time with their family. They are always busy with imposing their culture and their way of living upon the colonisers. Grenville describes the daily routine of the colonisers as,
. . . the Thornhill household was up with the sun, hacking at the weeds around the corn, lugging water, chopping away at the forest that hemmed them in. Only when the sun slipped behind the ridge did they take their ease, and by then no one seemed to feel much like fun and games. Certainly no one seemed to have energy to spare for making a baby laugh. (229)
Even though the aboriginal people devote a lot of time to their families and for their rituals such as dancing and singing, the settlers are not able to understand the cultural heritage of the aboriginals. The colonisers leave their families in Australia, in search of the sources of living, without taking their family. They even fail to spent their spare time with their family. Their only intention is to work hard in order to secure their families and to become rich. The aborigines have no worry of starving, as their family is always with them in their occupation of hunting and gathering. Grenville admires the time management of the aborigines as “they were like gentry. They spent a little time each day on their business, but the rest was their own to enjoy” (229- 28). The aborigines work in order to live happily with their family but the colonisers believe that happiness is the only product of material wealth.
The European settlers are not satisfied with the land of the native aboriginals, but they have to apply for convict servants in the strength of the service in bringing food to Sydney. Thornhill also needs servants to engage in agriculture. When he thinks to apply for the convict servants, Nightingale, one of the settlers advise Thornhill to ask for four men so that he can get at least three servants but only two convict servants are assigned for Thornhill. Sal is also astonished to get the transported convicts as
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servants and she says “we should have asked for ten. . . . Then we would have got five” (170). The later transported convicts are made to surrender themselves to the wish of the earlier transported convicts. The atrocities of the earlier transported convicts affect not only the natives but also the later transported convicts. They use the later transported convicts as a weapon to marginalize the natives.
The European settlers are ready to exchange provisions to the aboriginals in order to take away their land. They give beads, glasses, salt pork, rum and so on to the aborigines but some of them are attracted by the gifts. They think that if they can entertain the aborigines as well as they may allow them to settle thereby, they can own their land easily. In the name of civilizing the people, the settlers give rum to the aborigines and try to make them as drunkards. The colonisers think “rum was the currency of all exchanges, there being little coin. As well, rum promised consolation for the fact that everyone in the colony might as well be on the moon” (85). The aborigines feel happy because they can find some sort of consolation and peace in gaining the gift of rum. The aboriginals like Scabby Bill and others are willing to do almost everything for a cup of rum. At the same time, some of the aborigines are not impressed by the gifts provided by the colonisers. Thus, Thornhill recognises that there are aborigines who are not easily impressed by the gifts of the colonisers.
The aborigines are not attracted towards the gifts of the colonisers. Two of the aborigines visit the hundred acres owned by Thornhill. The two children of Thornhill namely Wilkie and Dick, because of fear, on seeing the blacks run down in the slope with the bag of seed in their hands. His wife Sal is also frightened on seeing the blacks in their farm. On seeing the blacks, Thornhill thinks,
The blacks seemed to be waiting for something. Thornhill wondered what he might offer them. The pick, the hatchet, the spade: all were too precious. He wished he had thought to brink something from Sydney for this moment. Beads. He had heard of beads being given to the blacks. Mirrors. It would have been so easy to get a handful of beads, a couple of mirrors. (145)
Thornhill thinks of the other convicts who offer beads and mirrors to the aborigines. While he is wondering how to get rid of the aborigines from his land, his wife advises him to give some food to the two aboriginals in order to get rid of them from the land. She says to Thornhill as “give them a bit of that pork! Look sharp Will, here it is” (145). It is the way she uses to deal with Scabby Bill but she later realises that these two aborigines are totally different from that of Scabby Bill. The two aborigines pretend to accept the pork and then the younger man put the piece of pork down on the dirt in order to symbolically present that no gifts can separate them from their land and culture. Thornhill is even ready to give a penny and six silver pence to the aborigines but the aborigines hesitate to get it from the colonisers.
Song is one of the primary means through which aboriginal Australians express and maintain their identity and culture. A multiplicity of different indigenous song types continues to flourish across Australia. The critic Leonard tells “song was the first idea, the principle of sharing which underlies our system” (15). Song is the art
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that cannot be separated from nature and man. Music, dance and painting are part of the culture of the aboriginals. As they do not have any professional artists and also do not know the distinction between the art and craft, they are not recognised by the aboriginals. The aboriginal men are scared of Thornhill and they never come close to him. Meanwhile, the aboriginal women are more forthcoming with Sal. They skirt around the hut as if it as a new boulder and they “got into the habit of singing out to her” (River 199). The flutter of the leaves and the breeze produce a sound that express their intentions: “the breeze brought the sound of their singing, a high hard dirge and the rhythmic clapping of sticks” (93). The above incident clearly states the fact that, the aborigines are interwined with nature for everything rather than the encroachers, who try to subordinate them.
The aborigines use ordinary tools as their arms and ammunition to hunt and to do their day-to-day activities. Spears are the powerful aboriginal tools which are used extensively by the aboriginals for multipurpose deeds. They also use firestick to clean up the dry vegetation. When the natives go to the corn fields along with their spears and firestick of Thornhill, he thinks “those black men who with nothing better than a burning stick” (286). The aboriginals use spear and fire to encourage the growth of food plants such as daisy, yams and grasses. They also use the spears to protect them from the wild animals. Spears are inseparable from the life of the aboriginals. They always wander around the wild area with spears. Even though they are tall and their shoulders are powerful they always carry spears with them. On seeing the aboriginal man with a spear, Thornhill thinks,
In London Thornhill counted as a big man, but these men made him feel small. They were as tall as he was, their shoulders sinewy but powerful, their chests defined with pads of muscle. Each held a few spears, the lengths of wood shifting like insects’ feelers. He stood legs apart, his heavy new boots planted on the ground. . . . It seemed important to act the part of host. That way, they were his guests. (195)
Grenville clearly implies the idea that the aborigines are direct opposite to the colonisers. They use ordinary weapons to till and plough the land. Whatever they use for their ordinary use, the colonisers consider them as savages and they think that they should teach them as well.
Bush is a recurrent image in Australian literature. The aboriginals, in order to hide themselves from the colonisers, become bushrangers. They are fond of not only of the bush and the bushrangers. The Europeans thinks that the Australian bush was entirely different from that of their green European landscapes. The aboriginals are familiar with that of the outback, which is the vast, remote and interior part of the bush. The natives, who live in the bush are considered as the nomads. The colonisers understand the fact that the Australian bush adds more colour and beauty to its landscape. The beauty of the bush in Sydney which is surrounded by the river is described as “the river revealed itself, teasingly, never more than a bend at a time, calm between its walls of rock and bush (102). The aboriginals make use of the bush to protect themselves from the colonisers. Scabby Bill, is an aboriginal man, Sal is
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afraid of him. She regards him as the same as the ants of that place and even he is the hazard of the place because he often hides in the bush. He feels confident and good at every time, when he leaves and hides in the bush. So, she remarks Scabby Bill as “he’s gone off to die, Will, she would say. Taken his bleeding cough and gone under a bush somewhere” (91). The bush is not only the abode of the animals but also the aboriginals. Thornhill is able to understand this, when he sees “a few fowls pecking miserably around the man’s feet and a shirt drying on a bush” (103). At the same time the colonisers have a hatred towards the bush. The critic Myers explains the attitude of the colonisers as “they have no nationalistic pride, no love of the bush and no feeling of mate ship or affinity between the bush and its inhabitants” (30). The bush or the outback provides relief to the aboriginals.
Thornhill begins to give the aboriginal men names and tries to civilize them. He gives humble sorts of name like Whisker Harry, Long Bob, Black Dick and so on. It makes them feel domestic. Even though Thornhill tries to mingle with them, they never come too close to them. Long Bob and Black Dick help Thornhill in his household works and Thornhill thinks “they were never without their spears” (199). The aboriginals, in the hospital also they will lie with the spears. Thornhill has never informed about the relationship of the aboriginals with the spears to his wife but her neighbours have informed her about the spears. She also witnesses an aboriginal man and a woman coming along the hillside carrying a firestick. Thus, spears and firesticks are the two weapons that are inseparable in the life of the aborigines, but the colonisers always carry the gun with them which shows the suppressive nature of the colonisers. Thornhill feels superior as he has boots in his legs, mysterious clothes and hats. He thinks “the aboriginals were dogs that would bite if they caught the scent of fear” (195). As he thinks the aboriginal people are ready to do anything to him, he feels comfort of having a gun with him but he fails to realise that gun is the weapon which separate him from the aboriginals and their culture.
The colonisers consider clothing represents the wealth and the position of a person in a society. On the other hand, the aboriginals do not consider cloth as a symbol of wealth, so they do not wear clothes. Scabby Bill, as an aboriginal Australian always appears naked and the scars in his body can be easily seen when he moves in his village. The scars in his body always remind him of the period in the Australian history when he and his contemporaries have to struggle for their land. Even though he appears naked, he is not a source of fear for the white settlers. Sal thinks that, “she did not seem to fear him: he was the same as the ants or the flies, a hazard of the place that had to be dealt with. Every time he left, she felt confident that it was for good” (91). The aboriginal people lead a life that is completely different from that of the European newcomers. They do not live in houses and do not wear clothes. They just wander around and sometimes they kill some animals to provide food for their family. The colonisers think that “it was true that they did not even know enough to cover their nakedness, but sat with their bare arses on the dirt like dogs. In all these ways they were nothing but savages” (229). Thornhill in his first encounter with an aboriginal man itself, understands about the clothing of the aboriginal people. On seeing the aboriginal man he thinks that “he wore his nakedness like a cloak. . . . Clothed as he was. Thornhill felt skinless as a maggot” (5). The nakedness of the aboriginals is not at all accepted by the white settlers and they
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consider them as shabby creatures who spoil the land and their culture. Fanon Frantz, the acclaimed critic writes “the first step for ‘colonized’ people in finding a voice and an identity is to reclaim their own past. . . . then the second is to begin to erode the colonialist ideology by which the past has been devalued” (qtd. in Barry 193). The aboriginals should realise the uniqueness of their culture and should take efforts to preserve their own culture.
The clash of cultures between the aboriginals and the European cultures in Australia disclose the fact that the natives have lived peacefully and happily before the arrival of the colonisers in their land. The freedom of the colonisers is also shattered because before the arrival of the colonisers, the natives stayed in the place of their choice. Due to colonisation, the aboriginals suffer a lot, their land is being taken away and their rituals are being valued worthless by the Europeans. The colonisers try to prove that they have a dominant and superior culture and try to crush the culture, traditional habits and the ideology of the Australian aboriginal people. As a result of this, the cultural clash reaches towards the pinnacle and both the coloniser and the colonised find it difficult to impose their culture on each other.
Works Cited
Abdalla, Mohamad. “Construct of Cultural Hegemony.” Journal of the School of Dynamics of Diversity: Culture and Literature, edited by Pradeep Trikha. Sarup Book of Publishers, 2013, pp. 93-106. Grenville, Kate. The Secret River. The Text Publishing Company, 2005. Rickard, John. “Aborigines.” Images of Australia, edited by Gillian Whitlock and David Carter. U of Queensland P, 1992, pp. 5-61. Barry, Peter. “Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.” Beginning Theory, edited by Alka. Manchester P, 1995, pp. 192-203. Leonard, John. “Many Dreams.” Contemporary Australian Poetry. India Council Publishers, 2003, pp. 15-27. Myers, David. “Perspectives of Contemporary Australian Literature on Culture-Clash Between Australian and the Asia/ Pacific Religion.” Australian Literature Today, edited by R. K. Dhawan and David Kerr, ISCS, 1993, pp. 9-39. Peng, Fangzhen. “Translation Principles and Cultural Psychology.” Contemporary Issues in Australian Literature: International Perspectives, edited by William woodcock, Cambridge U P, 1998, pp.160-73.
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