Pākehā Constructions of National Identity in New Zealand Literary Anthologies

CREATING NEW ZEALAND: PĀKEHĀ CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY IN NEW ZEALAND LITERARY ANTHOLOGIES A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington by SUSAN WILD Victoria University of Wellington 2015 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my grateful thanks for the support and assistance of my two supervisors at Victoria University, Professors Mark Williams and Peter Whiteford, who have provided invaluable guidance in bringing the thesis to its completion; Professor Vincent O’Sullivan and Dr. Brian Opie provided early assistance; I am appreciative also for the helpful advice and encouragement given by Ed Mares, and for the support and patience of my family. This was especially helpful during the disruptive period of the Christchurch earthquakes, and in their long aftermath. I wish also to state my appreciation for the services of the staff at the National Library of New Zealand, the Alexander Turnbull Library, the MacMillan Brown Library, the Mitchell Library, Sydney, and the libraries of Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Canterbury – the extensive collections of New Zealand literature held at these institutions and others comprise an enduring taonga. 1 ABSTRACT The desire to construct a sense of home and the need to belong are basic to human society, and to the processes of its cultural production. Since the beginning of New Zealand’s European colonial settlement, the determination to create and reflect a separate and distinctive collective identity for the country’s Pākehā population has been the primary focus of much local creative and critical literature. Most literary histories, like those of Patrick Evans (1990) and Terry Sturm (1991), have followed the narrative of progression – established initially in E.H. McCormick’s Letters and Art in New Zealand (1940) – away from colonial dependency through delineated stages from provincial and cultural nationalist phases to the achievement of a bicultural and multicultural consensus in a globalized, international context. This thesis questions the progressivist assumption which often informs that narrative, arguing instead that, while change and progress have been evident in the development of local notions of identity in the country’s writing over time, there is also a pattern of recurrent concerns about national identity that remained unresolved at the end of the last century. This complex and nuanced picture is disclosed in particular in the uncertain and shifting nature of New Zealand’s relationship with Australia, its response towards expatriates, a continuing concern with the nature of the ‘reality’ of ‘New Zealandness’, and the ambivalence of its sense of identity and place within a broader international context. New Zealand’s national anthologies of verse and short fiction produced over the twentieth century, and their reception in the critical literature that they generated, are taken in the thesis as forming a microcosmic representation of the major concerns that underlie the discourse of national identity formation in this country. I present an analysis of the canonical literary anthologies, in particular those of verse, and of a wide range of critical work focused on responses to the historical development of local literature. From this, I develop the argument that a dual, interlinked pattern, both of progress and of reversion to early concerns and uncertainties, is evident. The thesis is structured into six chapters: an introductory chapter outlines the national and international historical contexts within which the literary contestation of New Zealand identity has developed; the second outlines the contribution of influential literary anthologies to the construction of various concepts of New Zealandness; three chapters then address particular thematic concerns identified as recurring tropes within the primary and secondary literature focused on the discourse of national identity – the ‘problem’ of the expatriate writer, the search for ‘reality’ and ‘authenticity’ in the portrayal of local experience, and New Zealand’s literary response towards Australia; and the Conclusion, which summarizes the argument presented in the thesis and provides an assessment of its major findings. A Bibliography of the works cited in the text is appended at the end of the thesis. 2 CONTENTS Acknowledgements 1 Abstract 2 Contents 3 CHAPTER 1. Introduction – Creating New Zealand 4 CHAPTER 2. Versions of ‘New Zealandness’ in national anthologies of verse 44 CHAPTER 3. ‘What is a New Zealander?’ – The problem of the expatriate writer 105 CHAPTER 4. ‘True vision’ – The literary construction of New Zealand ‘reality’ 154 CHAPTER 5. ‘The loathsome Australasian’ – The role of Australia in the creation of New Zealand 212 CHAPTER 6. Conclusion – Becoming New Zealand: ‘A process never completed’ 270 Bibliography 282 3 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION – CREATING NEW ZEALAND Strictly speaking, New Zealand doesn’t exist yet, though some possible New Zealands glimmer in some poems and on some canvases. It remains to be created … by writers, musicians, artists, architects, publishers. (Allen Curnow, 1945b, 2). The need to identify and define a concept of ‘home’, and a desire for belonging, are fundamental to human societies. These desires find particularly strong expression in the art and literature of those nations, such as New Zealand, whose origins and narratives of identity are founded on a history of migration and colonial settlement.1 Benedict Anderson, in Imagined Communities (1991), proposes that in order for a nation to be constructed it is first necessary to ‘think’ it into existence, suggesting that it comprises the collective perception of self-identity of the society from which it is structured, and is both formed from and represented by the cultural expressions of nationhood that it produces (15, 28). Reflecting on the role of literature in these processes, Anderson considers that the act of constructing a nation requires a ‘narrative of identity’, and that a community’s creative and imaginative writing are crucial for formulating and conveying such a narrative (205). The nature of New Zealand’s ‘narrative of identity’ and the processes of its construction, particularly over the twentieth century, form the primary interests of this thesis. I present in the thesis an analysis of Pākehā2 constructions of New Zealandness, as this notion has been reflected in the country’s national anthologies of verse and short fiction 1 See, for example, Barbara Einhorn’s studies focused on the impact of migration on identity construction, especially ‘Gender, Nation, Landscape and Identity in Narratives of Exile and Return’ (2000). 2 In the thesis, the currently accepted spelling of ‘Māori’, which employs a macron over the first vowel of the diphthong, is used except in cases of direct quotation where the spelling ‘Maori’, without the macron, has been used in the original text. A similar approach in regard to ‘Pākehā’ has been used. Also, in direct quotation, the original usage of upper or lower case and italicization in these words has been retained. 4 over the twentieth century and in their critical reception over that period.3 This analysis identifies and examines a number of repeated tropes of identity that have been expressed frequently in the words of New Zealand writers and that, despite evidence of movement and change in the nation’s sense of self-conception over time – through stages of colonialism, provincialism, nationalism, internationalism, and towards a wider globalization and multiculturalism – have formed recurrent echoes in the literary account of its history. The argument is developed that these tropes represent problematic issues of identity that have arisen from conflicting responses towards the country’s colonial beginnings and its subsequent difficulties in determining its cultural ‘place’ in relation to its international environment, and that these remained largely unresolved at the end of the past century. The thesis is arranged into six chapters. The first, this Introduction, provides an outline of the historical and cultural contexts in which local writers have engaged in the imperative task to create a distinctive New Zealand identity and a national literary canon, and it identifies the major protagonists in the discourse of identity-construction. This chapter introduces the aims, theoretical framework and method of the thesis, and identifies the particular thematic concerns that form its primary focus. It also specifies the media that form the subjects of its analysis, being the ‘iconic’ national anthologies of New Zealand verse and short fiction produced over the twentieth century, and the critical literature that these generated. This analysis illustrates the processes by which the discourse of New Zealand national identity has been correlated with the development of a local literature. It identifies a set of dichotomized positions that have been expressed in creative and critical writing, relating these to the complexities and uncertainties that are inherent in constructions of concepts of New Zealand. In particular, it presents the argument that, rather than a unitary, 3 The thesis is focused on questions of identity evident in the literature of the country’s European/Pākehā population, and does not consider issues of Māori identity or literature. 5 progressivist historical narrative of achievement, a pattern of interlinked elements both of progress and of reversion

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