A Study of Convict Protagonists in Gothic Fiction from Australia

Convict Hero-Villains: A Study of Convict Protagonists in Gothic Fiction from Australia Lea Rudolph-Buergisser 20729829 MA, University of Zurich, 2007 This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia School of Humanities English and Cultural Studies 2015 ii Abstract This study focuses on novels that make use of the Gothic to explore Australia’s convict history and have a male convict as their protagonist. In fact, the transported convict can be considered a special figure which has been resurfacing in Australian literature for over 150 years, as exemplified by the texts analysed here: James Tucker’s Ralph Rashleigh (c. 1840s), Marcus Clarke’s His Natural Life (1870- 1872), John Boyle O’Reilly’s Moondyne: A Story from the Underworld (1878), William Hay’s The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans (1919), Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997) and Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish (2001). It analyses the protagonists of these fictions by using the concept of the Gothic hero- villain as defined by Leslie A. Fiedler and others, among other Gothic conventions. The study of these texts is prefaced by an introductory survey of the history of convict transportation to the Australian colonies. I trace how the representation of the convict changes over time, an approach which provides me with a useful framework for comparison and allows me to illustrate the different cultural discourses that have emerged with regard to Australia’s convict history. My central argument is that Australia’s convict origins were repressed for generations, and that Gothic literature has allowed the return of this experience into the cultural discourse, with most texts illustrating how the penal past was dealt with in the various time frames in which they were published. I draw on historians such as John Hirst, Robert Hughes, Stuart Macintyre, David Andrew Roberts and Babette Smith, who discuss the shame associated with the convict past, often referred to as the “convict stain”, and how this past has only reluctantly been acknowledged at personal and official levels. The Gothic genre commonly deals with the repressed past. According to Allan Lloyd Smith, for example, the Gothic “is about the return of the past, of the repressed and denied, the buried secret that subverts and corrodes the present” (American Gothic Fiction 1). This concept can fruitfully be applied to the texts analysed in this study. Ralph Rashleigh, written by Tucker while a convict at Port Macquarie, foreshadows convict Gothic tropes that occur in most of the other texts included here. Moreover, as part of his search for how best to represent the convict experience, Tucker includes a variety of character types, including a Gothic villain and a hero of sensibility. Joe, the protagonist in O’Reilly’s Moondyne, embodies some of the core iii characteristics of the Gothic hero-villain also found in later texts. Both these novels by men who had actually been transported suggest that the convict experience lends itself to Gothic treatment. Clarke’s His Natural Life, one of the first published examples of Australian convict Gothic fiction, is central to this study because Clarke depicts Richard Devine/Rufus Dawes as a Gothic hero-villain and introduces key convict Gothic motifs such as cannibalism and homosexual rape, with the aim of critiquing the British transportation system. Hay’s Heans centres on a, from a modern viewpoint, morally dubious gentleman-convict, and provides insights into how affected Australia was by changing class hierarchies and status anxiety in both the mid-nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Moreover, Hay is the first author to link Australia’s penal past with the tragic fate of Tasmania’s Indigenous people. In the chapter on Jack Maggs, I argue that Carey subverts Dickens’s Great Expectations by turning the convict into a hero-villain and placing him centre-stage, and by foregrounding several Victorian taboos which depict the imperial centre in dark and degenerate terms. In contrast, the novel’s happy ending in Australia provides a late twentieth-century perspective on the country’s penal history. The protagonist in Gould’s Book of Fish is a very different hero-villain. In this novel, Flanagan successfully brings together postmodernism and the Gothic to highlight how the penal past continues to haunt present-day Australia, and how official history has functioned as a metanarrative to silence the voices of convicts and Aborigines. Collectively, the novels can be said to belong to a tradition of convict Gothic fiction, a tradition that goes on beyond the most recent novels analysed in this study, as Australia’s convict history, as well as Aboriginal dispossession, continues to unfold in postcolonial Gothic writings. iv CANDIDATE’S DECLARATION: This thesis does not contain work that I have published, nor work under review for publication. Student Signature……………………………………………………………………. Coordinating Supervisor Signature………………………………………………….. v vi Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to acknowledge and thank my supervisors Associate Professor Kieran Dolin and Professor Judith Johnston. I could not have wished for better guidance and support than I received from both Judy and Kieran. Their exceptional knowledge and advice have made this thesis infinitely sharper than it would ever have been without their unerring and invaluable feedback, and their kindness and professionalism have made the whole PhD experience much less daunting than anticipated. I am also thankful to the many other people who have assisted me in various ways throughout the last years. As I had two girls while writing this thesis, my heartfelt thanks go out to everybody who helped look after Ellie and Jackie, including my husband, my family, Amelia, Lisa L., Lisa S., Antonia, Melisa and Caro. I am very grateful that I was able to combine early motherhood and my studies in a way that allowed me to be there for my young children. I furthermore would like to thankfully remember my uncle Manfred, who sadly passed away two years ago. The money he left me allowed me to finance my studies once my scholarships ran out. I’m sure this would have been to his liking. I would also like to thank my parents for their amazing support, both financially and with the girls, especially during the last few months before submission. Finally, I will never forget how encouraging and patient my husband has been throughout this journey. Thank you, Laurence. Dedication To my daughters, Ellie and Jackie vii viii Table of Contents Abstract iii Candidate’s Declaration v Acknowledgements vii Dedication vii Introduction 1 (i) Australian Convict Gothic in Critical Perspective 2 (ii) Australia’s Convict Past: The Historical Context 19 (iii) A Brief Description of Each Chapter 35 1. James Tucker’s Ralph Rashleigh and John Boyle O’Reilly’s Moondyne: 39 A Story from the Under-World: Two Texts Written By Actual Convicts 2. His Natural Life: Marcus Clarke’s Famous Nineteenth-Century Convict 65 Gothic Novel 3. William Hay’s The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans: 105 A Gentleman-Convict’s Ordeals in Van Diemen’s Land 4. Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs: Australia and Great Expectations 147 5. Gould’s Book of Fish: Richard Flanagan’s Postmodern Retelling of the 171 Convict Past Conclusion 199 List of Works Consulted 209 ix x Introduction This study focuses on novels that make use of the Gothic to explore Australia’s convict history and have a male convict as their protagonist. In fact, the transported convict can be considered a special figure which has been resurfacing in Australian literature for over 150 years, as exemplified by the texts analysed here: James Tucker’s Ralph Rashleigh (c. 1840s), Marcus Clarke’s His Natural Life (1870- 1872), John Boyle O’Reilly’s Moondyne: A Story from the Underworld (1878), William Hay’s The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans (1919), Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997) and Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish (2001). By applying the concept of the Gothic hero-villain as defined by Leslie A. Fiedler and others, among other Gothic conventions, to the protagonists of these fictions, I trace how the representation of the convict changes over time, an approach which provides me with a useful framework for comparison and allows me to illustrate the different cultural discourses that have emerged with regard to Australia’s convict history. My central argument is that Australia’s convict origins were repressed for generations, and that Gothic literature has allowed the return of this experience into the cultural discourse, with most texts illustrating how the penal past was dealt with in the various time frames in which they were published. I draw on historians such as John Hirst, Robert Hughes, Stuart Macintyre, David Andrew Roberts and Babette Smith, who discuss the shame associated with the convict past, often referred to as the “convict stain”, and how this past has only reluctantly been acknowledged at personal and official levels. The Gothic commonly deals with the repressed past. According to Allan Lloyd Smith, for example, the genre “is about the return of the past, of the repressed and denied, the buried secret that subverts and corrodes the present” (American Gothic Fiction 1). This concept can fruitfully be applied to the texts analysed here, which collectively can be said to belong to a tradition of convict Gothic fiction, a tradition that goes on beyond the most recent novels analysed in this study, as Australia’s convict history, as well as Aboriginal dispossession, continues to unfold in postcolonial Gothic writings.1 1 Although this study focuses on convict Gothic literature, some of the primary texts also deal with the devastating impact British colonisation had on Aborigines, as will be explored in subsequent chapters.

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