THE HAPPENING TIME: A study of adolescence in the Australian novel, autobiography and short story,

1924-1974.

A Thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Arts at the University of New South Wales, December, 1974, by P.E. Watson. SUMMARY

This thesis explores the topic of adolescence in the Australian novel, autobiography and short story published over the last fifty years,

1924-1974. The first chapter begins by posing the question of the literature of adolescence as a twentieth century phenomenon. It proceeds to define the nature of adolescence, to outline the basis for the selection of works for this study and to indicate the need for research in this area. In Chapter Two, the postulation of

Australia as an adolescent country is corroborated and the relevance of this concept to our study is examined. The major part of this thesis is concerned with the themes and images in the Australian novel, autobiography and short story which contain an adolescent protagonist. These three central chapters cover the themes of: adolescence as an age of transition; the search for identity; the journey into adulthood. The accompanying images, illustrated in the works under discussion, are: spring, rebirth and the fall from innocence; the mirror and the "looking-glass self"; the voyage.

These chapters are followed by a critical assessment of all works in this survey. The concluding chapter reiterates the main findings of our study and places them in a historical perspective.

The stress throughout this dissertation is upon the contribution which creative literature makes to an understand~ng of the adolescent. CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE : Introduction p. 1 The novel of adolescence as a twentieth century phenomenon p. 3 Definitions and common characteristics of adolescence p. 8 Basis for selection of literature for this study p.16 The adolescent: through fiction and psychology p.20 The need for research p.21

CHAPTER TWO: Australia: the adolescent country A discussion of the relevance of this concept to the literature of adolescence p.30

CHAPTER THREE : Recurring themes and images I. Adolescence: an age of transition p.45 II. Images of transition: spring, rebirth and the fall from innocence p.88

CHAPTER FOUR: Recurring themes and images (continued) III. The search for identity p.108 IV. The mirror image and the "looking-glass self" p.188

CHAPTER FIVE : Recurring themes and images (continued) V. Towards adulthood p.213 VI. The voyage image p.216

CHAPTER SIX: Australian literature of adolescence, 1924-1974: a critical assessment I. The novel and autobiography p.245 II. The short story p.284

CHAPTER SEVEN : Conclusion p.299

BIBLIOGRAPHY: p.310 CHAPTER ONE

Introduction p. 1

The novel of adolescence as a twentieth century phenomenon p. 3

Definitions and common characteristics of adolescence p. 8

Basis for selection of literature for this study p.16

The adolescent: through fiction and psychology p.20

The need for research p.21 92 JL'STt :s.; o'JJtUI·. , !lead 1f11 girl(c. 1950) CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

Adolescence ••• is a period during which almost too much is happening.

Bettleheim, Love is not enough

When we look at the connnents of writers on adolescence over the last three thousand years, we find that adolescence has always been a "happening time".

Hesiod, writing about 800 B.C. concerning the youth of ancient Greece, says, in effect, what Shakespeare also expresses, in the sixteenth century, through the words of the old shepherd in The

Winter's Tale. In both statements, too, we see reflected the feelings of many contemporary parents and teachers. In Hesiod's declaration, there is the same gloomy prophecy about the future of the world, the same contrast with the older person's own adolescence that one hears currently reiterated:

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of to-day, so certainly all youth are reckless beyond words When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.

The old shepherd affirms the desire, whether overtly expressed or secretly cherished, that the age of adolescence could be eliminated: -2-

I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting. (Act III, Sc.III)

We should note that both these statements are made by older people within the security of their established society and from a traditional adult vantage point. In looking at the comment of a contemporary writer, the anthropologist, Margaret Mead, we see that there is a strong inference that this kind of security in our modern society and the place of the adult within it are being actively threatened. Stressing the tremendous changes in social and cultural values between parents and adolescents to-day, she writes that parents are "strangers in to-day's world while adolescents are at home in it."1

Mead's statement is a particularly interesting one because, despite the differences between individual cultural settings and periods of history, what is most striking about the references to adolescence over the last three thousand years from a diverse range of writers is that there is very little in the attitudes that they represent which would not be applicable to the mid-twentieth century.

It is, perhaps, only in approximately the last ten years that the role of the adolescent appears to many people to have changed quite dramat- ically so that, as Mead suggests, he is more "at home" in the world

than his parents; according to some critics, he has so permeated the

daily life of adults as to impose upon society teen-age standards of

thought, culture and goals. 2 In our study, we shall see to what

extent Australian literature reflects the established attitudes of

the past and the changing values of the contemporary scene. -3-

The novel of adolescence as a 20th century phenomenon

It is obvious that adolescence as a stage of physical, intellectual and emotional development has always existed; what is worthy of note is the fact that it has become increasingly a topic for fiction and for critical assessment during this century.

R.L. Barnes, for example, in his study of Childhood and Adolescence in 20th Century Fiction in English has stated that "the prevalence of these themes is a major phenomenon of this century" 3 and both Simon4 and Witham, among others, refer to the adolescent hero as a twentieth century phenomenon. Witham, in his book The Adolescent in the

American Novel, 1920-1960,5 presents a study of six hundred American novels of adolescence published during those years. The following conunent, which he quotes from J.W. Johnson, is of particular interest to us. It is taken from an article which is entitled "The Adolescent

Hero: A Trend in Modern Fiction", published in Twentieth Century

Literature, April, 1959:

The emergence, within the past thirty years, of the child and the adolescent as heroes of much important fiction is a phenomenon only recently noted by the cri ties • • • The truth seems to be that an entirely new sort of hero has appeared in the fiction of recent years, reflecting a peculiar system of values and effecting important changes in literary technique. The adolescent protagonist .•• is a distinctly Twentieth-Century manifestation, virtually without precedent in British or American fiction. (p.24)

In the present study, covering the period 1924-1974, fifty five works are included and I would venture to suggest that very few major Australian authors remain unrepresented. It seems clear, -4- therefore, that the phenomenon apparent in both England and America is equally in evidence in our own country although, as we demonstrate later on, the increase in research which has taken place overseas in the last twenty years has not been paralleled in Australia.

Douvan writes of the adolescent in 1966 that "until fairly recently he had little weight in our collective imaginings, in fiction and the mass media."6 If we look back for a moment to the nineteenth century in England, we see that it is the child who emerges, from relative obscurity, as a prominent participant in the novel particul- arly, though there is no doubt that poets like Blake and Wordsworth also played an important part in "recognising" the child as an individual in his own right. At the same time, their vision of childhood as a vital influence upon adolescence and maturity is apparent in much of their work where it is implied, for example, in

Blake's whole concept of Innocence and Experience and in

Wordsworth's well known line, "The Child is father of the Man" •

• As far as the novel is concerned, writers such as Dickens,

Thackeray, Butler and George Eliot have given us many unforgettable and psychologically penetrating vignettes both of the child and adolescent but it is, perhaps, to Henry James that the credit must go for first putting the adolescent "on the map", so to speak, of

English fiction. What Maisie Knew is especially interesting because he uses an adolescent, in this case a girl, as the central intell­ igence of the book, a technique to be adopted by many later authors in writing the novel of adolescence. In The Awkward Age, which James describes in his Preface as "a study of one of those curtailed and extended periods of tension and apprehension", he shows the disparity -5- between the European and English handling of the adolescent.

Longdon's comment on the two girls, Aggie and Nanda, points up this difference with admirable clarity and insight.

Both the girls struck him as lambs with the great shambles of life in their future; but while one, with its neck in pink ribbon, had no consciousness but that of being fed from the hand with the small sweet biscuit of unobjectionable knowledge, the other struggled with instincts and forebodings, with the suspicion of its doom and the far­ borne scent, in the flowery fields, of blood. 7

Barnes also sees James as the most important literary influence in the novel of childhood and adolescence because he

"opposed to the view of the child as a pint sized adult his own notion of the child as a distinct creature living in a world of its own, which it is the duty of the writer to understand and communicate to his readers" (p.17).

The dissimilarity between James's books and many of the later twentieth century novels on adolescence lies, perhaps, in the matter of stress; in the extent, for example, to which the book is solely or primarily about the adolescent and his feelings and in the degree of insight based on an increasing understanding of adolescence from a psychological point of view. Such stress on the individual character, together with the psychological approach to writing, was apparent during this period in the development of the English and

American novel in general. Walter Allen, in noting this factor, points out that, by the nineteen thirties, the narrative form had given way to one of psychological absorption into the inner

consciousness. 8 Witham, in talking of the novel of adolescence in -6-

America, sees it as reflecting the shift in fictional technique from the objective naturalism of the twenties and thirties to the subtle and symbolic presentation of inner mental patterns in the forties and fifties (p.27).

When we examine the history of the novel in Australia in the 19th and early 20th centuries, we find it difficult to make any definitive statement about themes of childhood and adolescence because of the lack of any substantial body of literature in this genre.

The history of the Australian novel up to 1920, according to Heseltine, can be told for most purposes in six titles, and Barnes argues along similar lines, 9 putting forward the generally accepted theory that early Australian novels - if, indeed, that term can be used of many of them - were more interested in "local colour", more concerned with details of the setting than with the narrative. It is of interest, however, that he chooses Henry Handel Richardson's novel,

The Getting of Wisdom (1910), as one of the earliest classics. Two other books, not in the same class but often mentioned for their contribution to a meagre store, are Miles Franklin's autobiography,

My Brilliant Career (1901), and Louis Stone's novel, Jonah (1911).

These three works, all with considerable stress on the adolescent period, (together with some of Henry Lawson's short stories), might, then, be said to constitute the forerunners of the modern novel of adolescence and, in their choice of subject matter, to indicate the direction which the Australian novel and short story were to take increasingly in the years from 1920 onwards. As we shall see later, many of the novels of the twenties and thirties relied still to a great extent on documentation so that the development towards a -7- psychological approach in form, theme and characterisation came, for obvious historical reasons, at a later stage in this country.

Writing in 1971, T. Inglis Moore suggests that only now is

Australian fiction "turning away from the reporting of the external world by social realism to a more imaginative, more creative probing of the inner world of the mind. 1110 We shall be examining the validity of this statement in subsequent discussion.

Another important influence on the psychological approach to literature in the twentieth century - and especially the literature of adolescence - has been Freud's theory of infantile sexuality with its accompanying revelation that adolescence often involves the recurrence of infantile sexual impulses. There does not seem in Australian literature much evidence, as yet, of the conscious exploitation of this theory though its manifestation can be often observed, especially in those works of an autobiographical nature.

Freud's theories have attempted to explain why the period of adolescence is often considered the most difficult one for a patient to re-enter psychically. It is frequently seen, as Douvan comments, as "too passionate a period: hot, angry, sentimental, lustful, grief-ridden, sullen, anxious, bitter, elated, tormented"

(p.3). One might hazard the suggestion here that the novelist can more "comfortably" re-enter his adolescence through the creation of a fictional character or even through the selective and distancing process of an autobiographical work. -8-

Definitions of Adolescence

Before proceeding to an examination of the influences on and the social background of the Australian novel of adolescence, I would like to discuss, in general terms, what adolescence means. It is relatively easy to define the physical boundaries of this period, remembering that physical maturity is now several years earlier in the developed countries of the world than it was in the 19th century, due largely to better social conditions.

It should be noted also that, in trying to formulate a definition of adolescence, we are doing so within the social frame- work of the developed countries because it is almost entirely within that framework that our study has been made. Many anthropologists have stressed that it is the society and its culture which define adolescence, not its inherent nature which does so. 11

The following quotation from Hurlock provides a useful starting point:

"Adolescence" comes from the Latin verb, adolescere, which means "to grow" or "to grow to maturity". As Horrocks has defined it, 'Adolescence is both a way of life and a span of time in the physical and psychological development of an individual. It represents a period of growth and change in nearly all aspects of the child's physical, mental, social, and emotional life. It is a time of new experiences, new responsibilities, and new relationships with adults as well as peers' • 12

It is generally recognised13 that the average age for the onset of puberty is for girls during their thirteenth year and boys during their fourteenth, th<1Ugh the process of pubescence begins, of -9- course, a few years earlier. The significance of these physical and emotional processes plays, as might be expected, an important part in the treatment of the adolescent in literature. The degree to which this kind of material is used and the point of view of the writer towards this period of his protagonist's life will be discussed in detail in later chapters.

Though adolescence may be said to begin with sexual maturity, it is harder to pin-point its conclusion for we may well agree that there is often "something of the uncompleted work of adolescence in every adult". 14 For some writers it is the end of "empty dreams", as Mr Lewisham15 says, tearing up his "schema" as if it is his "past self" while he embarks upon a new way of life involving the responsib­ ilities of marriage and fatherhood - significantly, perhaps, in the year 1900. Certainly, it would seem that the synthesis of dream and reality is axiomatic for a state of maturity in our modern society but we might question how true it is to-day that the goal of the adolescent is to move, as Cole suggests, "from a type of behaviour dependent upon pleasure and the avoidance of pain to one dependent upon conscience and a sense of duty". 16

Many writers in the fields of psychology and sociology would place the conclusion of adolescence when, to quote Hurlock again, "independence from adult authority is legally assured" {p.1) - until recently, at the age of twenty-one. In Australia, however, there is no longer anything "magical" about the age of twenty-one.

In an interesting comment on Australian adolescents, the Attorney­

General for New South Wales in 1972 elaborates by saying: -10-

Twenty-one has no special claim to be the age of maturity. According to one theory 21 evolved because it was about the age at which young warriors became strong enough to wear armour. But according to much expert opinion - and I agree with it - young people reach the age of physical and mental maturity much earlier now. Young people to-day want to behave like adults, and do behave like adults, at 18 • 17

As a consequence of this kind of attitude, Australian adolescents now have, at the age of eighteen, the legal right to drive, drink alcohol, see restricted films - a recent innovation which clearly differentiates between early and late adolescence - join the regular army, get married18 without parental consent and vote19 - not necessarily in that order!

It may, therefore, be more useful to take a broader view of the period of adolescence and not restrict it too closely to a chronological age range. Such a view would be supported also by the fact - as we shall see in many of our literary examples - that there is a widely differing rate of growth of all kinds amongst adolescents, as is obvious in the early and late maturers, as well as a distinct difference in the same person between his own early and late adolescence. (Seventeen is usually taken as the dividing line,

"the year of temptation" as Jamie's grandmother calls it in The Mango

Tree.) 20

In addition, while the adolescent to-day is receiving on the one hand increasing rights and independence, 21 there are some, at least, who, by staying on at school or going on to University or

College, are financially dependent upon their parents and to some extent subject to their discipline. -11-

Witham, in noting the financial, social and legal problems which are being added to the physical, emotional and intellectual problems of the American adolescent under modern living conditions, suggests that the suitability of this period for the literary treat- ment of inner and outer conflict has been greatly increased. "Thus" he says, "the adolescent has become an archetypal figure for the confusions of our age" (p.25).

It is too early yet to see many of these contemporary issues22 and their accompanying repercussions reflected in Australian literature but one would expect that they might become increasingly prominent in future novels about the adolescent.

Nichols, in rejecting a strictly chronological definition of the term "adolescence", sees this period as:

the first real encounter with adult emotion, ideas and social relationships, a time when, explicitly or not, the effort of growth is to construct a personal synthesis which will be able to cope with these, and make sense of them. It includes the emergence of true self-awareness, autonomy and freedom. 23

Simon adopts a somewhat similar approach when he writes:

The period of adolescence includes approx­ imately the chronological ages between twelve and nineteen. However, since many literary characters in the later teens are treated as adult characters, for the purpose of this study, an adolescent character is one who is undergoing a transitional period between child­ hood and adulthood in which he is still emotion­ ally or intellectually immature and has not yet been granted the status of independent adult­ hood. (p. 6) -12-

Broadly speaking, these last two definitions would cover the field of adolescence as presented in the literature under examination in this thesis although I would wish to clarify Nichols'slast statement to the effect that the word, "emergence", implies the beginning of the process of self-awareness and not its completion. It would be true to say,als°" that while there are some very interesting presentations in our study of the adult who is still behaving like an adolescent - of which Sam Pollit in The Man Who Loved Children24 would be the best example - our primary focus is on the maturation of the adolescent rather than on immaturity in the adult.

In looking at the general characteristics of adolescence and the images associated with them, we find that the maturing human being

does indeed live in "a complicated world11 • 25 One of the complicating factors, which New26 suggests as primarily the clearest cause of adolescent disturbance, lies in the fact that the physical development of the child is such that he generally reaches sexual maturity before intellectual maturity. Most of the books we shall examine will be concerned with the discrepancy between sexual growth and, on the whole, emotional rather than intellectual maturation. The mental capacity of a human being, it is now recognised, reaches its peak during adolescence but, as Davis points out, "acquired knowledge, judgement, insight and

self reliance are generally far from their peak11 • 27

As far as the intellectual development of the adolescent is concerned, one sees it being channelled most often into avenues which form a substitute for the emotions. Reading, particularly, is often indulged in as a way of escaping involvement with life. The other common characteristic of the intellectual development of the adolescent, apparent especially in those novels of an autobiographical nature, is -13- its close relationship with writing. We see this illustrated in many of the novels under discussion where the urge to come to terms with the pressures of both intellectual and emotional growth through writing is a marked feature of the protagonist's life. Witham makes a similar comment about the American novel in the period 1920-1960.

(p.137)

The creativity of adolescence, both in artistic and sexual terms, is stressed by most writers, metaphors of birth and springtime being often used as a parallel to this time of budding development.

As expressed in the following quotation:

This is the period when the body is strong and the spirit viable and dynamic. On the symbolic side, we see youth identified with the springtime of the year - the time of emergence and growth, the period when all is fresh, clean and pure. Winter, on the other hand, comes to represent age - the eventual conclusion of the life cycle - the winter is cold and the winter is hard. 28

Spring, however, as Eliot29 is wont to suggest, can also be hard and it is wise to bear this in mind when looking at this aspect of adolescence, as we shall see in our later examination of the novels in this study. Likewise, the images of purity and innocence - states which are usually shattered as the adolescent is pitched headlong into an evil world - are frequently encountered and are sometimes seen to have a complexity beyond their archetypal usage and accepted association.

Certainly, adolescence is regarded as one of the critical

stages in the life of man and is often seen as a period of second birth.

In the apinicnof Levy and Monroe, "No mother ever delivered a child at

adolescence with less pain than at the hour of birth". 30 Henderson -14- contrasts the "death" of the adolescent and the "birth" of the man, preparing for life, with the onset of old age - the menopausal period in women - when one prepares not for life (at least on this earth) but for the actual and final death. He shows also illustrations of

Australian Aborigine boys covered at puberty with a blanket, a symbol of their ritual death, a necessary precursor to their rebirth as adults as well as to their entry into the tribe's collective identity. 31

Such symbols of death and rebirth as part of the "rites of passage" from one state to the next are closely related to the metaphors used in literature about adolescence as an age of trans­ ition. For the final voyage into adulthood, the most common one in this respect is that of travel itself and, in the Australian novels studied, the train provides the most common means employed by the protagonist for the escape from his family in his progression towards autonomy.

Before he takes this step, however, his relationships with his parents, siblings and peers form a vital part of his development.

For the portrayal of the adolescent's search for self-awareness and his efforts towards the establishment of his identity, the mirror image is the one most frequently used.

Traditionally, in so-called civilised communities and

increasingly in the twentieth century, the period of adolescence has been regarded as a period of stress. One has only to glance through

titles of books and journal articles to see the number that are epitomiled in such a title as The Stormy Decade: Adolescence. 32

Jones writes: "As is well known, adolescence is a period of storm -15-

and stress for many young people11 • 33 Hurlock comments that "studies of happiness at different ages during the life span have revealed that adolescence stands close to the top of the list of unhappy ages" (p.19) ; and Josselyn suggests, along Freudian lines, that this may be because

"it is a period in which many conflicts dormant since childhood return to be solved". 34 Adolescence does appear to be a time, both for psychological and physiological reasons, when,as Hadfield postulates,

"disorders are more liable to happen than in earlier years 11 • 35

In a recent letter - January, 1970 - to the American Journal,

Seventeen, a teenager writes emotionally, with Keatsean overtones: 36

"I'm sure most of us will testify that adolescence is full of turmoil of heart, mind and soul". On a more down-to-earth, Australian level1 there is the conversation between the protagonist and his friend,

Geoff, in J. Hetherington's book, The Morning was Shining:

'You know' Geoff said suddenly, 'there's a rotten time coming for us.' ''Is there?' I said, 'Why?'

'It's called the age of adolescence and I can tell you it isn't much fun. We're going to wish we'd never been born.• 37

We shall find many exclamations to this effect both by authors and their characters in the works under discussion. For if stresses and strains "are normal to adolescence", if "they are the rapids and cascades in the stream of growth1138 and if, furthermore, we believe with New that "the portrayal of the human struggle to survive conflict is the central concern of the art of fiction" (p. 6) , then it is not surprising that the period of adolescence has become an increasingly popular subject for twentieth century writers. -16-

(My presupposition in regard to New's statement is that many would see this portrayal as a major concern, if not a central one.)

We should add here, perhaps, that though these characteristics, as outlined above, are fairly common to adolescence and are frequently found in the novels of our survey, one would need to be careful not to take the adolescent of the novel as a prototype for all adolescents in

Australia. Taken en masse, such protagonists could present a picture of deviancy, super-sensitivity and unhappiness to a degree that would not be typical of adolescents in general. 39 On the other hand, there is a great deal to be offered in such studies in the way of insights into the functioning of the "normal" adolescent and, thereby, into the whole spectrum of human growth and the values and attitudes of society. For, just as the adolescent is conditioned by the formative years of child- hood, so the man emerges from his adolescence into maturity; any understanding, then, that we may gain about the nature of our own inner experiences during adolescence will, necessarily, lead to a further enlightenment about ourselves and others as more mature persons.

Basis for Selection of Literature for this Study

Fifty-five works by forty-three authors have been chosen, together with a representative selection of short stories. The following criteria have been adopted for their inclusion:

1) They contain an adolescent protagonist or a major adolescent figure. (Occasional reference is made to books outside this survey with a minor adolescent character of special interest.)

2) They cover the period of adolescence, sometimes including as well the pre-adolescent and/or the post-adolescent stage. A few books have been included where the adolescent period of the protagonist's life is treated relatively briefly but in which the author does, nevertheless, make a contribution of value to this study. -17-

3) They are written by Australian authors40 and have been published during the period 1924-74.

4) They include "pure" fiction and works of an autobiographical nature.

5) They represent the major authors of this era. Books by some of the minor ones have also been included in order to present an overall survey of this kind of Australian literature during the last fifty years.

Selective references have also been made from time to time ? / to works by non-Australian authors for purposes of comparison.

With reference to item (4) above, some further explanation may be deemed necessary. In this connection, I take the point of view expressed by T. Inglis Moore in the following statement, the tenor of which I see as being particularly relevant to the novel of adolescence:

All writing, even the most imaginative is ultimately autobiographical, spun with thread drawn, like a spider's web, from the body of the writer's perceptions and thoughts, dreams and desires and memories. (p.4)

I think, too, that for many of the novels studied, Henry Handel

Richardson's comment on The Fortunes of Richard Mahony is very apt. She is quoted as having said that fact and fiction were so interwoven in the

Mahony chronicle that she could not tell where one ended and the other began.41

Though such a deduction may well be true of the majority of the novels examined in this thesis, so that one may feel justifiably that there is no question of their inclusion in a discussion of literary fiction, there is still the consideration to be met as to whether literature, overtly classed as "pure" autobiography, has a place in a study of this kind. I believe that all autobiography has the potential for being classified as a work of art. Nichols, in discussing Marcel -18-

Proust writing of his own life, describes how Proust sets out to rediscover his own personal past, not in a random way through a patch­ work of recollections but in such a way that the inner meaning of past events appear in relation to the unified whole of his life. He then goes on to quote W.H. Hudson's words: "In going back we take our present selves with us" (p.12). If the author takes too much back with him and in too self-conscious a fashion, he may well destroy the immediacy and spontaneity of the adolescent period and, in this connection, we shall be examining methods of approach and stylistic devices in detail at a later stage. As we have implied earlier, however, it is impossible for a writer not to take something back with him in his "recherche du temps perdu1142 and, in varying degrees, therefore, the so-called autobiography can never be the whole truth.

It results in at least a potential art form43 wherein the facts have been re-ordered and re-structured; it is the end result of a journey by its author back into time - to a crucial time of his life if the period is adolescence; at its best, it is the creative outcome of a mind which has dug deep into the recesses of memory at the mercy of the unconscious. 44

In concluding this topic, I would like to sum up with the words of New, grappling with a similar situation:

Truth in itself will not in the process of being recorded necessarily result in art, but the facets of truth, arranged so as to reveal the totality of the fictional situation, can contribute the sense of vitality necessary for art. (p.52)

It may be as well at this stage, too, to clarify the relation­ ship between the novel of adolescence and the novel for adolescents. -19-

None of the novels in this study has been chosen on the

grounds of its having been written for adolescent readers though many of them, of course, would be enjoyed by the late adolescent age group.

Stuart's Ilbarana, for example, when reviewed, 45 was recommended

especially for High Schools, as well as for adult readers. Unlike books written for children of various ages, the novel written

expressly for adolescents is less likely to succeed because of the wide divergence in development and interests over this period. 46 It

is interesting to note that Clark, for example, in his study47 finds

that the one novel (out of his total of four) written with an adolescent

audience in mind was the most superficial. In Australian literature,

Ivan Southall would have made the greatest contribution to novels aimed

primarily at an adolescent audience, in books such as Ash Road48 and

Matt and Jo, 49 and these two novels have been included because they can

compare favourably on a literary basis with others in the survey.

As might be expected, novels written by adolescents are not

prolific and there is only one chosen for this study, Harry's Child, 50

by Suzanne Holly Jones who was nineteen when the work was written.

Short stories, such as the prize-winning ones in the American Journal,

Seventeen, January, 1970, all composed by adolescents about pre­

adolescent and adolescent experiences, often show some literary merit

and evidence of real insight into the author's own feelings and those

of others. There is little opportunity, however, in Australia for the

publication of stories by adolescents. Poetry, because of its simpler

form and highly emotional content, is a more frequent vehicle for

adolescent creativity as can be seen in the Australian publication,

Under twenty-five. 51 In this anthology, there are only two short

stories by adolescents, only one of which shows some originality and

promise. -20-

The Adolescent - through fiction and psychology

Both in this Introduction and in the ensuing chapters of this work, reference has been made,from time to time)to writers in the fieldJ of psychology and sociology as I have felt these references to be a necessary adjunct to a study of this kind. It is true, too, that some of the works presented would be of interest to sociologists and psychologists but not more so, one would imagine, than to the literary critic, a criterion adopted by Jones in discussing a similar situation in relation to novels about the Aborigine~, As she further points out, an author is likely to produce a poor novel if he supports his case with a mass of corroborative detail. 52

I should like to stress that, despite the overlap in subject matter and interest, the two areas of literature and psychology are not synonymous. I concur here with Nichols who, in covering the same ground, writes:

I wish to maintain that literary communication, marked as it is at its best by a high degree of both particularity and universality, is a distinct mode - not therefore the same as the frontiers of psychology pushed out, however far - and one which is indispensable to our understanding of our own experience, and that of childhood. (p.4)

In fact, in discussing certain aspects of adolescence during this thesis, I have used quotations from psychological works and set them against similar thematic scenes or conversations as portrayed in the novel in order to show how the creative writer's skill and imagin- ation have clothed the bare bones of psychological fact. Jung makes the point that literary discourse enables us to understand the character of our own inner experience and that the insights gained through literature offer recognition rather than comparison. 53 In -21-

accepting this observation, one can, I think, still agree with

J. O'Brien's argument - if we take "the results" to be a deeper under- standing of ourselves and a greater empathy with our fellow human beings - when he says:

Despite the differences between the point of view of the analyst and that of the creative artist, the object they are viewing remains the same for both and consequently the results they achieve are very similar. (p.23)

In this respect, one might note that an interesting tendency in recent years has been that of combining a psychological study of the adolescent with illustrations from creative writing. Douvan uses this method, for example, in The Adolescent Experience and Kiell has produced two major works in this vein, The Adolescent Through Fiction:

A Psychological Approachs4 and The Universal Experience of Adolescence.SS

The Need for Research

The final issue to be raised in this Introduction concerns the question of the need for an examination of the topic under consideration.

While we have noted the emergence in England and America of increasing research into the subject of the adolescent in literature over the last twenty to thirty years, we do not find a similar trend in this country.

I would claim that the evidence of overseas research and, more over- whelmingly, that of the Australian novels themselves, strongly suggests that here is a fruitful field of investigation which is particularly rich in insights and discoveries of value to other areas of literary study as well as bringing in their train the delight and satisfaction of personal rewards.

In a book published as recently as 1971, with clear potential -22-

relevance, Social Patterns in Australian Literature by T. Inglis

Moore, there is no mention of the novel of adolescence as such, except for a very brief reference to Norman Lindsay's work. We may well endorse the critical comment of Michael Wilding that "as far as

Professor Moore's study is concerned, Australians come into the world adults". 56 It is pertinent to note that it is New's thesis on adolescence written in England to which we must look for comment on

"Commonwealth" novels because, as the author states, "It seems vital to consider works from this many sided source as well" (p.2). (He includes one Australian novel.)

Heseltine, in discussing Vance Palmer's work, recognises the recurring theme in the Australian short story of "the painful awakening of the adolescent mind to adult experience", 57 and we shall see in later chapters that the short story is particularly valuable for this kind of moment of insight. In this same article, Heseltine refers, in an evaluation of Koch's work, to his "fusion of two recurring themes of Australian fiction - adolescence and a profound hopelessness in the face of experience" (p.213). There have been, of course, many excellent studies of individual authors58 whose works are concerned with the theme of adolescence but I think it would be fair to say that no "in depth" research into the treatment of adolescence in general has been produced over the last fifty years.

Indeed, apart from the evidence in the references from

Heseltine quoted above, even the recognition of the significance and prevalence of the adolescent in Australian literature seems to have been notably lacking.

At the beginning of this chapter, we discussed the novel of

adolescence as a twentieth century phenomenon; we defined the term -23-

"adolescence" and noted its major characteristics. Having outlined the basis for selection of the books for this study and traced briefly the relationship between works of autobiography, fiction and psychology, we have stated finally the need for research.

we shall now proceed to examine the unique relevance which the literature of adolescence possesses for Australia and its people in this century. -24-

Special Note: In the first reference in this thesis to any author or work, I have given full details in the chapter notes. In order to avoid excessive use of notes, I have placed in subsequent references, where there is no likelihood of confusion, all page numbers in parentheses immediately following a quotation or other citation.

NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE

1. "The Changing American Family", Children, 10 (1963}, 173-4. This point of view was stressed with even more vehemence by Margaret Mead in personal statements made by her in Australia in July, 1973.

2. See, e.g., H. Sebald, Adolescence: A Sociological Analysis (New York, 1968} and w. Jarvis, The Adolescent Years (Sydney, 1969}. A strong exception to his point of view is to be found in Professor W.F. Connell's study of adolescents in Sydney, Growing up in an Australian city (Melbourne, 1957) and in his present study 12-20: Studies of City Youth, now in the process of publication (November, 1974}. One of the co-authors of the latter study, Dr K.E. Sinclair, is quoted as saying: "There's very little evidence for the generation gap, rebellionness or exaggerated influence of peer groups". (sydney Morning Herald, April 6, 1974.}

3. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (Liverpool University, 1964/5), p.2. P. Coveney, in commenting on the frequency of the treatment of childhood in modern literature, adds that "a theme ceases to be personal or eccentric when it becomes the serious and deliberate choice of so many over so long a time. It becomes reasonable to speak in terms of a literary phenomenon ••• " The Image of Childhood (Harmondsworth, 1967}, pp.34-35.

4. C.T. Simon, Adolescence in Literature: A Comparative Study. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (New York University, 1967).

5. W.T. Witham (New York, 1964}. Note also two European studies of comparatively recent years: J. O'Brien, The Novel of Adolescence in France (New York, 1937) and Irene Reifsnyder, A Comparative Study of the problems of adolescent heroes and heroines in Russian and Soviet literature. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (University of New York, 1963).

6. Elizabeth Douvan and J. Adelson, The Adolescent Experience (New York, 1966), p.l.

7. {London, 1967), p.206.

8. The English Novel: A short critical history (London, 1954), p.41. -25-

9. See H. Heseltine, "Australian Fiction since 1920", pp.181-223, and John Barnes, "Australian Fiction To 1920", pp.134-180, in The Literature of Australia (Harmondsworth, 1972), ed. G. Dutton. We might note here also that the episode of a child lost in the Australian bush was used in several of the early novels, such as The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn (1859) by Charles Kingsley, For the Term of his Natural Life (1870) by Marcus Clarke and Such is Life by Joseph Furphy (1896).

10. Social Patterns in Australian Literature (Sydney, 1971), p.18.

11. See, e.g., M. Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (New York, 1950) for an account of a very different kind of adolescence from that of so-called civilised countries. In Australia, we have the example of the Aborigines and we shall be referring to an instance of "primitive" adolescence in a later discussion of Ilbarana by D. Stuart (Melbourne, 1971).

12. Quoted in E. Hurlock, Adolescent Development (New York, 1967), p.l.

13. The Oxford English Dictionary (1967) states that the age for being "functionally capable of procreation" in England is legally twelve in girls, fourteen in boys. The position is similar in Australia.

14. A.T. Jersild, The Psychology of Adolescence (New York, 1963). Quoted in Hurlock, op. cit., p.22. In this connection, the eminent psychologist, Ernest Jones, writes "one might think it would be no very formidable task to establish the most notable differences between a child and an adult, but I can only say that on attempting it I found it extremely difficult". "Some Problems of Adolescence", Brit. Journal Psychology, LXV, 13 (1922), 33-39.

15. H.G. Wells, Love and Mr Lewisham (London, 1900), p.252.

16. Louella Cole, Psychology of Adolescence (New York, 1954), p.5.

17. K.M. Mccaw. Quoted by J. Yeomans in The Sun-Herald, September 21, 1969.

18. The age of sexual consent for girls is sixteen. Many of the protagonists in our study - like their real life counterparts - are clearly unconcerned by the fact that it is a legal offence for a boy to make love to a girl under sixteen, even if she is willing! The reduction of the legal age of consent to 14 years is one of the law reforms called for in a recent report by the Sexual Law Reform Society in England.

19. It is of interest to note the poor response by some eighteen year olds to register in 1973 for the franchise - only 25.3% in New South Wales - though this is balanced by 82.6% in Victoria. Why such an enormous disparity, one wonders? -26-

20. R. McKie (Sydney, 1974).

21. See Children's Rights ed. P. Adams (London, 1972), pp.127 ff. for further discussion on the rights of the adolescent.

22. Some of them,like conscription, education and increased sexual freedom are treated in J.M. Couper's two novels, The Thundering Good To-Day (London, 1970) and Looking for a Wave (London, 1973).

23. K.F. Nichols, The contribution of creative literature ••• to the understanding of the adolescent. Unpublished M.Ed. Thesis (Liverpool University, 1967), p.10. Witham, op. cit., states that the majority of adolescents in his survey are in the 12-21 age group. (p.3)

24. c. Stead (Harmondsworth, 1970). This novel provides also one of the best examples of an adolescent who is chronologically young - Louisa is 11½ at the beginning of the book and 14 at the end - but more physically, mentally and emotionally mature than many much older adolescent characters in our study; and, as we have suggested, more emotionally mature than her father.

25. s. de Beauvoir's phrase about her adolescence, used in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Harmondsworth, 1963).

26. W.H. New, The problems of "growing up" treated in selected English, American and Commonwealth novels. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (Leeds University, 1965/66), p.39.

27. K. Davis, "Adolescence and the Social Structure", in The Adolescent: a book of readings, ed. J.M. Seidman (New York, 1960), p.42.

28. D. Gottlieb and C.E. Ramsay, The American Adolescent (Illinois, 1964) , p. l.

29. As in "April is the cruellest month" (The Waste Land) and "depraved May" (Gerontion).

30. "The Adolescent and his Happy Family", in The Adolescent: a book of readings, op. cit., p.389.

31. G.L. Henderson, "Ancient Myths and Modern Man", in Man and His Symbols conceived and edited by C.G. Jung (London, 1964), pp.130-31.

32. G.H. Moht and M.A. Despres (New York, 1958).

33. H.E. Jones, in The Adolescent: A book of readings, op. cit., p.230.

34. I.M. Josselyn, The Adolescent and his World (New York, 1952), p.120.

35. J.A. Hadfield, Childhood and Adolescence (Harmondsworth, 1962), p. 244. -27-

36. Remembering Keats's Preface to Endymion which he wrote in 1818: "The imagination of the boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment •••• " The Poetical Works of John Keats ed. H.B. Forman (London, 1931), p.56.

37. (London, 1971), p.257.

38. C.B. Zachry "Customary stresses and strains of adolescence". Ann. Amer. Acad. Pol. Soc. Sci., 236 (1944), 136-144. An opposite point of view - and one less often seen - is put forward by L. Cole, when she writes: In the normal growth of a normal individual, childhood fades, adolescence advances, and adulthood arrives in a gradual, smooth series of small changes and with only temporary and incidental difficulties and disturbances. (p.5)

39. See note 2. In Australia, there is the comment of Mr R.E. Stroobant a co-author of W.F. Connell in 12-20: Studies of City Youth, that "the broad finding in the 1950s was that teenagers were leading relatively straight-forward, contented lives, and were all that their parents and the community wanted them to be. By and large, that's what we found, too." Sydney Morning Herald, April 6, 1974.

40. I have included two novels by Christina Stead and Martin Boyd, both of whom have lived the major part of their adult life abroad, seeing their work in the category of "the result of experience in Australia when the author was such a resident"; and the two novels of John Couper, an author who was born in Scotland but who had lived twenty years in Australia when his first book was published, seeing him as "a resident as distinct from a mere visitor". These are two of the guidelines laid down by H.M. Green in A History of Australian Literature, I (Sydney, 1961), Preface, p.XIII (though he does exclude those of Stead's novels which were written in America). These three authors are also included in G. Johnston's Annals of Australian literature (Melbourne, 1970).

41. Nettie Palmer, Henry Handel Richardson: A Study (Sydney, 1950), pp.155-6. We are reminded also of Dickens who said of David Copperfield that he had done it ingeniously with a complicated interweaving of fact and fiction.

42. Proust has some interesting observations to offer on the "going back" process in Vol. I, Part I of his book A la recherche du temps perdu (Paris, 1954).

43. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce would be an outstanding example of a fully created art form based closely on the author's childhood and adolescence but not "an autobio­ graphy". -28-

44. Nichols, op. cit., p.67, refers to Jung as making the distinction between autobiographical novels and autobiography in the fact that the former draw from the hinterland of the mind rather than from its vivid foreground.

45. In Sydney Morning Herald, February 26, 1972, by Anne Bower Ingram.

46. Alan Garner's Novel Red Shift (London, 1973) is an example of a book which many younger adolescents could find difficult to under­ stand while most older ones would not find it sufficiently sophis­ ticated or substantial. Another important factor is that the adolescent is usually too close to his own experiences to laugh at himself or the situations in which he is likely to be involved. Hurlock discusses this aspect. (p.82) See also Bernard Shaw's comments through Tanner in Act I of Man and Superman.

47. L. Clark, A Critical Approach to Four Novels of Adolescence. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (University of Iowa, 1970).

48. (Sydney, 1965).

49. (Sydney, 1973).

50. (Brisbane, 1964).

51. A. O'Donovan (ed.} (Brisbane, circa 1967) No date given. The two adolescents are Eileen Haley (18) and Susan Hemphill (19). "Marcellin", by the former, is the better story.

52. Dorothy Jones, Treatment of the Aboriginal in Australian Fiction. Unpublished M.A. Thesis (Adelaide University, 1961), p.140.

53. Modern Man in Search of a Soul (London, 1961), Chapter VIII.

54. (New York, 1959).

55. (New York, 1964). As its name implies, Kiell stresses the universality of adolescent development in all Western European countries, from the first century to contemporary times. It is of interest that he, too, emphasises "the great internal turmoil and external disorder of adolescence" as universal and "only moderately affected by cultural determinants" (p.9}.

56. "Writer and Reader. Social Patterns", Southerly, XXXII, I (1972), 68-76 (73).

57. H. Heseltine, "Australian Literature since 1920", in The Literature of Australia, op. cit., p.200.

58. Particularly those of Porter, Norman Lindsay, Vance Palmer, Stead, Stow, Harrower and Richardson. Not all their novels, however, are concerned with adolescence; nor has this facet of their work been stressed, necessarily, in those that are. CHAPIBR~O

Australia: the adolescent country

A discussion of the relevance of this concept to the literature of adolescence -30-

CHAPTER TWO: AUSTRALIA, THE ADOLESCENT COUNTRY

A discussion of the relevance of this concept to the novel of adolescence. 1

Is our writers' preoccupation with it ~dolescenc~ a kind of mirror image of our growing pains as a people, a necessary part of the process of finding ourselves in literature? Certainly it is only a post nineteenth-century phenomenon; those hardy pioneers ••• sprang up fully adult with their pens in confident untroubled hands.

Joan Stevens, The New Zealand Novel, 1860-1960. 2

The question asked by Stevens about New Zealand poses a query that has, perhaps, even more relevance for Australia and is one, I think, worthy of some consideration. As we have already indicated, the theme of adolescence has been treated by many of Australia's foremost writers. I should now like to show that the process of maturing, an integral part of adolescence, has been paralleled in this country's development over the last fifty years and has been strongly reflected in the growth of our literary as well as our social culture.

In a very real sense, therefore, a study of the adolescent in

Australian literature is a study also of the country where he lives; he becomes a figure who, while interesting and important in his own right, exists in addition as a significant metaphor representing both the society of his time and the historical emergence of his country: through change to stability, through innocence to experience, through conflict to resolution, through maturation to adulthood. Apart from -31-

New Zealand, there would perhaps be no country in the English speaking world to-day whose stage of growth offers such a close and interesting parallel to the adolescent period as that of Australia. 3 It is for this reason, then, that the insights gained from a study of this area of fiction have a value far above those of personal, individual insights, important though these may be. In commenting on this aspect of the literature of adolescence, New writes:

When the person growing to maturity is seen as a representative figure of a social age of change, the courses of action open to the individual become also the courses of action open to a society. The added dimension offers the scope for a greater universality, and the art that can be achieved in the depiction of the conflict of maturing seen as a corollary more likely to endure. (p.16)

The parallel is seen to be even more relevant when we consider that many of the generally accepted characteristics of adolescence are analgous to the kind of characteristics seen to be endemic to Australia and its people. When we examine the literature of the last fifty years, we shall find these attributes portrayed and, as would be expected, a gradual maturation becoming evident in the social and personal attitudes of the Australian people which is reflected in our more recent public- ations.

Many writers have referred to the Australian's ingrained dislike of authority - epitomized in Henry Lawson's oft quoted lines in "Shearers": "They call no biped lord or sir/And touch their hat to no one". This dislike and distrust, especially of the military and the police, have their roots in the history of the colony, first with the rebellions and ill-treated convicts, later on the goldfields and more generally in relation to the strong Irish element in the population. 4 -32-

We shall be discussing in a later chapter this anti-authoritarian element in the Australian novel together with the "larrikinism" which was prevalent in the early part of the century and is well illustrated in Stone's novel, Jonah, where the youthful gangs are dodging "their natural enemies", the police, "'before they're in long trousers'", as Mrs Yabsley comments. 5 We shall see, too, examples of more modern manifestations against society in contemporary groups. For most young people, however, in real life and in fiction, it is the parental figure6 who represents authority, and one important factor in their maturity lies in the resolution of the conflicts which ensue when such authority is flouted. The conflicts of adolescence have, of course, their counterpart within the much wider framework of human conflict so that any understanding of their resolution which emerges from litera­ ture is applicable to life in general and to Australia's evolvement as a mature society in particular. New comments in similar vein when he says that:

the concept of maturation can be found readily in the literatures of the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Commonwealth, where it is used not only for particularly national or regional expression but also for re-creating the worldwide conflicts of a twentieth century age of change. (p.375)

The behaviour seen in the adolescent's rebellion against his parents is close to that of Australia itself in its relationship with

"mother" England, a term frequently used in the past, and implying a mother/adolescent symbiosis. Though there have been intermittent outbreaks against conventional English values and the authority wielded by the mother country, it is only in comparatively recent -33- years7 that there have been increasingly strong outcries against "the cord that binds". 8 The use of the term, "coming of age", is now more frequently seen in critical literature and in newspapers though, as we have already noted in discussing the question of where adolescence begins and ends, it is difficult to find complete uniformity as to when Australia came "of age" or, in fact, as to whether she has already done so. Writing of the nineteen fifties, authors such as Serle9 and

Partridge10 were suggesting that the process of national and cultural maturation was still continuing. On the literary scene, G.A. Wilkes, referring to the nationalistic literature of the 1890s, has this to say:

This independence may be claimed as a sign that Australian literature had now come of age. Alternatively, the assertive nationalism and the repudiation of overseas canons may be regarded as stamping it as provincial and adolescent still. The truth lies between the two extremes. 11

He concludes by asserting that it was in the period from the end of the 1914-18 war to the present (1964) that "Australian litera­ ture has really attained maturity" (p.34).

By 1970, there were more definitive statements of the kind made by Pike to the effect that "now that Australia has come of age ••• ". 12 The conclusion of this statement is also interesting because Pike suggests that a complete survey of Australia is now needed "even if growing pains are hard to describe and harder to explain". Such a need could well be applied also to the field of

Australian literature. With reference to the latter part of his assertion, I would hope to show that the process of description and

explanation is one to which Australian literature has already made an

important contribution. -34-

Part of the dependence of Australia on England had been expressed in earlier novels through the protagonist's desire to return

"home" either for a visit or as a permanent step. In Henry Kingsley's I book, Geoffry Hamlyn (1859), as Ewers13 points out, the one ambition of the characters is to return to England, having made their fortunes in

Australia. in many of Boyd's novels and those of Henry Handel J Richardson in the twentieth century, the conflicts of the Anglo/

Australian are explored in "the competing claims of their English and

Australian homes" 14 and the way of life that each entails. As

A.A. Phillips puts it: "For Boyd's educated townsmen of the twenties, the voyage to England was the way to freedom". 15

A marked feature of the work of adolescence,which we shall be discussing in detail later on,is the fact that many of the adolescent protagonists embark on a journey at the end of the story. Almost without exception, however, that journey is within Australia itself and there is no indication that the adolescent will need to travel overseas to complete his voyage to maturity, though in fact many of them do leave the country at a later stage. This subsequent travel abroad, apparent amongst Australian writers also, is accompanied, however, by far less emphasis on the visit to England; nor does the implication exist that they are seeking an identity at "home".

Australia, instead, has become the home to which most of them return.

If we have not yet reached the stage described as a goal by Judith

Wright over ten years ago, many would agree, I think, that we are well on the way. She concludes by saying: -35-

For we are the Antipodes, the Opposites, the Underdogs. we still live in a hut that's upside-down. Only now, gradually, is the love-hate relationship we have with this country beginning to become clear to us. Some day we will be able to think of Europe as our Antipodes. Only then will the theme of exile, sacrifice, hope be finally worked out, and our house be right-side up at last. 16

It is interesting to note that in Australia's defiance of authority, on the one hand, and her prolonged dependence on England as "mother", on the other, we see a typical example of the ambivalence so prevalent in adolescence.

The literary parallel may be expressed in the following words relating to American literature which T. Inglis Moore quotes as relevant to the history of Australian writing:

Caught between the urge of youth to break all ties with the past and the need of art for a tradition and a model by which to bend the raw material of life to formal expression, our earliest men of letters were at once naive, experimental, conformist, self-conscious, and imitative. 17

The growth of Australia is reflected also in the kind of suggestion put forward recently for the abolition of Anzac Day as a holiday for a national celebration. This proposal18 was an important one because of the almost sacrosanct aura surrounding this particular day; and the fact that such a proposition could even be made publicly - (though not yet accepted) - is a sign of Australia's questioning, maturing disposition.

Anzac Day is related closely to the part played by both world wars in the emergence of Australia as "a nation" and is typical of her need to look back and to stress the "grown-up" nature of her particip- -36-

ation in those conflicts. Now, however, it seems that the country is almost secure enough to look forward rather than backwards, that it has almost reached a stage when it can take its nationhood and its adulthood for granted, just as its writers are becoming mature enough to take, in Ward's words, "their Australian-ness for granted". 19

Now it is the adolescent, in particular, who is mocking the sentimental and shallow celebration of the past and demonstrating, in word and deed, against a future in which he should be required to fight. An interesting example of these new attitudes and the conflicts which they pose for the younger generation is seen in Couper's novel,

The Thundering Good To-Day, and in Seymour's earlier play, The One Day of the Year. 20 The protagonists in these works make a good contrast to the adolescents of the early thirties as portrayed in the stories of

Porter, 21 Johnston22 and Horne, 23 for example, and show the degree to which the acceptance of the Anzac theme as an illustration of Australia's

"finest achievement1124 has been rejected. As Jan says to Hughie,in

The One Day of the Year when he has been talking about the narrow, I provincial outlook of his parents - summed up in the terrible word,

"Australian!": "'They're what it was. We're what it's going to be!"'

(Act III, p.102)

Two other aspects which appear in any discussion of the

Australian character and which are equally a part of adolescent develop­ ment are those of the pioneer spirit and of mateship. The latter characteristic is manifested in a peculiarly Australian way, related perhaps to the former. In a country of hardship and isolation, where one's life might depend literally upon one's mate, it is not surprising that something akin to a cult of mateship was established in the early days of the colony and continued during the 19th century, its virtues -37- and sheer necessities being immortalised in many of Lawson's bush ballads and stories. 25 It is a cult which belongs more to the bush than to the city where its basic sincerity and disinterestedness are more open to question, where the dependence upon a mate is not so vital and where the wider availability of contacts makes the allegiance to one person or a small group of mates less strong and binding. Never­ theless, one might claim, I think, some connection between the phenomenon of mateship and the relation of the adolescent to his peer group or to one particular friend. As we shall see in our later exam­ ination, the loyalties and comradeship of these relationships bear a strong resemblance to the traditional concepts of mateship and we find the word "mate", with all its inherent implications, still used in literature as it is in real-life associations. 26

On the other hand, the decreasing need for the pioneering spirit during the twentieth century has led to a decline perhaps in the self-sufficiency and independence which such a spirit fosters and which have to be re-learnt to-day by adolescents in a primarily city­ orientated society if they are to achieve a viable maturity. In this connection also, we might note that in countries like Australia and

New Zealand, as Stevens suggests in the opening quotation of this chapter, the adolescent period was less marked in the early pioneering days because of the need to make use of growing boys and girls in the establishment of a new life. In the words of A.A. Phillips, "the family authority was often weak at this stage because the sons struck out for themselves at an early age and self reliance was too valuable a quality in the bush-wife to be discouraged" (p.13). We have already referred to the increasing dependence of the adolescent, at some levels -38-

at least, in to-day's society so that we are faced here again with another of the ambivalences that are typical of this stage of life.

The closest parallel that can be drawn, I think, between the maturation of the country, Australia, and that of the adolescent protagonist lies in the search for and the achievement of a sense of identity, an obligatory process for both if maturity is to be attained.

Serle sees as the special function of literature in new countries "to make articulate the emotions and imagination of citizens of societies struggling to define themselves" (p.144); and Heseltine, in discussing the novels of the twenties and thirties in the article quoted earlier, stresses the role of the novelists of that time to express the need for national self-definition and understanding (p.186). As late as

1964, s. Murray Smith suggested that "we are, and have been for eighty years, worried about identity. No writer has been able to escape."27

we might see the period of the last fifty years, then, as a time of a slowly emerging self-image which our literature, particularly in the portrayal of the adolescent, has reflected and has also helped to evolve. Like the emergent adult, we are no longer so "worried" about our claim to identity. We are, in fact, beginning to question, through Patrick White and others who may have been influenced by him, whether the identity we have chosen as a country is the one we want to retain. This is indeed a sign of maturity, just as the truly integrated and mature person questions and assesses his own identity at various stages of his development.

As Buckley puts it: "A man who cannot stop asking 'Who am I?' is in a state not of mature self-possession but of disintegration; yet a man who never asks it is a sort of automation." 2 8 -39-

Concurrent with this kind of progression have been changes both in literary style and subject matter. Heseltine, referring again to the novels of the twenties and thirties, suggests that they are founded on documentation, that they enumerate "objective phenomena rather than isolating the socially or psychologically illuminating instance" and that "their typical structure points to an extensive rather than an intensive imagination" (p.185). One sees frequent references to the self-conscious, assertive and often "untidy" 29 writing of the thirties (all common manifestations of adolescence) and to the more polished, less overtly nationalistic and, on the whole, more mature writing of the fifties, sixties and seventies. Heseltine stresses a fact, with which many critics would agree, that it was

Patrick White who was "at the centre of a movement which raised the general standard of Australian fiction to hitherto unattained heights"

(p.209). Russel Ward sees White as Australia's first universal writer because he "belongs so wholly and naturally to his own culture".

He continues:

Secure and unself-conscious acceptance of one's own nationality is one of the prime conditions of such universality ••• at last we have a great Australian novelist precisely because he is first a novelist and only incidentally an Australian. (p.26)

I would place Christina Stead in a similar category. It is true, too, that we find in many other recent Australian novels a concern with universal rather than simply local issues and, increasingly, with the exploration of human relationships, particularly those of adolescence. 30

The trend of such novels,in which relationships are often treated on an illuminating psychological level and with universal -40-

repercussions,is gradually leading Australian literature into the stream of modern English fiction, away from our localised billabongs and backwaters, so that a writer such as New can say that "since World

War II Icommonwealth fictioii] began to challenge the fiction of both of the older cultures (United Kingdom and United States of America) in energy and in quality of writing" (p.378).

We have seen, then, that in the last fifty years, Australian society and its literary culture have manifested the conditions of progression and growth, of conflicts and resolutions; as we shall show in more detail in later chapters, they have represented a period of searching and fulfilment, of imitation and innovation, dependence and experiment= all features of life which are closer to the cycle of adolescence than to any other phase of one's existence. We have endeavoured to show how relevant the metaphor of adolescence in liter­ ature is to a country like Australia which has recently undergone what is, in many ways, a uniquely adolescent stage and which is now in the process of adult emergence so that both its society and the cultures within it are beginning to put down roots in its ancient yet still virgin bush. The words that Henry James used of America in 1879 could be said to apply homologically to us to-day: "The moral is that the flower of art blooms only where the soil is deep, that it takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature, that it needs a complex social machinery to set a writer in motion". 31

The increasing self-assurance of Australian writers and critics, the stress upon the satisfying and realistic nature of relation­ ships within an independent country, that is also free, 32 the ability to laugh at ourselves are all further signs of a nascent maturity. We -41- might consider even more justified to-day the optimism expressed by

Heseltine in 1964 when he referred to the increasing incidence of satire as "the sign of a society sufficiently self-confident to tolerate and respect criticism of its own institutions and practices"

(p. 228) •

As with the adolescent, there are times of regression and disillusionment, vulnerability and vacillation which recur at intervals to indicate that Australia's passage to social and literary independence may not yet be complete. The second birth, 33 as we shall see in many future instances in our survey, is often difficult and painful but it brings with it the sign of a new life that is challenging and exciting. Our study suggests, too, that the insights gained from the created experience of adolescence and the guidance which the adolescent metaphor inevitably brings, may well assist in Australia's ultimate separation from its "mother" country and in the establishment of its own self-image through harmony and integration. Even more than this, as a maturing society increasingly discarding its adolescent characteristics in order to accept an adult role, Australia is in a unique position to benefit from such insights, to demonstrate to the rest of the world the link between literature and life and to epitomile the moral function 34 of an art that enlarges men's sympathies and under­ standing at the same time as it enriches the mind and delights the heart.

In the following chapter, we shall examine these considerations further by a detailed study of the portrayal of the adolescent in

Australian literature and through the images in which this picture is revealed in the works of our survey. -42-

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO

1. I am indebted to New, op. cit., for support, in some areas, of a theory I had already formulated about Australia as an adoles­ cent country. We might add here, also, on a literal note, that 40% of the population in Australia is under the age of 21, 15% in the 12-19 age group. (As at 1961 census}

2. (Wellington, 1961), p.74.

3. See New for an interesting comment on Canada in this respect, in 1966. He quotes examples of the concept based specifically on the notion of Canada being an adolescent land, the child of loveless wedlock, struggling for maturity in an unstable home.

4. The protection afforded to the Kelly gang for a period of more than two years and subsequent events in which sympathy is often shown for the wrong-doer rather than for the law suggest, as R. Rivett argues, that "the tradition that 'the copper' is the enemy dies hard". Writing About Australia (Sydney, 1969), p.42.

5. (Sydney, 1965), p.21.

6. One could also argue that the police and similar authority figures are representative of the father figure against which the adolescent needs to rebel. See T. Inglis Moore, Social Patterns in Australian Literature pp.178-179, for a discussion of the theme of "sansculottism" as being typical of the revolt against the father and indicative of a young society rebelling irreverently against parental traditions. There is an amusing variation on this theme in J. Hackston's collection of short stories, Father Clears out (Sydney, 1966}, where the adolescent asserts his authority against the mother who wants to "de-bag" him in order to thrash him. (pp.207-208)

7. Let us not forget, however, William Wentworth's poem, as early as 1823, in which he dared to prophesy that England might one day decline and Australia could then "take over" - as the grown child and,notably,as a replica of the parent: May this, thy last-born infant then arise, To glad thy heart, and greet thy parent eyes, And Australasia float, with flag unfurled, A new Britannia in another world! (This sentiment might have partly accounted for the fact that he received second prize only, in a competition organised in England for a poem about Australia. The winner of the first prize had never been there.}

8. This kind of emotive language, redolent of the adolescent metaphor, is often used. See, e.g., T.S. Monks, Sydney Morning Herald, April 13, 1973, in which he refers to Mr Whitlam's determination "to cut the last legal and judicial ties with Britain" and suggests that,as the old relationship changes, a new one might emerge "just as strong but different. Instead of father and son, might it not be as brothers?" (An unusual variation here on the "mother" relationship.) -43-

9. G. Serle, "A Corning-of-Age c. 1935-1950?", From Deserts the Prophets Come (Melbourne, 1973), pp.148-178.

10. P.H. Partridge, "Depression and War 1929-50", in Australia: A Social and Political History, ed. G. Greenwood. (Sydney, 1955), pp.345-414.

11. "The Development of Australian Literature", in An Introduction to Australian Literature, ed. c. Narasirnhaiah. (Brisbane, 1964), pp.28-37 (30).

12. D. Pike, Australia, the Quiet Continent (Cam.bridge, 1970), p.224. A further example is seen in a book review by William Fitter in the Sydney Morning Herald, April 6, 1974, where the writer refers to the period in Australia from 1935-1973 which the book covers. "It is" he writes, "a concise and impressive picture of growth, of the country's emergence, as it were, from adolescence to vigorous manhood." The view of an outsider is expressed in the words of s. Liljegren in 1962 when he says unequivocally: "There is no doubt that Australia has come of age". Aspects of Australia in Contemporary Literature (Copenhagen, 1962), p.52.

13. K. Ewers, Creative Writing in Australia (Melbourne, 1962), p.20.

14. A phrase used of Boyd's Langton family by H. Heseltine in "Australian Fiction since 1920" in The Literature of Australia, ed. G. Dutton, pp.181-223, (214-215).

15. The Australian Tradition (Melbourne, 1966), p.18.

16. "The Upside-Down Hut", Australian Letters, III, IV (1961), 30-34 (34) •

17. R.E. Spiller, The Cycle of American Literature (New York, 1955), p.24. Quoted in Social Patterns in Australian Literature, p.96.

18. The Australian, July 17, 1973.

19. R. Ward, "Colonialism and Culture" in An Introduction to Australian Literature, ed. c. Narasirnhaiah, pp.21-27 (26).

20. (London, 1962).

21. The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony (London, 1966).

22. My Brother Jack (London, 1968).

23. The Education of Young Donald (Sydney, 1967).

24. Ibid. The phrase is used by Horne's father - et al!

25. See, e.g., "Telling Mrs Baker", a short story by Henry Lawson in which Bob Baker's mates say: We could have started on the back-track at once, but, drunk or sober, mad or sane, good or bad, it isn't bush religion to desert a mate in a hole; and the boss was a mate of ours; so we stuck to him. In The Prose Works of Henry Lawson (Sydney, 1940), pp.483-493 (484). -44-

26. New, p.381, in commenting on the tradition of mateship in Australia, suggests that the reliable and ready support which such a relationship offered was one factor in creating the independence of the Australian pioneer and in building up his self-sufficiency; a point of view which accords with the adolescent image in the sense that where adequate and spontaneous support is forthcoming the adolescent finds it easier, in fact, to become independent.

27. "The Novel and Society" in The Literature of Australia, ed. G. Dutton, pp.427-440 (427).

28. v. Buckley, "The Search for an Australian Identity", in An Introduction to Australian Literature, op. cit., pp.12-20 (19).

29. This word is used by A.A. Phillips, op. cit., p.427.

30. A.D. Hope commented in "Standards in Australian Literature", Current Affairs Bulletin, IX, 3 (1956), 35-47 (40), that more than half the novels which had some claim to distinction in Australia up to that date were historical novels. Ewers, Heseltine, Inglis Moore and McGregor, et al, all comment on the change of theme and subject matter which became increasingly apparent from the forties onwards. It is significant that in our survey nearly two thirds of the works studied were published during the sixties and seventies (up to 1974) with the remaining third being distributed evenly throughout the thirties, forties and fifties. Even allowing for the increase in the total number of books published over that period and for the varying degrees in which the adolescent relationship is explored, these figures illustrate a tremendous shift in emphasis - though one cannot ignore the relatively high number of historical novels and socio­ literary books "about Australia" still being produced.

31. Hawthorne (London, 1879), p.3. (The same quotation is used in a discussion by Serle, op.cit., p.52.)

32. Cf. James McAuley's lines about Australians from his poem, "Envoi". "The men are independent, but you could not call them free." Quoted by Judith Wright in "Australia's Double Aspect" in An Introduction to Australian Literature (op.cit.), p.7.

33. It is a second birth for Australia in the further sense that the identity of this land and its people was found many years ago by the Aborigines. Now, the descendents of those original inhabit­ ants are trying to find a new identity in a new culture; again, another theme found in our survey and, certainly, one that indicates that it is a harder birth for the Aborigines than for the white Australians.

34. Recalling George Eliot's famous words, "if Art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally". CHAPTER THREE

Recurring themes and images

I. Adolescence: an age of transition p.46

Symbols of transition: Long trousers p.54 Voice breaking p. 55 Shaving p.56 Drinking p.58 Smoking p.60 Menstruation p.61 Boys' onset of sexuality p.69 First sexual encounter p. 72

II. Images of transition: spring, rebirth and the fall from innocence p.88 - 4 6-

CHAPTER THREE

I. an age of transition

Bardan = Growing boy, skinny, tough, enduring Mallaloo = No longer Bardan, not yet man Eedja B'rirrih = Proper man, fully initiated man

D. Stuart, Ilbarana

He had a sharp foxy face looking out from between a l arge pair of ears, which had got a start in the race for l i fe, and arrived at manhood before the rest of Pointer Brindle.

Norman Lindsay, Saturdee

The term, "age of transition", is, I think, more applicable to this p eriod than to any other stage in the life cycle of a human being. It is a phrase commonly used both b y psychologists and sociologis ts j ust as it denotes an asp ect of adolescence treated in de t a il b y many novelists and short story writers, with particular appeal for the latter as we shall see in further discussion. Vance

Palme r' s title , "The Passage " , 1 - as well as being the name of the p l ace wh e r e the p rotagonist lives - s ymbolises the transition for

Hughie from earl y to late adoles c e nce and for Lew from late adolescence to maturit y; whil e Norman Lindsay ' s tit le, "Halfway to Anywher e", vividl y depicts what he calls "the no-man ' s l and limbo of being fifteen years of age" . 2

Though one may, for purposes of discussion, attempt to divide this transitional period into two, one is continually reminded that -47-

this is a time of fluctuation both backwards and forwards, a time when the adolescent often vacillates between childish and mature behaviour within the same week, the same day or even the same hour.

This is seen, for example, in the description of David Hardy, at the age of fifteen, in Winesburg, Ohio:

He realised that he was almost a man and wondered what he would do in life but before they came to anything the thoughts passed and he was a boy again • • • Thoughts of his coming manhood passed and he was content to be a boy with a boy's impulses. 3

The idea of wavering between boyhood and manhood - or girlhood and womanhood - is one illustrated in many novels of adolescence and its sense of mystery is often stressed, as in the following description of the fourteen year old Mariechen, from

David Martin's novel, Where a man belongs:

Her little breasts stuck out boldly, yet in another way she now seemed to be younger. She was at the age when a girl can change from day to day or from hour to hour, like some mysterious insect. 4

In the non-Australian field, one thinks of novels like Member of the Wedding5 where the veneer of sophistication which the young girl has built up over the three days of her sister's wedding is broken down when the soldier makes advances to her and she reverts to being a child again; or the description of the young girl in Studs Lonigan: "She was a girl suddenly baffled by a woman's impulses". 6

The early transitional period is a time of incompleteness, an

"in-between" stage, "a between world" as John A. Rice describes it when, at the age of thirteen, he was "no longer a small boy and not nearly a man". 7 Jack Lindsay expresses this same sense of the "suspended" -48-

adolescent when he writes of "Bob, the brother of the two girls G,ho]

was about fourteen, too old to share in our games, too young to shade off into the ignored world of grown-ups". 8

One of the best expressions of this state comes, I think, from

the meaning of the title of Stuart's book, Yaralie: "Young Girl. Not

child but growing girl",9 in the language of the Garaadyari Tribe of

North West Australia, of which the male counterpart appears at the beginning of this chapter.

The unevenness of growth during this period, particularly the

lag between physical, emotional and social development is reflected in

such appelations as "the awkward age 11 , 10 "the difficult stage", phrases which suggest, as we have already indicated, that it will not be an easy transition for either parent or child as much now as, perhaps, for Agnes E. Meyer when, writing of her adolescence at the

turn of the century, she said, succinctly and bitterly: "The whole

transition period was sheer pain11 • 11 Rice, again, has captured the

essence of this phase in his life when he writes:

Awkward, stumbling, aching with voice and limbs that fly incontinently out of register, every morning he wakes to the shock of change He cuts a swathe through the room stumbling over chairs and rugs and thoughts, and his father glares. This awful thing was an infant, then he was a boy, now he is a monster. (p.184)

Certainly, the sense of pathos and humour illustrated in

these passages and inherent in the discrepancies of this stage of

development is one often grasped by Australian authors in their

portrayal of the adolescent.

The inconsistency of growth within each person is often

matched by the discrepancy between the ages at which the adolescent may -49-

begin - or end - his transitional journey. Emily, in The Long Prospect, is only twelve when she sees herself as being "re-born" when "overnight she had become all-seeing and all-wise". 12 Dolour, in The Harp in the

South, can think, at the age of thirteen: "She was only glad that she was alrrost fourteen and not a child any longer, and soon would be freed from school and allowed to go to work"; 13 while Laura, in The Getting of Wisdom, is nearly sixteen when, as "a half-grown girl in white", she leaves school (having sat for her matriculation exam) and runs across the park in an act of defiance, her hair flying, leaving her hat and gloves (the symbols of submission) with her younger sister. In this gesture, the early transitional stage is completed as she comes to

"a sudden bend in the long, straight path. She shot round it, and was lost to sight". 14

We shall see, too, in the discussion of many of our ensuing extracts,that the climactic phase of the transition, as epitomi'led in the first sexual encounter, varies from early to late adolescence according to the individual concerned.

The "overnight jump" from boyhood to maturity is well exemplified in Home's autobiography when he writes:

In my first fortnight at Sydney University I knew that I was now a~- Like a piece of rubbish found unexpectedly in a pocket, youth was an embarrassment to be discarded quickly and furtively. Nothing in it seemed precious and its only distinctions were those of which I was ashamed. Before Christmas we were boys and girls. In March, by beginning our first term at university, we became men and women. One of the greatest criticisms to be ma.de was to say of someone that he wasn't yet mature. (p.199) -50-

Porter, in The Watcher, adds a perceptive comment on his own last day at school. "I walk awayu he says •towards manhood which I think is just around the next corner in the years, but which is many more corners away, and has little to do with years'' (p.173).

Horne and Porter are referring to a period when it was most common for students to go on to University or College at seventeen, sometimes only sixteen, and to leave school for work at the age of fourteen. Here, again, we are made aware of the social change mentioned earlier which now makes eighteen or nineteen the more usual age to enter

University and sixteen or seventeen the leaving age for those not seeking a tertiary education. Such a change during the period of life when one year holds more potential for growth of all kinds than at any other segment of one's life, is having marked effects on the adolescents', the parents' and the teachers' adjustments, as has been duly noted by the sociologists. We have, however, yet to see this particular aspect represented in Australian literature.

The final indication of discrepancy in this transitional period is apparent in the rate of growth and in the development of interests between sexes. We see this, for example, in Foveaux where the young boy

Tonuny, in his early teens, is forced by Neicie, at the same age, into a role he is not yet ready to undertake.

In the park at night with her, he calls to the little wild kittens playing under the Moreton Bay fig trees. "Neicie was rather bored by Tommy. Any chap who would look up from kissing a girl to call stray cats was just a waste of time". 15 She has to provoke him into making love to her, so that the baby, and the subsequent marriage which does not, of course, last, are the results. Perhaps this kind of discrepancy between adolescent boys and girls might be best summed up "Girls are sillier at first but boys keep it up longer ." Lin in Looking for a Have. -51-

in Lin's phrase about Mark, now twenty in age but still adolescent in many ways, in Looking For a Wave: "Girls are sillier at first but boys keep it up longer" (p.85).

In our following examination of the transitional phase, we shall see many common features, delineated by authors to mark this period, and images which are frequently used to symbolise the "rites of passage" from childhood to adolescence. Despite, however, the many landmarks by which the adolescent's crossing from the world of child­ hood is recognised, it is evident that there is no real counterpart to the primitive rituals which clarify the status of both boys and girls in tribal societies.

This fact is well illustrated in Stuart's book, Ilbarana, a quotation from which at the heading of the chapter indicates the clearly defined stages through which the adolescent boy passes, and where it is said of the young Ilbarana that "he knew his place, he knew what was required of him" (p. 4). He realises the need to learn and to be tested before he can become "a proper man" and is not tempted to anticipate this stage, for he knows that his turn will come, in due course:

In infancy and early boyhood, freedom and privilege and no responsibility; in the years of training, a withdrawal of privileges and a gradual taking up of responsibilities and duties, together with much hard testing and a great deal of learning, until in full maturity, privileges, or, rather, rights, of the choicest pieces of food, the right to speak and be heard in silence, the right to a place in all the secret life. That was the way of the People of the Land; it had always been so from the Beginning; it would continue so. As he now was subservient and obedient to his elders so in turn in time youngsters would obey him. Through all the great intricacies of the Law, there glowed the warmth of the People, who knew that children must be nurtured, trained, to be hardy, that the People might -52-

continue in a hard Land. Never would the responsibilities be more than a man could bear, never would the privileges and the rights be taken in such degree or kind as would make other men lesser men; always every man, woman, and child would have a set place, partaking of the riches of the Land according to age group and degree of maturity. (p.19)

The lack of definement, so evident by contrast in Australian white society, may well account for some of the confusion and ambival­ ence which the adolescent often faces in his new role. We have already noted some of the adult expectations which confront the adolescent to-day, many of them needing to be faced at an earlier age than previously, while at the same time he may meet with, in other areas, a refusal to recognise his maturing status. In fact, though he is, in many ways, more liberated than his Victorian counterpart, he might well envy some of the clear-cut and recognised "rites" by which the adolescent was, at a common age, initiated publicly and consensually, into adult society. Sebald makes this point in his reference to the lack of a rite of passage in American contemporary society - and his statement could well be adapted to our own. He goes on to say that

"many of the typically adolescent behaviour styles can be defined as manifestations of their maladjustment to a world that is poorly defined for them" (p.141), and we shall see many illustrations of this in the literary portrayal of the adolescent over the last fifty years.

Before reverting, however, to further examples from our study, one final point needs to be made about the transitional stage.

In clarifying the term, "transition", it is important to note that,

for most people, there are two transitional phases - one at the begin­ ning of adolescence and another at the end16 - and that the nature of

both is dependent on what has gone before. Douvan sees the adolescent -53-

period of transition as one with little independent reality or meaning if detached from its adult goal. 4 It draws its meaning" she says

1' from the past and from its relationship to some future adulthood toward which it aims and unfolds'' (p.229).

The word, "transition", is vital in this context for, although the adolescent may feel he is entering a new world, although, as we shall see, adolescence may come upon him suddenly, this cycle of life, far from being a completely fresh start will, as Freud was one of the first to demonstrate, only further confirm his origins. 17 Like all periods of our lives, it is inexorably joined to what has gone before and to what must emerge, though these facts are rarely acknow­ ledged on a conscious level by the adolescent himself, or even by all adults.

Elizabeth Montagu expresses the apparent "separateness" of this period in commenting on the presentation of her protagonist in

This Side of Truth:

I believe that at the age of thirteen one lives in a strange sort of place; a strange country which appears to lie between what has been and what one is about to become. In this place strange things happen, things which for the most part are imperfectly understood. 18

In The Aunt's Story, Theodora's adolescence forms only a brief section of the book but White shows such insight into this period of her life and portrays it with such sensitivity and understanding that we are able to see her growing inevitably into what she must become; her end is truly in her beginning. As her school acquaintance, Una Russell, puts it, with contempt: "not that it really mattered if Theodora

Goodman should become what she would become". 19 -54-

In a more physical sense, Donald Horne talks of his new body which "had grown up inside my old one, at first painfully and grotesquely, and then bursting out with such finality that I wanted to decorate it with floral ties and new suits and sun it in swimming trunks" (p.181).

Symbols of Transition

Horne's reference to "new suits" leads us to one of the most common outward symbols for boys that, at least until recently,20 heralded, in real life and in literature, the passage from childhood to adolescence or adolescence to manhood: long trousers. Their former importance may be seen in Jack Lindsay's statement: "I had now gone into long pants . • • My mother wept when she saw me in adult trousers"

(p.97).

Vance Palmer uses this outward sign of development in his description of Hughie's inner growth in The Passage (p.72), and Rob, in The Merry-go-round in the Sea, stresses the wearing of long pants as an important part of his new school life, for he is still smarting from the ignominy of being patronised at the local social evenings by the "big girls" who would occasionally condescend to dance with him in his short pants. 21

As with the symbol of "de-bagging" noted in Chapter Two, opportunities for humour are often exploited. Rose Lindsay gives a delightful picture of herself, "at the budding stage", when her mother suspects that every boy "is up to no good", distrusting especially

"those in long trousers". Further hilarity ensues when she buys for young Frank his first pair of trousers with a fly. Rose, in her perplexity at all the fuss and importance attached to this event, consults her brother Bill: -55-

'What difference do you think they make to him?' I asked Bill. 'I'll tell you - his voice has changed.' This seemed very wide of the mark to me, so I put it to Frank. 'What does having a fly to your trousers do to you?' I asked. He was outraged. 'I'll tell Ma on you' he threatened. There was no need to. She was listening. 'That's no way to talk to your brother, there's something real bad in you' she added, glowering at me as I shrunk away. 22

At the end of the vicissitudes that follow this great event,

Ma sums it all up with admirable conciseness: "'It's just the age she's come to'" (p.173).

Porter sees the same link as Bill between the acquiring of new trousers and a new voice. Speaking of himself at this stage, he says: "Mother goes with him to the tailor who measures him for his first long-trousered suits. Upon this, his voice descends to a certain level, and settles there, safe though still with ruffled feathers"

(p.191). An interesting comment on cause and effect!

Taken all round, it is not surprising, perhaps, that the vacillations and ambivalence of the adolescent boy's feelings are reflected in the mixture of pride and regret that he sometimes feels in relation to such a symbol of maturity as his long trousers exemplify.

Almost immediately following Rob's boast, quoted on the previous page, he says wretchedly to his friend Rick: " 'I wish I was a kid again'".

Another outward sign of the boy's transitional stage, as we have already observed, is manifested in the breaking of the voice, the

symbol, as Thackeray has so aptly described it, of "that uncomfortable

age when the voice varies between an unearthly treble and a preternatural -56- bass". 23 This aspect is brought out well, again in The Passage, in the description of Hughie, already worried by the thinness and paleness of his legs:

Then there was his voice, which had cracked early, and sometimes evaporated to a whisper when he most needed it. These things had haunted him during his last years at school, making him dullish and awkward, inclined to tumble his words out like blue metal from a dray, as Uncle Tony said. (p. 72)

In the use here of the word, "haunted", Palmer expresses the degree of suffering of the boy, the inability to shake off his awareness of the manifestations of his body in its transitional phase so that his very embarrassment increases the physical awkwardness. 24 Then, the almost passing reference to Uncle Tony's graphic phrase makes it clear that his doltishness is perceived and commented on by others - often with an eye to its comic aspect.

This same kind of attitude is seen, too, in relation to the process of shaving - "a puberty rite, a ceremony of initiation into manhood', as Kiell says in The Universal Experience of Adolescence,

(p.56) - and another transitional element shared by boys. In 1945,

David S. Kogan refers to July 31st as "one of the landmarks in my life, for on this day I took my first shave". 25 In more recent times, the tendency to grow a beard as a sign of the adolescent's assertion of his sex and maturity has meant that there is no equivalent "landmark" or

"ritual act" illustrated in the current literature to replace the first shave. It remains, however, a commonly used symbol in our study as well as in English and American fiction. In a short story with an American background, "Francine", by R. Anjou, the adolescent protagonist and his friend, Abe, meet the negro servant of their childhood days who has just -57- heard of the former' s dating with "little Francine Carroll":

'You a young man now. I bet you has to shave. That right?' And leaning over me from above, he peered at one cheek. 'I declare I believe you do.' There was a rumble comprising admiration, disbelief and amusement. 'I think I see a cut hair.' Then the delightfulness of the whole process - whereby babies grow into children and children into young men, and young men have to shave, in order to take out young women - overwhelmed him, and laughter poured forth torrent after torrent. Abe and I finally walked off with as much dignity as we could salvage. 26

"The delightfulness of the whole process", as we have already intimated, is often far more apparent to the grown up from his secure and distant vantage point than it is to the adolescent who is actually undergoing the throes of change and the confrontation of new experiences.

This is evidenced further in the same scene between Rob and Rick quoted earlier in the chapter when, in reply to Rob's statement about his long pants, Rick says: "'You're getting ancient aren't you' ••• 'Hey, is that a trace of bumfluff I see on that manly lip?'

'Aah', said the boy, rubbing his fist across his mouth. He felt ugly. And a crop of pimples had broken out on his jaw." (p.280)

We can see, then, why the adolescent frequently tries to repress, in this early stage, or at least to hide from adult jeers, the outward manifestations of changes which disturb him. Donald Horne makes this point in his book when he writes: "When hair grew on my face, I shaved it off secretly, borrowing Dad's razor, unwilling to discuss

this new assertion of change" (p.139). -58-

"A wine will be warming": Porter to himself, as the rationale for his first drink.

Two other common landmarks in the transitional journey are the first drink and the first smoke. Henderson, in relation to the former, discusses the initiation rites of the Greek Dionysiac religion where wine was used as a "rite of passage" whereby the initiate abandoned himself to his animal nature and thereby experienced the full fertilising power of the earth. He goes on to say that:

l_!he win~ was supposed to produce the symbolic lowering of consciousness necessary to introduce the novice into the closely guarded secrets of nature, whose essence was expressed by a symbol of erotic fulfilment: the god Dionysius joined with Ariadne, his consort, in a sacred marriage ceremony. 27

We could expect, then, that in modern times the first alcoholic drink or the initial experience of drunkenness might become an initiation process for the adolescent which often results in his first sexual experience also, but we find that this is rarely so in the literature under discussion. In Life Rarely Tells, Lindsay recounts the opposite reaction, in fact, to that of the followers of Dionysius, when the occasion of his first two glasses of wine results in a cathartic vomiting under the pepper-corn trees,and the effect of his first pipe renders him incapable of responding later in the evening to Maisie's advances - (the maid at the boarding house where he is staying).

Despite the undertone of humour here, this book provides a graphic and serious example of an adolescent having to cope with an increasingly alcoholic mother. The simplicity and understatement of passages like the one on page 141, reveal an aspect of life that the "initiation rites" do not foretell. -59-

It is significant that for Davy, in My Brother Jack, his first drink of alcohol - brandy - is taken when he thinks that Jack is dying.

"I pulled the cork out" he says "and drank from the bottle - one choking, scalding gulp to burn the pain out" (p.163).

For Francis and his friends in The Boys in the Island, their drunken spree is a deliberate way of "declaiming" maturity and breaking free of their "circle of childhood", as they indulge in a series of activities that are prohibited to children. As with the other first experiences, however, the sensation of freedom does not last. 28

Norman Lindsay puts the adolescent's viewpoint in perspective when he says of Bill, in Saturdee, that he "was now fifteen and had already done a tremendous thing: got drunk, no less. You can't do a

more grown up thing than that 11 • 29

The hilarious description of Bill and Waldo in Chapter XII of

Halfway to Anywhere contains, as often in Lindsay's work, undertones of a serious and perceptive nature. The two boys decide deliberately to get drunk because they are so "fed-up" with parental restrictions and see in this step a way of asserting their maturity. Having progressed systematically through the various stages of drunkenness, they come to the conclusion that they can dispense with home and family.

With wonderful abandon, "Bill laughed loudly, in carefree rejection of

Ma, the home and the earth generally" (p.186). After their meeting with Waldo's father - when Bill ignominiously retreats but Waldo threatens his father with assault - and their grand entrance at school, their parents need to get together to see how they can meet this kind of unforeseen rebellion. The boys are finally forced by their parents to "sign off girls and booze" if they want to go to University, an ------

Bill and Waldo "laughed loudly, in carefree rejection of Ma, the home and the earth generally. "

Halfway to Anywhere -60-

ultirnation to which they agree in spirit but, not surprisingly, one which they soon find a way of circumventing - being careful not to get caught next time. The whole episode throws an interesting light not only on the motivations of the adolescent in relation to drunkenness but also on the inefficacy of parents to deal with such a situation in both the short and long term (especially when one of them, like Bill's father, is frequently drunk himself).

One of the best examples of the first smoke occurs in a short story by Vance Palmer, actually entitled "Tobacco", in which the incident surrounding the young boy's initiation is portrayed with a mixture of pathos and wry humour, together with a keen awareness of its symbolic value. The core of this tale concerns Andy's coming to manhood through an adventure whereby he rides all night over flooded rivers to get tobacco for a group of men working a remote oil well.

When he returns, he finds that, unknown to them before, the tobacco was there all the time inside a biscuit tin. The story then concludes:

Andy sank down on the slab seat, his powers of speech dried up at their source. All eyes were upon him, but in none of them could he detect any real understanding of what he had gone through. Hard as stone they looked, indifferent as the wet trees that had dripped rain upon him. That was what being a man meant.

In the circumstances there was only one thing to do. He slowly unfolded the American cloth and, cutting some strips off a plug with chilled fingers, lit his first pipe. 30

The importance of drinking and smoking to Robert in Redheap31 is manifested in the care with which he lists each day in his Diary the nwnber of beers he drank and pipes which he smoked!

We have noted, so far, some of the outward manifestations of -61- the transition period from childhood to adolescence of special meaning to boys. When we consider girls in this context, we find that it is more difficult to recognise a similar group of symbols, just as it is more noticeable that the elements of surprise and concern - as expressed, for example, by Charles in The Young Desire It, pondering

"on the surprise of his body's growth and potency" 32 - do not seem to be so widespread. So often, in the literature studied, the boy feels the need to show, to prove to the world - his family, his peers, his girl - that he is now a man. He seems to feel a basic insecurity which, he argues, his long trousers, his shaven chin, his cigarette, his drink, must all belie. Porter's words about himself at this age, express this attitude with directness and humour: "Now that his legs are long and hidden, he considers he resembles a man. Disguised as such, he joins the Mechanics Institute" (p.191). The girl usually relaxes more securely in the knowledge of her womanhood, in the sense of its inevitability, and is often the one more "in control" of the situation, though her overt role may seem a passive one. Ruth Park has shown this kind of difference in the relationship between Tommy and

Roie in her novel, The Harp in the South. For Roie, "the chapter of her girlhood" is closed when Tommy asks her out. In this scene, it is

"the boy, shy and sidelong with adolescence's shames and inferiorities

~ho] wanted to say something that would show this girl he was a man.

She, simpler, wanted him to say nothing more than that he liked her"

(p. 25). (Tommy has, of course, even more need than most adolescents to prove his manhood - as he pathetically does later with Roie in their sexual encounter - because he is a hunchback.)

In the view of many psychologists, menstruation remains for a girl the sharpest dividing line between childhood and adolescence -62- and, together with the first sexual experience, might be seen as the most commonly shared symbol of her awakening to womanhood. It seems at first, then, somewhat surprising that menstruation, in contrast to the pubescent manifestations exemplified in boys, is so seldom used by the writers in our survey.

This may be due, at least partly, to the fact that there are in this study so many more books about adolescent boys than girls, as well as so many more written by male rather than female authors. We must stress here, however, that two of the few books which employ menstruation as part of the theme of transition are written by a man:

Yaralie by Donald Stuart and A Dutiful Daughter by Thomas Keneally. 33

Simone de Beauvoir, after her initial shock (not being prepared in any way for the onset of her period) explains how her heart swells with pride because she sees her experience as an "important" one. Anne Frank uses the same word in her diary when she writes, after reading about menstruation in a novel: "Oh, I'm so longing to have it too; it seems so important", 34 and, later, after its arrival: "I have a sweet secret" (p.116). It is interesting to note also in this context how horrified and "consumed with shame" Simone de Beauvoir is when her father jokingly makes a reference to her condition. She had imagined

"that the monstrous regiment of woman kept its blemish a secret from the male fraternity" (p.101).

An effective contrast to this latter kind of attitude can be seen in Stuart's novel Yaralie - a move from post World War I middle­ class Paris to the gold diggings of Western Australia, from the educated

Simone to the half-cast girl Yaralie, the offspring of an Aboriginal mother and a white father. In this setting, the understanding between -63- the daughter and father as well as that with her part-time foster mother, Mrs Mendoza, the sense of vitality and the naturalness of the whole process, together with the real pride and responsibility which come with it, are all shown in the following extracts. When Yaralie is thirteen:

That time at Mrs Mendoza's was the start of her sign of growing up. As soon as it happened, Mrs Mendoza told her every­ thing she had to know, leaving her almost proud that she had come so far forward on the road. Behind the old woman were the women of the Philippines, the women of China, and the black women of the country. They had known.

'My girls never had any trouble. I s'pose it was because I never gave them the idea of trouble. There's Chinese and blackfeller and Manila man in my breeding, and none of them ever had time to make much of themselves and play at being sick! Having a child, well, that can be tough if a woman is too hard­ worked, or starved, or maybe too small, but this business, why, it's just a change of mood, girl! You just look after yourself like I've told you, and make no fuss about it.' (p.75)

As she and her father are ready to leave town again, he goes back into the Store, saying:

'There's only one thing you two didn't get; you didn't even think of it, so I'll get it for you. Hop in, and wait a minute or two.'

He returned with it, in a few minutes; a tin trunk, a yard or more long, a deep wide trunk with a hasp and a padlock, and a key that shone brightly.

'There you are', he said with a grin as he put it in the back of the utility. 'It's yours, to keep all your own things in. A place of your own, a place you can lock. Now if you've got everything, we'll go back, eh?' -64-

'A place you can lock, a place for your own things.'

She was hurt for a moment. She had grown up, and he knew. She was no longer a baby, a girl, she was a woman, and he knew. Then as they turned out of the street and took the road to Mrs Mendoza's, she felt pride rise in her. Her father knew she wasn't a child any longer; he knew she was growing up, and he had bought her a big tin trunk, strong, massive, shiny with dark red paint, for herself. She saw it, in her mind's eye, filled with he.r own things, set on two boxes beside her stretcher, with partitions of narrow pieces of wood in it, and her things arranged neatly. (p.80)

The use of menstruation in this novel as a symbol of life and birth, with all its naturalness and joy, points to a fruition for

Yaralie of the same kind; a fruition which does, in fact, eventuate at the end when the young Aboriginal boy, Raymond, "makes her a woman" at the age of fifteen and her transition is complete (pp.177-8).

(This scene is examined in more detail at the conclusion of this chapter.)

A stark contrast is presented in the character of the young girl, Vinny, in Thea Astley's novel, A Descant for Gossips, 35 where her shame and disavowal of the menstruation process act as forerunners to her death by suicide at the end of the story. In her denial of her womanhood, in her desire for abnormality and sterility, she denies life itself, as is clear in the following scene.

At the same time, I feel that the real and warm concern of the mother for her daughter, the reassurance which she tries to give, despite her embarrassment, are shown very sensitively in this encounter and, therefore, seem to make the shock of Vinny's death hard to substantiate when it comes so suddenly at the conclusion of the novel. -65-

Her mother had met her at the back door that afternoon in May, concerned and fussing. 'Are you all right, love?' she had asked. 'Yes', Vinny answered, puzzled. 'You didn't feel different, did you? Not sick or anything?' 'No. Why?' Her mother took her inside gently. The tenderness was unnerving. She led Vinny into the bedroom and showed her her pyjamas. Vinny looked at them with a peculiar feeling of panic. 'What is it?' she asked. 'What's happened?' Her mother pressed her child's thin arm between her hands. 'Please, love', she said, 'don't worry. It's all natural. I should have explained before, only I forgot. Mothers do forget how old their babies are getting.' She ventured a half-smile, trembling with the guilt of her neglect. 'I was frightened all day you might have been worrying what was up with you. I only noticed when I was taking the clothes out to the wash.' 'I never noticed anything', Vinny said. 'I felt all right.' She resented having to feel different, to adjust herself. 'It happens to all girls when they reach your age', her mother said, explaining insufficiently. 'What does?' 'This. This does, Vinny. You can't have babies unless this happens. All this means is you're a normal girl and you'll be able to have children of your own one day.' Vinny contemplated the floor. She felt ashamed. She could sense her mother's embarrass­ ment and she felt embarrassed on her behalf. But her mother was talking on. She urged her daughter to the bed and sat beside her, fiddling with the yellowed fringe of the quilt. 'Every month it happens', she said. 'Perhaps not now for a while but later. You're only starting to grow up.' Vinny was startled at seeing her mother's mouth jerk with feeling. 'Does it happen to everyone?' 'Everyone. ' 'Don't they mind?' 'No. Why should they? It's part of being a woman.' 'I hate it', Vinny said. 'I hate it. I'd rather not be normal. I wish I were a boy.' 'Now don't be silly, lovey.' Her mother was concerned because she had omitted to prepare her youngest child for the shock of puberty. 'There's nothing wrong with it. It's natural. It's like seasons in your body. A sort of ripening.' She fumbled around the idea and then gave up, timid of her own imagery. 'And, anyway, it stops again when you're forty or thereabouts.' -66-

'Can you have babies then, after it stops?' 'No', her mother said. 'Not ever.' 'Well, I wish I were forty.' 'There', her mother said, and patted Vinny's arm awkwardly remembering she had felt the same way thirty years ago. 'There. You won't feel like that always. Even next time you won't mind so much.' (pp.223-25)

The use of menstruation by Keneally in A Dutiful Daughter cannot be seen simply as part of the girl's transition to womanhood.

He does indeed say, through the words of her younger brother Damian, whom the twelve year old Barbara calls to her aid in the fear that she is dying at her first shock at the blood, that when they go back to sleep afterwards, it is "the last sleep of both [thei~ infancies"

(p.22). But it is, of course, a great deal more than that. At the ritual burning of the bloodied nightdress, the boy puts it to his lips

- as a forerunner, no doubt, of the incestuous relationship to come - and in terror asks himself: "How evil was it to bleed from a private place? Was it a sin or a disease? Would it happen often? Would it happen to you?" (p.46).

This sense of sin and evil is increased when the mother, on finding out what has happened, is shocked at Barbara's frankness, and her efforts at "tenuous gentleness" in making the process appear

"natural", "a part of God's plan", are made obscene to the girl when the mother explains further that the body needs "to get rid of bad material" (p.49). Barbara, who in her own eyes "had spent the night dying", can only ask bitterly, as Damian does also, "was that just when they could have told her, even the night before?" The main significance of the episode is that it is at this point that Barbara runs from the farm, over the surrounding fields, followed by her parents. On their return, the father has become a bull, the mother a -67-

cow; "they had found their bovine selves" (p.52), and it is this incident which convinces them that Barbara is to blame for "their accident". The symbolism of the whole book contained in this "fable" is too complex and ambivalent to discuss at this point and is only partly related to a study of the adolescent as such. One can only say that there is a poignant reality about the treatment of the menstrua- tion process in this scene between Barbara and her mother which makes it of interest and of value to our examination, despite the esoteric and somewhat fragile framework within which it is set. In some ways, in fact, it can be observed to resemble the scene in the extract quoted above from Thea Astley's novel and it is no coincidence that both girls are destined to take their own lives although, given

Barbara's life on a "reality" basis, the rationale for her suicide seems the more acceptable.

Another book by a woman author - The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead - which uses menstruation and sexual maturity as part of the transition theme is a particularly interesting one because it concentrates not so much on the effect on the adolescent girl,

Louisa, but on the consequences of this sign of growth on her father,

Sam, and step-mother, Henny.

Sam, with his idealistic views of "bright pure womanhood", wishes that, for girls, adolescence could be entirely avoided for it is he who fears, "with the shrinking of the holily clean, the turpi­ tudes of adolescence" (p.339). The signs of Louie's maturity, her swelling thighs, broad hips and short breasts are repugnant to him:

He wanted a slim, recessive girl whose sex was ashamed. Louie was his first adolescent, too: he was full of mystery of female adoles­ cence of which, in his prim boyhood, he had been ignorant. He poked and pried into her -68-

life ••• stealing into her room when she was absent ••• investigating her linen, shivering with shame when suggestive words came into her mouth. (p.340)

His rationale for his behaviour is well expressed in this vivid phrase of Stead's: "his palpitating heart could not bear to think of her coming to shipwreck on the hidden reefs of youth". And so, for her sake:

he went through all the literature on adolescence, becoming more horrified every day as Satan's invisible world was revealed to him, who had been a bloodless youth living on greens and tap water. Youth was one of the beasts of Revelations, the worst and more insolent than the Sun. He writhed within himself to think that his high-souled, sober­ minded Louie had to go through all that. Why? (pp.340-41)

It is a wonderful picture of a man, repressed and full of shame, trying, on the one hand, to idealise the whole process of female maturation and, on the other, - to use another vividly descriptive phrase of Stead's, - "with mental lip-licking" to investigate his daughter's most secret moments. As we shall see in the more detailed discussion of parent relationships in a later section, this behaviour of Sam's is carried over to every facet of his involvement with Louie.

From Henny, Louie suffers in a rather different way. In her increasingly neurotic state, Henny finds the mere presence of the girl a source of irritation, a feeling which is, at times, whipped to a terrifying hysteria. In one of her final outbursts, it is significant that she not only mentions her previous accusations of filth and obesity, but that she refers especially to Louie's "great lolloping -69-

breasts [!"hat] looked as if she'd rolled in a pigsty or slaughterhouse" and concludes by shouting to Sam "that she couldn't stand the streams of blood that poured from her fat belly and that he must get someone else to look after such an unnatural big beast" (p.442).

It is now the beginning of the end for Henny and, as she loses her grip on life, so the evidence of Louie's potential for life and creativity - which in her own case have led only to unhappiness - is more obscene and unbearable to her. Henny will die, the adolescent girl will live and flourish. Here we see, as so often in Stead's writing, an original and imaginative treatment of a symbol rarely used in our study but one which, more than any other perhaps, represents the transition of the girl from childhood to womanhood. 36

If menstruation receives scant mention in the literature of maturation, it is apparent, too, that the onset of the boy's sexual maturity is rarely referred to as a landmark in the transitional stage of adolescence.

Donald Horne does express well the fear accompanying his first ejaculation - at the same time highlighting the lack of information so prevalent at that period37 - when he talks of being "horrified that I had done myself some unknown and perhaps serious damage" (p.140).

A more notable instance is seen in the following quotations from The Young Desire It where the language in the first excerpt expresses - perhaps rather too forcibly in places - the tension in both the boy's mind and body: -70-

However, during the hot summer, and more noticeably since he had lived among boys and listened to the manly and experienced images in their talk, he was frequently aware at the back of his mind of a tightness in his own loins and a warmth there, as though some hot flower were about to break from the green bud, or some ripening fruit to burst and scatter rich juices through his whole body. (p.82) and then:

His misfortune was to make the greatest of all discoveries, to become aware of his own manhood in the School itself; and sleep, that had been his refuge and innocence, was now his concern, and for a long time haunted and troubled him. (p.83)

This feeling is similar to that experienced by Rob in The

Merry-go-round in the Sea where he is haunted by "sex dreams" that make him wish "he was a kid again". In this in-between stage, he can not be consoled by Rick's encouraging words -" 'You' 11 have the time of your life, matey, in a few years, so think about that'" (p. 283) •

In these excerpts, we see again the reference to sleep, the last refuge of the child with all its connotations of consolation and innocence - an image that will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter.

For the adolescent, however, transition and development bring a dream world that is to be dreaded rather than sought, one that "haunts"

rather than comforts. Note how often the word "haunted" is used in the descriptive language of adolescence, conveying the sense of doggedness

and inescapability that we saw earlier in Palmer's description of

Hughie, and the apprehension of unknown visitations. -71-

One related, ensuing step in the sexual transition is that of masturbation. Though this may now be recognised by psychiatrists as a part of normal growth process and, according to Kiel!, its absence during adolescence "not only the exception but ••• symptomatic of a serious disturbance in emotional development", 38 society's attitudes have remained both repressive and primitive 39 towards this practice, attitudes which seem to be changing very slowly in relation to the more permissive responses towards sexual relationships generally. It is perhaps to be expected, then, that referen?e to masturbation is found hardly at all, in respect of girls40 in the literature under discussion and only very infrequently in relation to boys. 41

Despite its possible potential as a symbol of the adolescent's growing sexuality, of his experimentation with his body, of his sens­ ations of mixed pleasure and guilt and of the older adolescent's anxieties and fears, despair and loneliness if he uses masturbation as a retreat from and a substitute for full and satisfying heterosexual relationships, it remains rarely used by writers either of their own lives or those of their protagonist. The fact, however, that these two persons are, as we have already noted, often coincidental in the novel of adolescence may have some significance in this context. ;z;··· -"- ze~ ~ £,''•'i''• -72- ('yJ'f) \-.rr c ''-., .i-fi . --- \ I used to wonder how to kiss and what words should be said, \...... ,/ 1', j 11' :, And whether first I'd kiss your ITK)Uth or kiss your golden head. [' 1 I\ ( I wondered how one started and just how to hold you tight. \ / ,L~, , I was so very shy, you know, and anxious to be right. . j~\ Yet when at last we leaned and looked within the unbidden spell "]/4f)\j And all the fears that hid between us broke away and fell, ~ ~~f._ I did not need to think at all, I did not need a sign. -·-µ Our arms went round each other and I found your ITK)uth on mine.

(An Adolescent Poem in Life Rarely Tells)

The other most common landmark in this early transitional stage is the first sexual encounter, often of a very restricted and innocent nature but of an overwhelming significance for the adolescent.

Here, the elements of wonder and surprise are often strong, particularly, as in the following extracts, where the two adolescents have known each other as children.

The first example comes from a short story by White, "Down at the Dump", in which he describes a funeral attended by the fourteen year old Meg. At the beginning, she is standing in the garden of her home, waiting for her mother:

Then that Lummy Whalley showed up, amongst the camphor laurels opposite, tossing his head of bleached hair. She hated boys with white hair. For that matter she hated boys or any intrusion of her privacy. She hated him most of all. The day he threw the dog poo at her. 42

Later on, Meg wanders off from the funeral and meets Lummy at the nearby dump where they talk briefly and then he kisses her. White continues:

She was amazed at the hardness of his boy's body. The tremors of her flinty skin, the membrane of the white sky appalled him. Before fright and expectation melted their mouths. And they took little grateful sips of each other. Holding up their throats between. Like birds drinking. (p.309) -73-

The cars of the two families pass as they are going home but

the two adolescents hardly acknowledge one another. "They lowered

their eyes, as if they had seen enough for the present and wished to

cherish what they knew" (p. 263).

In the next extract from Ruth Park's novel, The Harp in the

South, a story of the Sydney slums, we see the young girl Dolour - whose

lively portrayal is, I think, one of the best parts of the book - in her moment of sexual awakening. This extract, I feel, with its touches of

realism, humour and underlying sadness, provides an outstanding contrib­

ution to the literature which deals with the awakening of the adolescent

girl following her first physical response to a member of the opposite

sex and the realisation of a reciprocal feeling in him:

Dolour blushed and ran outside. She stood outside the phoenix palm in the windy, gusty darkness, and looked up at the bright and piercing stars. Stray cats, empty-bellied and desolate, mewed feebly from behind the alley fence, but Dolour did not notice. Once again there was a spellbound, exciting world before her. She was not fierce and pure and fortified against the world after all, and she did not want to be.

'I know now how Roie feels about Charlie', she chanted under her breath, and giggled, and hugged herself.

'He's nice', she whispered. 'He's got lovely brown eyes, and he wears a blue suit when he's all dressed up.'

It was a miraculous thing. She had gone to school with Harry Drummy, had yelled at him, kicked him in the shins, and been kicked in return. And now she had fallen in love. It was as sweet as a peppermint stick, and as pink and white. It made everything different. There was no sex in Dolour's feeling for him. It was as pure and fairy-like and useless as the love of knights and ladies in antique ballads. But it was something to be gloated over at night­ time, hugged to her bosom, and cherished until, -74-

like a bubble, it floated unheeded away. For the first time Dolour was pleased that Roie wasn't sleeping with her any more. Now she was free to indulge as she wished in dream conversations.

St Anne of the Seven Dolours vanished with a swish of the skirts, and Dolour said softly, 'Mrs Dolour Drummy. Mrs Harry Drummy.'

'Ah, crumbs', she said. The sweetness and wonder of it nearly overcame her, and she leaned her face against the spiky trunk of the unheeding tree and shivered for joy. Her Mumma cried crossly from the doorway: 'What are you trying to do? Imitate the ivy?' And Dolour, a little cross and red-faced, marched in. Mumma! How should she know what her daughter was capable of feeling? Her life had only been housework, and babies, and trouble. Nothing like the glamorous, golden, and misty life which stretched out before Dolour Darcy. She drifted in and began handing around cups of tea, gobbling a tomato sandwich meantime, for love had not affected her appetite. (pp.224-5)

It is, I think, again a fruitful exercise to take a statement from Hurlock on the subject of early heterosexual relationships and then compare the ways in which the literary parallel can add to our understanding of human nature and human relationships through its emotional impact and creative power.

The following words from Hurlock say, in effect, what both

Park and White aim to portray in the scenes quoted above:

The most marked change in social behaviour in adolescence is in the area of heterosexual relationships. Throughout the latter part of childhood, heterosexual relationships are marked by antagonism between the sexes. With sexual mating, the adolescent develops a lively interest in members of the other sex. For girls, this comes early in adolescence. (p.136)

Further insight into the significance of these last words may be seen, too, in the following extract from Margaret Trist's story, -75-

Morning in Queensland, where the difference in attitude between the girl, Tansy, and the boy, Ronny, is stressed with succinctness and humour.

'Do you always kiss girls when your mother tells you to see them home?' asked Tansy.

'Yes' answered Ronny. 'If they want to. But if you don't want to, I won't. There's not much in it anyway. Some girls like it, but. Girls like it better than fellows.'

Tansy made a disbelieving sound. Then they walked on in silence. The far stars above Goombudgerie whirled above their heads. She forgot Ronny, she forgot Gladdy. She forgot she had been to tea at the Gladstone's. She forgot Meredith would be waiting, propped on her pillows, her hair in plaits on her shoulders, her book held close to her eyes, to hear all about it.

Tansy forgot everything but her surprise at finding that she liked boys. 43

Without attempting to press too closely the comparison between these three extracts and the statement by Hurlock nor to discount entirely the legitimate difference in approach and point of view which each writer may be said to possess, I would wish to stress that each book deals with the subject of adolescence and aims at an exploration and illumination of that period. In an age of much questioning by young people themselves; at a time when a justification for the teaching of subjects such as English literature at tertiary level is being more and more demanded, perhaps one needs to stress more frequently the contribution of creative literature44 to the kind of insights which can be both felt and appreciated and to the kind of understanding which cannot always be learnt in text books.

If we look briefly at White's short story, we are most struck,

I think, by the duality of atmosphere: the constricted, suburban world -76-

with its "plaster pixies"Jwhich Meg's mother had trained her child to cover with plastic at the first drops of rain, together with the terrible drabness of the Aunt's funeral taking place beside the local dump. Against this background, is set the blossoming of Meg's and

Lummy's love which, for all its uncertainties and tentativeness, stands for creativity and life in contrast to stultification and death. In the "membrane" of the sky is suggested the virginal membrane of the young girl - with all its associations of fear, expectation and fruition.

In the "grateful sips" which they take of one another, "like birds drinking", the sense of relief and refreshment in an arid world is tenderly expressed and is sustained even further in their later

"cherishing" of this experience. The very rhythms of this passage, the short, broken sentences, the contrast of the hard and soft sounding words - like "hardness" and "flinty" with "membrane" and "melted" - embody the sense of awkwardness and fluctuation, the ambivalence of reaching out and withdrawal which form the essence of this transitional stage.

In the passage from The Harp in the South, we have the same contrast of feeling between the ecstasy of the young girl and the drabness of her surroundings epitorn.i:..ed in the "stray cats, empty­ bellied and desolate" •.

There exists also the same "pureness" of the relationship, in the absence of explicit sex, with the use of the identical word,

"cherish", in both quotations, conveying so well the inherent fragility of both the experience itself and the feelings which accompany it.

There is conveyed, too, in each excerpt, the relationship of these two

small individuals to the universe through the presence of the sky above, -77-

though White's incident takes place in the daytime, adding perhaps to the unusual quality of the experience, and Park's description is of the night. In this context, also, Trist envisages the stars "whirling above their heads". The "sweetness, the wonder", the sense of this awakening as "a miraculous thing" are implicit in all three passages, emphasised, of course, in the first two by the very contrast of each girl's relationship to the boy as a child. Hurlock's statement in

"the latter part of childhood heterosexual relationships are marked by antagonism between the sexes"- is brought to life in the picture of

Dolour and Harry kicking and yelling at one another at school and, even more vitally, in White's wonderful understatement: "The day he threw the dog poo at her". 45 The final touch, in Ruth Park's description of

Dolour eating the sandwich, "for love had not affected her appetite", sums up with humour and understanding the dichotomies of this early phase of adolescence.

The suddenness of an awakening to a more sophisticated aware­ ness of sexuality is described in a scene in The Watch Tower where the young girl, Clare, is being examined by a doctor. She is standing naked except for her shoes which she has decided to leave on:

For the first time since she had appeared from behind the curtain, his grey eyes raised themselves to hers. He looked briefly but deeply at Clare, and as she looked back it seemed that an invisible rocket sped between them, rocked the room, shocking and enlightening her to the very tips of her high-heeled shoes. 46

The rhythmic and "shock" quality of the words used in this excerpt is such that the reader is brought very close to the same overwhelming physical impact and response that Clare experiences. -78-

Who are my sexual relations?

(Child to mother: Anon.)

A further stage in sophistication and growth comes with the full sexual experience although, as many examples testify, such experiences vary gzeatly in their effect on the adolescent and in the age at which he first makes his transitional leap. Alexandre Dumas, for instance, describes the fortnight he spent with two "sophisticated young women" at the age of sixteen when, he concludes, "I completed my passage across the boundary that separates childhood from adolescence". 47

One of the difficulties we see so universally present in twentieth century literature arises out of the discrepancy between the fact that, as Olendorff says, "the young human being has already been biologically ready, in fact optimally equipped to mate between the ages of thirteen and sixteen" (p.97), and the view, held at least until recently, as expressed by Mr Bandparts in Redheap when talking to the adolescent Robert: "' Of course' , he added, 'your parents, having arrived at middle age, assume that naturally you will exhibit their own detachment from the activities of copulation"' (p. 81) •

On the one hand, therefore, we have the kind of occurrence described by Robin in Salute to Freedom where, in his last year at school, he goes with his friend Barney "under the bridge" - a signif­ icant image which we shall be discussing later - where the girls wait.

It is not for him, however, a happy encounter. He finds it depersonal­ ised and animalistic and when Barney asks him afterwards how he feels, he replies: "'Foul! I want - a bath'". 48 It is interesting that his friend interprets this statement as applying to his fear of infection

- a thought which had not, in fact, entered Robin's head. ~--~­ ! L_ -I·

heart . " "A man's got to have his affairs of the Robert in Red.heap -79-

on the other hand, we have the light-hearted approach of Robert in Redheap, playing the role of the sophisticated man of the world, expertly portrayed in his following discussion with his sister Ethel, who, together with his oldest sister Hetty, have been chiding him for his appearance at the local concert with the publican's daughter, Ruby

Cassidy:

'You don't understand', he said. 'If you were a man, you'd understand. As it is, you're a girl.' Stigmatised in that capacity, Ethel merely smiled in a secret and superior manner. 'A man', said the Misanthrope, 'has got his life to lead.' He hesitated, casting about in his mind for examples of this singular fact. The desire to boast a little, hard to resist even in a sister's presence, stirred him to elaborate certain hints revealing that masculine existence hidden from the cloistered lives of females. 'You think life's a matter of sitting in drawing-rooms and having afternoon tea', he said cynically. 'That sort of thing may satisfy women, but it's no good to a man. Women are subservient. As far as they are concerned, they've got to hang round till a man comes along and marries them. But a man must see life. A man's got to have his affairs of the heart. You think love's a matter of sentiment, and all that. You think a man falls sentimentally in love, and so on.' Robert laughed tolerantly. 'A man', he said, 'uses woman as a toy. When he's finished with her he throws her aside. Naturally. A man doesn't want to sacrifice his life for a woman. At the same time, having his passions to consider, he regards women as necessary. Very charming, and all that. Dainty, if you like, but a toy. Something to pass an idle hour away with.' Ethel listened to these profundities without alarm. 'If you'll take my advice', she said, 'you won't bring a toy like Ruby Cassidy to a concert when Hetty's about, that's all.' Robert subsided into gloom. 'What's the good of talking to you', he said, 'You don't understand.' (pp.72-3)

The problem as I see it in this novel is that, although this kind of insight about the adolescent is portrayed, as in the above -80-

passage, with charm and good humour, there is an imbalance of feeling

when "the real thing" is encountered. Robert's love affair with Millie

is described in terms of a passionate and tender experience from the

moment that she first relaxes in his arms to the jumbled, unarranged

but divine consummation. "For the first time in his experience", writes Lindsay, "a girl had conceded her body to a need as frank as his

own and he was filled with a surpassing tenderness for this generous

and adorable girl" (p.149) •

If, however, one accepts these sentiments at their face value,

then it is hard to accept, even allowing for some reasonable adolescent

instability, the sordid and unfeeling nature of Robert's later behaviour

when Millie becomes a mere nuisance as a result of her pregnancy. He

bundles her off to Melbourne to have an abortion - after all other

efforts valiantly borne by Millie have failed to achieve this end - and

his final assessment is that she may well come in handy for a while when

he first goes to live in Melbourne until he has had time to look further

afield.

Perhaps the core of the problem here is that, while this book

does give some enlightening insights into adolescence in general, it

does not develop or integrate the character of the protagonist to any

extent. Consequently, it becomes difficult to accept Robert's behaviour

on a convincing and realistic basis or to feel there is any tragedy in

Millie's situation. We shall be discussing in more detail in a later

chapter this kind of imbalance which sometimes occurs in Lindsay's

writing.

In his encounter with Heather in The Boys in the Island,

Francis sees it (like the first drink) as a declaration of manhood but,

in this experience also, though it has for a short time a liberating -81-

effect, there is no lasting fulfilment. The experience has changed him,

as he recognises; but the word Koch uses, that he is "trespassing" (my

underlining) too young "into the regions of love" (p.164), suggests, as

is indeed true in Francis's case, that maturity cannot come by the mere process of carrying out actions, especially in the sexual sphere, that

are the prerogative of adults or by entering those "quite new places"

(with all the sexual innuendos of this phrase) that are the rightful

domain of the mature person. In fact, Koch implies here that such

deliberate and premature attempts at maturity will result in a delay

in the finding of the protagonist's identity rather than becoming a

means of achieving it.

A study of two more fully integrated characters is found in

My Brother Jack and The Watcher where the first sexual experience is

closely related to the protagonist's concept of himself as a maturing

person. As in The Mango Tree also, the sexual initiation of the

adolescent by an older, experienced woman then becomes a metaphor of

his initiation into adult society. Though they differ somewhat in kind,

all three experiences share in common the facts that the adolescents are

in their late teens and are seduced by older women and that the episodes

are revealed with a mingling of humour and sadness that leaves the

reader, at least in Porter's case, with an abiding sense of pathos.

Johnston's account has initially all the elements of farce

when Helen suddenly and quite unexpectedly presents herself before

Davy's eyes, naked except for a heart shaped gold locket on a chain

round her neck, as he waits for her, characteristically reading, in the

room behind the library where she works. Pushing past her in a blind

panic, he rushes out into the night, running for almost a mile until -82-

he stops, breathless, reeling to a halt with the pain of a stitch in his side. "And then" he says "there was nothing else to do but to face my own hot pained confused self",• to examine his anger, mortif­ ication and shame (p.174). Helen, however, was not the kind of girl to be put out by this initial reaction and she safely and patiently completes the process of initiation the following evening, a better initiation he says, than he really deserved but one which would pale into insignificance beside his later relationship with Cressida. He describes very evocatively, I think, and with a nice aptitude for selecting just the right word to convey those sensations, the ambiv­ alence of feeling that such a first experience brings for the adolescent and the magic which, though not by any means universal, does express, for many, the essence of a full sexual awakening, the recog­ nition of a new self in flesh and in spirit, and "the beginnings", as

Johnston says later,, "of a kind of maturity" (p.178).

It is a wonderful and fearful experience, that first physical communion with a woman ••• the feverish fumbling, the sad inexperienced groping for those complex and eternal mysteries that are harboured in a woman's body, those wobbly intrusions into the perilous poetry associated with a hundred bewildering new sensations of both the flesh and the spirit: no matter how many women we may enjoy later nor how adept we become in the practices of sex, there is probably no other moment in life that ever repeats itself with such an excitingly exact mixture of alarm and ecstasy; fear and frenzy; doubt and intoxication; delight and dread. In a first seduction, I think, however foolish or naive or ridiculous, there is some wistful breathless magic which preserves forever - even if the preservative be sadness or regret - some little memorable trace of a great wonder and a great loveliness ••. Perhaps. I grappled with Helen Midgeley on a Genoa velvet couch in a darkness that seemed too dark and yet not dark enough, and I desperately tried to remember the things my brother Jack had told me years before. (p.175) -83-

This seduction has none of the pitiless inevitability, the sense of "unfairness" that are seen in Porter's experience. It does not leave us, metaphorically, with the bitter taste in the mouth that the youthful protagonist of The Watcher, physically endures. At the age of seventeen, he has been asked to Miss Hart's flat on the pretext of learning to play bridge - (another symbol of the transitional voyage, perhaps?). Miss Hart is, like Miss Pringle in The Mango Tree, a school teacher. There is humour in his arrival, clean and smart except for his tattered underpants, expecting to be taught a game of cards which collapses into the more serious game of sex. "'Who's there?' says Miss Hart. 'It is I', he says, nominative after all parts of the verb to be" (p.222).

It is interesting to note, incidentally, that this portion of the scene is written in the third person, giving the perspective of the watcher looking back on an experience which may be too immediate to relate at first hand. (The major part of the book is told in the first person.)

The ensuing seduction is ludicrous and pathetic. Porter's comments, in the form of direct statement now, contain poignancy but not humour. He writes of Miss Hart: "Had her perspicacity been greater she needs not have learned what she learned from me; what I had to learn

I already knew of myself and did not wish to know" (p.222). Looking back on himself after his initiation, he writes:

I do not know what other simpletons of seventeen, thus seduced by women two-and­ a-half times their own age, do after they have been used, or what they think, or remember. I remember that he walks the beach, under a moon, backwards and forwards at the water's final edge, up and down, not -84-

striding but bowed into rumination by an experience as necessary as unnecessary, bowed like an older man, like an old youth, like a dead boy, and saying to the water's final edge, 'I've done it. My fingers smell of woman. Was she a woman? I'm no } longer a virgin. I'm a man. Am I a man? I can smile - a little - at him in the moonlight whispering that. Is he a man? What is a man? (p.224)

So effective and scarifying has been the transition that he feels "split off" from his other self - the "other he" of the experience, - "uprooted from his designed self" which he now sees as an "old youth, a dead boy", images which strike us forcibly with their emphasis not on something gained but on something lost.

It is, perhaps, Jamie,in The Mango Tree,who comes out of this kind of initiation in the most positive way for, despite his sadness at

Miss Pringle's leaving him, he is able to face up to the experience with a degree of maturity and acceptance that is enhanced by his grand­ mother's sensitive and positive handling of the situation.

The boy must indeed die, as Porter suggests, in this moment of transition but out of the sexual experience should come archetypally a rebirth to manhood and new delights. As we have seen, however, this latter kind of experience is not often reported, at least on the first occasion. It is true that we do find in the first encounter of Brownie and Lola in The Delinquents an aura of tranquility and tenderness, as

illustrated in the following passage, where the image of the fallen

flowers stresses the rather nostalgic and fragile beauty of a childhood

now lost. (They are nearly fifteen and thirteen years old respectively.) -85-

He lifted her out of the tree and it was the lightness of the small quivering body in his arms that undid them both and brought their childhood to an end there in the night amidst the long grass and the fallen flowers of the frangipani. 49

This atmosphere is, however, soon dispelled through the author's habit of breaking in upon her story with outraged comment on social attitudes, a device which does great hann, I think, to the emotional and structural hannony of the nove1. 50

It is not surprising, perhaps, in the light of our previous discussion in the early part of this chapter, to find that one of the most affirmative exarrples of the transition to maturity through the first full sexual relationship is seen in the story of the half-caste

Aboriginal girl, Yaralie, in the book of that name. The fact that she is only fifteen at the time illustrates further the point made formerly that the possession of a clearly defined role is of more consequence than the age of the adolescent, even though Yaralie is not living within tribal confines. The following extract describes her sexual initiation when, unable to sleep, she walks towards the sea, in a scene that is outwardly reminiscent of Porter's description, quoted on the previous pages, but which contains none of the negative or ironic tones which we find in the passage of the latter author.

She kept on towards the sandhills, that loomed white and seeming cold. From over the hills came the sibilance of the tide on the beach, and from behind her Raymond's voice. 'Hey, wait for me.' She waited, silent, till he came to her, and they went on towards the sandhills. As they climbed the steep slope of fine sand that showed white in the moonlight, black and secret in shadow, she felt light and strong, free, poised between air and earth, as a bird gathering itself to take off into the wind. -86-

From the crest of the hill they looked out across the sea, hazed and reIWte under the JWon. The lighthouse shone in the distance, hardly brighter than the moon-dimmed stars. Time passed as they stood ankle-deep in the fine wind-banked sand of the crest of the hill, till he touched her for the first time, his hand strong, firm, sure, beneath her elbows. Her heart a whirring of finches' wings, she stepped slowly down with him to where a false crest laid its shadow on the clean cool sand, knowing, as she turned to him in the dark, wordlessly, feeling his strength above her as she laid herself down, slight and slim for him, knowing, then, as he made her woman, after her having been so long a child and young girl, Yaralie, that she had come to her maturity with him knowing, in the wordless timeless dark, with the moon-white ridge above, and all the sky far and hazed, and he so sure and strong with her, that his strength and hers were fused, knowing, as his male strength was spent in her, so recklessly, that they could not now ever be other than strong, knowing that the night round them was theirs, and all the nights and days ahead. (pp.177-8)

The imagery of sea and moon with its fertility associations, the sense of Yaralie "poised between air and earth, as a bird51 gathering itself to take off into the wind", suggest the onset of her maturity which, coming through her sexual association with Raymond✓ is instantaneous. She is now woman and there will be no looking back.

The echoes of Lawrence in the images and the cadences of this passage, especially in the long, repetitive last sentence, do, nevertheless, enhance its effect. Certainly, it is hard to find in Australian litera- ture another example of the transition from adolescence to maturity completed with such confidence and fulfilment, whereby the girl is made woman or the youth man. The feelings of both uncertainty and loneliness which characterise so many of the other adolescents might well be summed up in the words of Mordecai after his initiation by a prostitute in

Riders in the Chariot: "He stared exhausted at her enormous beige -87-

nipples, and wondered whether his instincts would know how to navigate the frail craft in which he had embarked alone. 1152

It is clear from many of our examples, also, why the adolescent has to use his "instincts" rather than any specific knowledge or help which have been given him to steer his way through this difficult period.

Tansy, in Morning in Queensland, refers to a talk she had with her mother as one of those "which said too little and too much at the same time" and which she hated (p.238). Horne relates the only "discussion" he ever had about sex being with his mother when he asks her: "'Are you going to have a baby?' She was" (p.122) • His only other inform­ ation comes from The Household Physician, "when Mum and Dad were not looking", resulting in needless fears about gonorrhea and syphilis

(p.117). Porter also relates succinctly his approach to his father on sex. Referring to the Nurse (Mother Mawsdley) who comes to the home as each new baby arrives, he says: "If I ask how old Mother Mawsdley plants the seeds for babies, he tells me to tuck my shirt in" (p.93). Once more, Bill~in Halfway to Anywhere, sums up the situation; having been berated by Ma with "awful reticence" for "unmentionable things", he shouts: "Cripes, it's enough to drive a bloke bats picking on him about things a bloke can't make head or tail of" (p.164).

These and other instances seem to point to the fact that, in sexual affairs particularly, the parents wish to keep the child in a state of "innocence", thus making the destruction of this state all the more traumatic for him.

"Change of place, of time and of fortune" says New, "all occur in the world and, in the literature of an age of change, they become focal metaphors, as it were, to express the flux of environment and growth" (p.130). -88-

In the following section, we shall see how the metaphors of spring, .rebirth and the fall from innocence are used in the literature of adolescence to express this flux of environment and growth that we have noted as an essential element in the transitional phase.

II. Images of transition: spring, rebirth and the fall from innocence

To me it seems that youth is, like spring, an overpraised season ••. more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting east winds than genial breezes.

Butler, The Way of All Flesh

He could feel the sides of his chrysalis cracking.

McKie, The Mango Tree

Innocence seemed to be fleeing almost visibly away from me, looking over her shoulder like a shy filly but also showing no real inclination to return.

de Jong, With a Dutch Accent

These three images are the ones which occur most frequently in the literature of adolescence to express and to explicate the trans­ ition from childhood to maturity. Very often they reflect the difficult­ ies and the misconceptions which beset both adolescents and parents, some manifestations of which we have already recorded in our previous discussion.

All three concepts are, of course, closely related. Spring is the time of birth - for rhe adolescent, a rebirth - as the innocent child dies within him or a new innocence is acquired. In most primitive tribes, the coming both of spring and of manhood is accomp­ anied by rites and ceremonies many of which stress, as we noted earlier, -89-

a ritual death. The knocking out of a tooth, fasting and circumcision all fall into this category. Whatever the means of initiation, however, the purpose, as Henderson suggests, always remains the same:

"to create the symbolic mood of death from which may spring the symbolic mood of rebirth". 53 Morris54 uses the phrase, "second birth", for the post-adolescent stage but I would feel that this term is more applicable to the entry into adolescence than to the usually less traumatic emergence out of it, into adulthood. Morris elaborates his idea, in an interesting way, by his analysis of the second birth as a repetition of the first one, with the adolescent's feelings transferred from the mother to a new love object. He says: "If the baby's message was 'hold me tight' and the child's was 'put me down', that of the adolescent is 'leave me alone'" (p. 31).

We hear this last phrase frequently reiterated, as in The

Tree of Man, when Ray says to his mother: "I only want to be left alone". 55 I would apply Morris's postulation to the adolescent's first love affair when, as he continues:

the primary sequence of changing intimacies - 'hold me tight/put me down/leave me alone' - now goes back to the beginning again. The young lovers, like the baby, say 'hold me tight' ••• to emphasise the strength of this attachment, the message 'hold me tight' becomes amplified by the words 'and never let me go' . (p. 32)

In the following examination of the images of transition, we shall find, as we have already intimated, that there are few clearly defined "rites of passage" in the world of the adolescent or reflected

in the literature of adolescence though the images associated with

them may be employed. Some remnants of the mysterious and magical

quality of these primitive rites occur occasionally in the novelist's -90-

imagery, a good instance of which can be seen in The Boys in the Island in the incident with Heather and Francis in the pool when they are both sixteen. Francis, after kissing her impulsively in the water, asks himself:

'What did it mean?' The boy felt a faint, baffling shame. It was as though seconds before, they had swum in a circle of childhood, laughing, thoughtless. And now, with the awkward adult kiss, the mute recognition of her woman-rounded shoulders, of those fearful and maddening white stones her childish bathing-suit held, he had clumsily broken into the circle of her childhood. (p.105)

The words, "circle" and "stones", with their strong magical inference, dominate the passage. Later, the same sense of mystery and of the incompleteness and ambivalence of the transition is seen when

Francis, on undoing Heather's dress, finds that she is wearing "no seductive adult brassiere but a homely small girl's singlet. But the fever waved through him as she let him cup the warm flesh of her breast in his hand: the full woman-mysteries her child's singlet held" (p .128) •

A more specific attempt to evoke the spirit of the ancient practices associated with the "rites of passage" is seen in Chapter Six of The Mango Tree when the "Professor" takes Jamie to a former initiation ground and describes graphically the aboriginal ceremonies that once were enacted there. This scene is well integrated into the novel as its occurrence matches the stage of transition through which Jamie himself is passing and presages his own forthcoming sexual initiation.

The following extract portrays, in language that has the imaginative intensity and the onomatopoeic rhythms of poetry, the terror and pride of the Aboriginal "transition": -91-

He paced the Big Circle, slowly, thinking, hearing the boys breathing, feeling their dark eyes on him, seeing the clay figures, recording the whispered mysteries. He stood against the Professor's grass-tree spear, in the centre of the ring, sat where the boys had sat with clamped mouths, terrified yet proud that soon they would be men. In the dusk he left the gully and walked back to town. He felt incredibly old and incredibly young. He thought of the dark gods behind him, the dust of time, the scream of bull-roarers, the crash of nullas, the high whistle of spears. Of when he too would be a man. (p.82).

This knowledge, coming to him as he says "from darkly within the blood and bone of that afternoon", heralds for him a point of no return: "To know and nothing more. To perceive without logic or proof. To be part of a mystery without knowledge of that mystery"

(p.83). From now on the transition to manhood is irrevocable.

It is surprising, however, that so little of this kind of

"primitive" imagery is used in the Australian literature of adolescence especially when one considers that Australia is one of the few countries of the civilised world where such rites and mysteries have been, until recently, - and in some areas, in fact, still are - carried on in their original form. This finding would seem to be endorsed by Hope's state­ ment to the effect that, to most Australians, "the Aborigines and their way of life are more remote and foreign than that of the Redskins of

North America whom they at least know at second hand through American literature". 56

More frequently used is the ubiquitous image of spring with its archetypal associations, so many of which are, of course, relevant to adolescence. In the following passage, from The Merry-go-round in the

Sea, we are filled with a sense of the overpowering metamorphosis which -92-

comes with spring and which the boy sees, not only in the land, but also as a forerunner of his own change from childhood to manhood.

In the midst of the vernal beauties encompassing all the senses, we are aware at the same time - as the young boy is - of the inevitable loss and change ahead. This extract appears to embody1 in its images of the dead foxes and the dark womb-like caves beneath the earth the primitive essence, not only of the need to die in order to be I re-born, but also of an awareness of the final death as an integral part of birth. This knowledge, however, is tempered by the "agreeable sadness" felt by the boy and even more so by the strength and solidity of the windmill, whirling "against all seasons", both taking from and bringing to the earth its life-giving nourishment:

In the spring pasture and among the maturing wheat red and blue wild geraniums flowered. Unflowering wild strawberry leaves draped dead wood and lichened rock, and ever­ lastin<,Prustled in one-coloured drifts of pink and white and yellow. By rock pools and creeks the delicate mauve­ petalled wild hibiscus opened, and the gold­ dust of the wattles floated on water. Wild duck were about, and in trees and in fox-holes by water he looked for the nests, staring in at the grey-white eggs, but touching nothing. Climbing a York gum, he was startled when a grey broken-off stump of branch suddenly opened golden eyes at him. He gazed into the angry day-dazzled eyes of the nestling frogmouth and felt that he had witnessed a metamorphosis. Under the wattles, between the flowering shapes, he plunged in the cold rock pools. But his cousin Peter, when he was there, would not take his clothes off. Peter said it was mortal sin or something. He was lXJarding now at the convent, and learning boxing and football from someone called Sister Catherine, who was in the habit of beating kids around the head with her empty beer bottles, according to Peter. On the small, rocky hills, among the keening flowering sheoaks, Rob walked old Bob and drank in the country above Bob's ears. For the first time in his life he -93-

knew that he was young, and knew, with agreeable sadness, that he would not be young for long. Time and death could stain the bright day, and the leaf-brown foxes that traced green paths in the dew could die poisoned and in agony among the flowers. He stood by the body of a young fox, and watched the capeweed and horseradish flowers bend in the wind against it, pollen clinging to the stippled hide. Furry-silvery fingered leaves of lupins dipped and swayed, and the new blue flowerheads nodded. Out of the tender blue sea of the lupin paddock a windmill rose, sandy-tawny with rust, spinning against the lupin-blue sky. Lupins withered and foxes rotted, and the windmill whirled and whirled against all seasons of the sky, drinking from the filled dark caves below the earth. (pp.268-9)

This same link between the awakening earth and the sexuality of the boy is stressed in many parts of The Young Desire It which is aptly described in the Foreword by Douglas Stewart "as a pastoral charged with the awakening of desire, like Spring" (p.XIII).

It is interesting to note that both these books are set in

Western Australia and use the bush, particularly, with its riot of scent and colour, its quality of something primeval and eternal, as a parallel to the hot urgency of the boys' feelings, "the terrible willingness of the flesh, and the mysterious purpose of its desire", as Mackenzie says of Charles (p.310).

Stead's novel, The Man Who Loved Children, is set in America but here, too, is used the image of spring about the young girl, Louie,

as she comes to adolescence, increasingly preoccupied with day dreams

of men's violent lusts (from the books she is reading) and the soft

sensualities of Shelley's poetry. One might note here, also, the

relevance of this image to her own budding as a writer. In one phrase,

Stead suggests evocatively the link between the season of the year and

Louie's "season" of transition when she writes of "the warm advancing -94-

spring", when Louie becomes "more and more thoughtful and round eyed"

(p. 386) •

Thea Astley uses the spring image in a strikingly different way in writing of Vinny Lalor in the opening paragraph of A Descant for

Gossips where she wants to establish both Vinny's difference in relation to most adolescents and a hint of her impending death, already suggested in the previous image of her clinging "to the spinning edges of her world" from where she fears that "one day she would be flung unwanted and violently into space". She continues:

Even the new season did not burst over her in a green flurry. Buds flocked along the adolescent trees, but she came, after her fourteenth winter, unmoved by the spring into the first week of the last term. (p.5)

The force of the word, "unmoved", with its litera157 as well

as metaphorical overtones, suggests a deadness that is very different

from Rob's awareness of both life and death. He will choose life:

Vinny is doomed to choose death.

Although the spring image is used frequently and specifically

in relation to the concept of birth, the summer, too, plays an important

part in Australian literature as a time when the transition to adolescence

is made. Both Horne and Porter, for example, express this aspect and it

is made very explicitly by Emily in The Long Prospect when she refers to

the long summer vacation as the season of her rebirth, "dividing child­

hood from adolescence" (p.52). In proffering New's suggestion that the

adolescent needs to accept both the heat and the light to become adult

(p.295),we might see the Australian summer as a particularly appropriate

symbol for this process. -95-

"Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart." so wrote Golding at the end of Lord of the Flies (p.248). We find that the fall from innocence, another image of the transitional stage, is utilised frequently by authors in our study and in a variety of ways.

Sometimes the innocence of childhood is stressed as compared to the corruption of change; a childhood which has so often been described by writers in glowing terms - the "enchanted realm" of W.H. Hudson, the

"golden gates" of Maggie and Tom, in Eliot' s novel. The Mill on the Floss, I closed for ever as they enter "the thorny wilderness" of experience.

Mackenzie, also, evokes something akin to this feeling in describing Charles when he first goes to boarding school at the age of fourteen:

Among the boys there, he was in fact like a person from some remote land that had been civilised without sophistication. He was a visitor from the very real country of child­ hood, and from that innocent demesne in it which all others of his age there had left, long ago. (p. 54}

This theme is reiterated in his description of the girl, Margaret, who,

"even though she was young, was a woman, lacking that complete innocence which Charles did not realise was his" (p.199} •

Perhaps, however, no one has captured better this moment of innocence, trembling on the brink of experience - and sometimes corrupted by it - than Henry Handel Richardson in her collection of short stories aptly entitled: The End of a Childhood. In •The Bath", for instance, she captures a moment when four young girls, on the threshold of adolescence, are having a bath on a scorching summer afternoon-and, with it, the sense of sheer exuberance, of burgeoning j adolescence, of a complete lack of self-consciousness so that not one -96-

troubles to take a look at her naked self. It would be hard to find two more sensitive and evocative descriptions of an innocence which, through its very existence, must be corrupted, and yet which can exist pure and complete in this moment, than in the following two passages from this story. She describes first the blond girl:

Her skin was of a delicate transparency, through which the veins showed blue as forget-me-nots. A wonderful prong, running down the chest, forked and lost itself in the whiteness of the barely-hinted breasts. Round her throat were two lines that might have been scored by a thumb-nail in wet clay; and below the ribs were two more - the lines of sitting beauty - deeply indented and wavy, like the lines carved by ripples on the sea shore. 58

Then, contrasted to her, the tall, dark girl:

Against the others she stood out for the richness of her colouring; her skin was the shade of old, old ivory, tinting to amber, to a dusky gold, in all crevices: where the curls met her neck, and in the hollows of her armpits. Her young breasts - at this moment laid flat, for she was stretching with the abandon of a cat, both hands clasped tight behind her neck - ended in rings the colour of blue grapes dashed with sepia. (p.114)

Two of the best stories in this collection which show, in one case, the fear of corruption, in the other, corruption itself, are

"Conversation in a Pantry" and "The Wrong Turning". In the first one,. we see the plight of the adolescents of fifty years ago and, as we have already noted, of more recent times, also, who know, as Simone

de Beauvoir put it, "at once too much and too little", and "apprehend

but ... do not comprehend". 59 Through the doubts and fears of the

thirteen year old, seeking information from a seventeen year old very

little better informed, we are made aware of an innocence which is told -97-

"to take care" but can only reply: "How can I .•• if I don't know?"

(p.106).

In the final story, we have one of the most explicit portrayals of the breaking of innocence, other than through a direct sexual experience. As we have seen, however, this latter experience can be one of tenderness, of two innocents reaching out tremulously and

joyfully towards one another whereas, in "The Wrong Turning", experience is gained at the price of the adolescents' loss of each other. Not only is the "breaking" of the young girl's innocence violent and obscene,

"pitching her headlong into a reality for which she was in no way prepared", but the fact that she and the boy are forced to share it is the final terrible indignity. The crux of the story is in this fact when, after an idyllic row up the river, they take a wrong turning and

come suddenly upon a crowd of naked, jostling soldiers, calling obscen­

ities to them and blocking their way. "For one instant the Girl raised her eyes - one only ••• but it was enough. She saw and he saw that she

saw'' (pp.122-3).

These stories succeed through the impact of their language,

sometimes colourful and elaborate, sometimes simple and direct, and

through the author's grasp of the essential quality of innocence, of

the horror and fear of corruption. By comparison, a story like Gwen

Kelly's "Mini-skirts" loses a great deal of its strength because of

the blurring of its outlines and the tendency to force the language

into too obvious parallels. We see this, for instance, in the sacrifice

of the lizard as an "offering" the young boy has to make before taking

Cheryl's body, in her exultant stoning of the lizard before giving

herself to him and in the final picture of her body which has, itself,

taken on the image of evil "as she lay beneath him banded brown and -98- white like a snake, bikini brown stomach and neck and white pale breasts and pelvis"~ O

The thrust of the story lies in the contrast between the lost

"innocence" of the young girl, Cheryl, with all her cruelty and hardness, and the illusion of the mother who thinks that the fashion of mini-skirts will help to keep her daughter as a child. As she says to her friends:

"'She's still the same little girl with long brown legs and sandals and short frocks. It's so important, their innocence, I mean'" (p.115).

It is an interesting attempt to explore the complexities of the state of innocence within a Garden of Eden setting and the framework of "the Fall" and to examine the almost universal idea that youth is, or should be, a time of innocence, together with the illusions which so often accompany this notion, but it remains a story with a potential not fully realised. It does show, however, the way in which the adolescent can live in a world apart from the adult community, including his parents, with neither side being aware of the other's problems or, at times, his own responsibilities. This is seen also in Henry Handel

Richardson's novel, The Getting of wisdom - based on her own childhood and adolescence - which is concerned with the disillusionment of the sensitive and imaginative young girl, Laura, and her "naive unprepared­ ness for life's buffeting", as her husband wrote later. 61 The naivety and what one might call the destructive innocence of her mother may be seen in one of her letters to Laura at boarding school when she says:

"'I want you to only have nice thoughts and feelings and grow into a wise and sensible girl'" (p. 61).

It is seen to an even greater extent in Sam's relationship with Louie in The Man Who Loved Children which we shall be examining in more detail at a later stage. -99-

This theme of innocence, destroyed or destroying, and its accompanying images, have been widely used62 in the literature of adolescence by such writers, for example, as James, Golding and Cary.

As we have noted already in the illustrations used above, it is a theme with particular attraction for the short story genre because the writer can concentrate his skill on the moment when, to use Walters' words in a wider context, "innocence operates to produce death or disaster or disruption of the fixed structures which stabilise society"63 and, we might add, the adolescent society in particular. A further instance of this theme is seen in a moving Italian story, a short novel called Agostino. 64

In this story, set in the Mediterranean summer, the author uses to fine effect the contrast of the boy's corruption and bitterness and his visualisation of his monkey-like corrupters, with the beauty and purity of the scenery, as in the following episode:

Agostino felt within him a heavy weight of pent-up grief which the windy sea and magnificent fires of sunset on the violet waters only made more bitter and unbearable. It seemed to him horribly unjust that it was on such a sea and under such a sky that a boat like theirs should be sailing, so crowded with malice, cruelty, falsehood, and corruption. That boat, overflowing with boys gesticulating like obscene monkeys, with the fat and blissful Saro at the helm, was to him an incredible and melancholy sight in the midst of all that beauty. At moments he wished it would sink; he would have liked to die himself, he thought, and no longer be infected and stained by all that impurity. (p.55)

Despite the stress on betrayal, cruelty and corruption in all these stories, one should bear in mind, as Douvan points out, that although "the entry into adolescence brings with it what may appear to -100-

be a loss of innocence childhood can also be the age without pity, the age of unconscious and casual cruelty" (p. 206).

No modern novel, perhaps, would illustrate this better than

Gelding's novel,Lord of the Flies, in which, as New conments, "part of its power comes from its theme and setting, the yoking together of childhood and savagery in an age when childhood and innocence have come almost to be synonymous" (p.291).

It would seem that the tendency, so connnon in the Victorian era, to idealise the period of childhood and to stress its purity and innocence, could be beginning to change in more recent literature and such a change could affect, therefore, the way in which the image of innocence is used in relation to adolescence.

This view of childhood is reflected, too, in the attitude of

Porter in The Watcher where he implies that the adolescent has to be taught innocence rather than, as is often assumed, that it is a quality he will inevitably lose. He says of his mother, for example, that she

"does not know that I have much innocence to acquire for she, as a victim of her motherhood, has forgotten what she knew as a child, and considers me innocent" (p.136). He then adds, significantly:

"Intelligence is never innocent". 65 He makes an even more explicit reference to this idea in the excellent scene between himself and Alex

Macalister after the latter has "seduced" him in an "innocent" sexual encounter during his early adolescence. Porter connnents:

This labour of teaching me innocence under the dark trees is neither a secret nor a lie. It is one of the facts of animal development all may not know or want to know. It is a truth of existence I am thankful Alex Macalister affirmed for me. (p.158) -101-

I would take Porter's meaning here to be related to the New or Higher Innocence of Blake that represents the synthesis of the opposing elements of past Innocence and Experience. This process is usually applicable to the second rather than to the first transitional stage of adolescence when, both Innocence and Experience having been encountered, the protagonist is ready to enter the realm of the Higher

Innocence. At this point there need be, as New suggests "no regret for a lost innocence if a vital future lies ahead" (p.115), and this is one reason, no doubt, why the second transitional stage is usually represented both as less sudden and less stressful than the first. As

New points out further, it is only when an attempt is made to retain the childhood innocence without development - when, in psychological terms, the protagonist becomes fixated - that a grotesque and atrophy­ ing immaturity remains.

The metaphorical implications of the fall from innocence, which New and other critics see represented in the American novel as a result of the growth of materialism and the subsequent loss of the country's vitality, are not apparent in the same way in the Australian novel of adolescence, though such implications may serve as a general commentary on the values of society over the last fifty years.

It is my contention, however, that the theme of loss of innocence, while sometimes used in conjunction with images which denote the destruction of individuals or of society, emerges more often

in Australian literature in the Blakean sense suggested previously: that is, as depicting a necessary process of experience which, through this very loss, is the only way for the adolescent to achieve a higher

innocence and a viable maturity. This metaphor might well be extended

to the experience of Australia as a country which, as suggested in an -102- earlier chapter, is itself emerging from its adolescence towards a state of knowledge and truth.

For the adolescent, one essential means of such achievement lies in the realisation of the potential of his individual self, seen by Henderson as a person's highest goal in his voyage from immaturity to maturity, in his release from "a confining pattern of existence" to a state of being that is superior in its liberation and development. 66

We shall now proceed to discuss how the writer deals with the concepts of emotional and intellectual growth, of parental and peer relationships, as part of the adolescent's search for self-realisation and identity. -103-

NOTES TO CHAPTER III

1. (Melbourne, 1944) • Note, also, the use of the term, "Age of Transition", as a Chapter heading by Hurlock, op. cit. Olendorff, writing in Children's Rights, sees adolescence as the most important transitional period in human life.

2. (Sydney, 1972), p.59.

3. Sherwood Anderson (New York, 1919), pp.98-99.

4. (Victoria, 1969), p.176.

5. Carson Mccullers (London, 1958).

6. J.T. Farrell (New York, 1938), p.56.

1. I came out of the 18th century (New York, 1942), p.144.

8. Life Rarely Tells (London, 1958), p.31.

9. (Melbourne, 1962). It is interesting to note the tone of affirmation, even of pride which seems to underlie these descriptions as compared with similar ones in the other Australian novels which are closer in tone to s. de Beauvoir's words: "I was hovering shamefacedly between girlhood and womanhood" op. cit., p.102. The latter confirm the judgement of O.E. Thompson in Contemporary Adolescence: Readings ed. H. Thornburg (California, 1971),in an article "Adolescent Personality", (pp.388-408), that modern society attaches minimal worth and dignity to any in-between stages so that the adolescent has no status in his own right.

10. Immortalised in James's book of that name and, in a very different atmosphere and setting, in White's short story "Down at the Dump" in The Burnt Ones (Harmondsworth, 1968), pp.285-316, when Lummy's mother tries to placate her irate husband, Wal, by saying of her son: "He's only at the awkward age" (p.287). Golding illustrates the "in-between" stage well when he says of Ralph that "he was old enough, twelve years and a few months, to have lost the prominent tummy of childhood; and not yet old enough for adolescence to have made him awkward". Lord of the Flies (London, 1954), p.10.

11. Out of these Roots (Boston, 1953), p.270.

12. Elizabeth Harrower (London, 1958), p.60.

13. Ruth Park (Sydney, 1955), p.79.

14. Henry Handel Richardson (London, 1910), p.274. -104-

15. Kylie Tennant (Sydney, 1968), p.137.

16. Hurlock, in 1971, presents this point of view in cormnenting that adolescence was regarded, until recently, as a single period in the life span but that studies of adolescents have revealed that there is a marked difference in the behaviour patterns of the young and the older adolescent. She sees the dividing time between early and late adolescence as seventeen years (for both girls and boys). (p.2) See also this thesis, Chapter I, p. 10.

17. Hurlock stresses this factor even more strongly when she says of adolescence that it is now considered that a metamorphis does not take place but that there is ample evidence that traits present in childhood will become more deep-rooted with the passage of time. (p.4)

18. (London, 1957), Preface pp.VII-VIII.

19. (Harmondsworth, 1963), p.54.

20. The widespread wearing of jeans by pre-adolescents, both male and female, over the last ten years has caused this symbol to lose a great deal of its significance.

21. R. Stow (London, 1965), p.280.

22. Ma and Pa (Sydney, 1963), pp.171-2.

23. Vanity Fair (New York, 1962), p.352.

24. This quoted passage might provide just one example, among many, of the kind of contributions made by creative literature towards an understanding of the adolescent. It is a living re-enactment of Hurlock's statement: "While the body is changing, the adolescent's self-consciousness about his body is intensified", op. cit., p.60.

25. The Diary of Davids. Kogan (New York, 1955), p.71.

26. Published in The Western Humanities Review, Autumn, 1968, p.317.

27. In Man and His Sym'bols, op. cit., p.132.

28. C. Koch (London, 1958), p.64.

29. (Sydney, 1933), p.236.

30. In The Rainbow Bird and Other Stories, selected by Allan Edwards, (Sydney, 1957), p.38.

31. N. Lindsay {Sydney, 1966).

32. Seaforth McKenzie {Sydney, 1963), p.7. -105-

33. (Sydney, 1971).

34. The Diary of a Young Girl (New York, 1952), p.38.

35. (Sydney, 1960).

36. Henderson refers to the menstrual cycle as being the major part of initiation from a woman's point of view. In modern times, however, not everyone would agree that "she willingly gives herself to her womanly function, much as the man gives himself to his assigned role in the community life of his group". In Man and His Symbols, op. cit., p.132. Certainly, the joy and feasting with which this event is greeted in most primitive tribes are lacking in our own culture.

37. During the 1930s. One sometimes wonders, in the light of socio­ logical and psychological studies, how much better informed the young adolescent is to-day.

38. The Universal Experience of Adolescence, p.181.

39. One can hardly fail to recall the image of Dr Leopold Bloom in Joyce's Ulysses, "prematurely bald from self-abuse" and "with metal teeth".

40. In Henny's outburst,quoted on p. 69, she says to Louie, "you look as if you spent the night in self-abuse" (p.442). ·

41. Porter and Horne are the only two authors who use it at all; apart from a somewhat ludicrous - though apparently serious - reference to it by F. Dalby Davison in The White Thorntree (Sydney, 1970), Vol.I, p.220.

42. In The Burnt Ones op.cit., p.289.

43. (London, 1958), p.247.

44. As already indicated, Kiell shows his awareness of this in two books: The Adolescent through Fiction and The Universal Experience of Adolescence. In the former, he draws on fictional extracts to illustrate his psychologically based conclusions; in the latter, on autobiographical material, including letters and diaries, to stress the universality - through all periods of time and in many different cultures - of the adolescent experience. A recent book, Child Development Through Literature, ed. D. Elliott Landau, (New Jersey, 1972), is also of interest in this area.

45. There are several other good illustrations of the suddenness and mysteriousness of change in attitude between the pre- adolescent and adolescent. In Halfway to Anywhere, Bill talks of the "new" Polly and Gertie "as examples of a magic performed on a bloke by some satanic wizardry of the senses" (p.56); in -106-

D. Charlwood's book All the Green Year (Sydney, 1965}, Charlie, aged 14, says of Eileen on the occasion of his first dance: "I looked at her with my mouth open. It seemed ridiculous to think I had boxed with her hardly a year before•(p.28}; in The Mango Tree, Jamie sees Mary again when they are both 17: "They were the same age and had known each other since childhood. They had played and swum together and sometimes fought. Once she had split open his ear with a cricket bat after he had pulled her pig tails. Yet they had never seen each other before. Until this moment. A second of startled awareness. Flick of a wing" (p.177}.

46. Elizabeth Harrower (London, 1966}, p.72.

41. The Road to Monte Carlo (New York, 1956}, p.36.

48. E. Lowe (London, 1938}, p.80.

49. Criena Rohan (London, 1962}, p.21.

50. This criticism is taken up later in discussing "point of view" in the novel in Chapter 6. Joyce Cary' s novel, "Charley is my Darling (London, 1961}, in handling a somewhat similar theme of "delinquent" adolescents, is more successful because of the author's subtlety of approach. His portrayal of Charley's and Lizzie's love and of their relations with welfare and police authorities is very movingly drawn through understatement and implication.

51. Jung, et al., refer to the bird being often used as a fitting symbol of transcendence whereby the individual is liberated.

52. Patrick White {London, 1961}, p.120.

53. In Man and His Symbols, p.132.

54. D. Morris, Intimate Behaviour {London, 1971}.

55. Patrick White (Harrnondsworth, 1967}, p.244.

56. A.D. Hope, Current Affairs Bulletin, Nov.1956, p.40.

57. See the previous reference in this chapter to the onset of her menstruation.

58. The End of a Childhood and other Stories {London, 1934}, p.113. An interesting contrast to the beauty of these girls is found in the description of the young, naked boys as seen by Stephen in Joyce's novel,A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, pp.168-9.

59. Elizabeth Montagu, This Side of Truth, Preface pp.VII-VIII. Similar sentiments are reiterated by Nancy Adams in Family Fresco (Melbourne, 1966), and Tansy in Morning in Queensland.

60. In Coast to Coast: 1969-70, selected by Thea Astley. (Sydney, 1970}, p.118. -107-

61. J .G. Robertson, "The Art of Henry Handel Richardson", in Myself When Young (London, 1948), p.170.

62. See D. Walters, The Theme of Destructive Innocence in the Modern Novel (Univ. of Oklahoma, 1960). Unpub. Ph.D. Thesis.

63. This reference is from a summary of Walte:rs'sstudy in Dissertation Abstracts, Vol.21, No.a, p.2300.

64. Alberto Moravia, Agostino, in Two Adolescents (Harrnondsworth, 1964). Trans. by Beryl de Zoete.

65. An interesting comment on adolescence, in this context, comes from Ruth Park when she says: "If you weren't ignorant and in the prime of your health and strength you couldn't stand it". Sydney Morning Herald, October 31, 1974.

66. In Man and His Symbols, p.149. Coveney uses a similar phrase, "the feeling of expansion", which exists "at this point of focus of the adolescent world turning into man", in The Image of Childhood, p.270. CHAPTER FOUR

Recurring themes and images (continued)

III. The search for identity

a) Emotional and intellectual development:

Aesthetic appreciation p.109 Religious feelings p.115 Reading p.119 Writing p.124

b) Parent-adolescent relationships p.134

c) Siblings, peers and the older friend p.159

d) The heroic gesture and the bid for life p.183

IV. The mirror image and the "looking-glass self" p.188 -109-

CHAPTER FOUR

III. The search for identity

The first basic right of the adolescent is self­ detezmination.

Ollendorff,Children's Rights

"I don't know who I am".

An adolescent speaking: In Jarvis, The Adolescent Years

And then an event did occur to Emily, of considerable importance. She suddenly realised who she was.

Hughes, High Wind in Jamaica

a) Emotional and intellectual development

Many writers would see the central problem of the adolescent period as being the establishment of a sense of identity. An important part of the growth integral to this attainment is in the emotional and intellectual progression of the adolescent, as necessary, in fact, as his physical maturation if adulthood is to be reached and the search for self-realisation accomplished. It is, of course, closely related to the physical changes taking place at this time, particularly in the glands of internal secretion,1 and usually follows a stable middle period when the child, as Nichols says, "is undisturbed by assults of abstract and reflective thought or by any vezy turbulent emotional life"

(p. 50) • -110-

With the onset of adolescence, a variety and an intensity of feelings become apparent, with moods ranging from depression to ecstasy.

Simon sees the adolescent image in a wide range of literature as being of this kind_.depicting a time when new relationships are explored, new experiences tried, and when the adolescent learns to develop new resources of inner strength and ability. The adolescent is, he says,

"intellectually active ••• with intense idealism, often rigid and uncompromising ••• with a deep drive to develop emotional independence from his parents, yet often lonely, isolated, depressed and confused"

(p. 8) • "I liked myself and I hated myself" says the young Donald Horne,

(p.181), expressing the ambivalence of the adolescent's state of mind.

The sense of isolation and alienation is strong in the literary presentation of the Australian adolescent, as it is in the history of the Australian continent. Under normal circumstances, it represents only a passing phase with which he can eventually come to terms. When this fails, the result may be suicide, as with Vinny in

A Descant for Gossips or Shane in The Boys in the Island. It is not surprising that the two teen-age girls in The Fringe Dwellers2 who feel this sense of alienation so strongly are part Aboriginal. In their search for identity, both girls are burdened with the conflict of two backgrounds - Trilby violently rejecting both - and with parents who are unable to help them. Trilby finally goes to Perth, not to find and express herself, but so she can be "lost" among the crowds.

The same reaction of being lost is seen in Wild Cat Falling, 3 also with a half Aboriginal protagonist, the boy who tells the story.

Here, Johnson uses the "wild cat" image to portray the boy's fears and wildness in an environment where he is an outsider; to symbolize his crazy circling in the frustrating and hopeless journey of life from -111-

which he is forever alienated, where he cannot achieve his own identity -

"trying to find himself and failing" as Johnson succinctly expresses it

(p.14). In the boy's talks with the old Aboriginal, however, there is a hint that he may "find" his country because, as the old man says, it has never really "lost" him. Both these novels form an interesting contrast to Ilbarana and Yaralie where, even with the half-caste girl, we have seen that the feeling of "belonging" was strong enough and the adoles­ cent's role clearly enough defined to enable a sense of identity to be established.

Henderson, in referring to initiation rites generally, sees them as a process whereby the adolescent "can strike a balance that makes him truly human, and truly the master of himself". 4 For, as

Douvan says, although identity does not begin at adolescence, it is then that a commitment to an identity becomes critical (p.15). (It is of interest to note that Johnson, at the age of twenty-six, was able to say: "I now find myself orientated to the Aboriginal people and am, for the first time, definitely committed to a race". 5)

In the adolescent's heightened awareness and self-conscious­ ness lies a reflection of his yearning to change the self and find his true identity. He may, in his fluctuating emotional state and with his problems of role confusion, act several parts, trying himself out on his peers and family, for his concept of self is largely determined by how others see him and may be revised with new experiences. Under­ lying Horne' s words, in his autobiography, "I had been cast into a new role but I had not yet learned the lines; I could not even find the script" (p.139), is a nightmarish quality, reflecting the dreams of adults as well as the reality of adolescents and suggesting that the task is not an easy one. The adolescent may be said, finally,to accept -112-

his identity when, in Hurlock's definition, "he respects himself and lives comfortably with himself" (p.682), though further adjustments may, of course, need to be made as he travels through life.

The following comment is illuminating, in this regard, from

Edward Muir who, it should be said, had a particularly difficult adolescence, losing a brother and both parents:

It is in these years between eleven and eighteen that we construct little by little with the approval of all the world the mask which we shall wear with such ease when we reach manhood, feeling that we were born with it, though it is merely a face which was made to look like a face by our own clumsy hands at an age when we did not know what we were doing. 6

Such a statement is reminiscent of the protagonist in Wild

Cat Falling, with the face which he puts on to the world which he senses will never understand him, or of Porter in The Watcher, with his

"I don't care" mask.

One of the best expressions of the fundamental uncertainty of the adolescent in his confrontation with this new consciousness of self comes from Lawrence in The Rainbow when he describes "the cloud of self- responsibility" which gathers around Ursula as she passes from girlhood to womanhood. For many adolescents, as for Ursula, it is "torment indeed, to inherit the responsibility of one's own life". 7

Once having found a sense of identity, however, and being convinced of its rightness, the adolescent may be loth to surrender it.

Elizabeth Harrower makes this point well in The Watch Tower when Clare, on the point of "finding" herself, is forced by her sister, Laura, with whom she lives, to adopt a cheerful, compliant relationship towards

Laura's husband, Felix, whom she despises. Harrower comments, with -113-

perspicacity: "In a sense, to be obliged to assume an attitude she did not feel was the worst thing that could happen to her" (p. 76).

The search for identity and the corresponding awareness and acceptance of self which occur in adolescence manifest themselves, as we suggested earlier, in clearly defined and recurring themes, both in psychological comment and in the literature under discussion. We shall now examine some of these in relation to the adolescent's emotional and intellectual development.

"I slept and dreamt that life was Beauty"8

The increased range and depth of the adolescent's feelings are apparent in his heightened aesthetic responses, often to nature and the countryside, sometimes to animals, and with an accompanying emotional "softening", obvious more in boys, perhaps, because of the greater contrast, on the whole, to what has existed before. We find this softening, for example, even in that incorrigible pair, Bill and

Waldo, who decide in their early adolescence that it is cruel to shoot possums when there is no real cause to do so - as there is with rabbits.

These kinds of responses are expressed, too, by Harrower when she says of Emily in The Long Prospect: "A palpitating new world of extraordinary richness and complexity had sprung round her. She and the world had been reborn" (p.60). She later makes the point that this experience is one which only the adolescent is undergoing. "No one else had changed.

They still lived from day to day, and meal to meal, and talked about the price of peas and tomatoes" (p.60).

A similar feeling, as we have already noted in the discussion of the spring imagery in Chapter Three, is strongly infused in The Young

Desire It where Mackenzie writes of the boy, Charles: "He felt the -114- growth of self in himself; it showed in his heightened and now consciously intensified reactions to the new surprise of beauty in the world" (p.124).

(It is important to note here that not only does Charles find his identity but he is also able to experience, later on, the loss of identity through the moment of "rare spiritual exaltation" which he shares with the young girl, Margaret (p.207). This momentary loss of self is affirmed by other writers, 9 with particular reference to sexual experience of which Charles'semotion is a prelude.)

This overpowering sense of "almost mystical fervour", a phrase which Simone de Beauvoir uses to describe her love of the country­ side at this age (p.124), is seen in Davy's response, in My Brother Jack, to the world of the city, of the waking wharves in Melbourne where, as he says:

for the first time in my life I came to be aware of the existence of true beauty, of an opalescent world of infinite promise that had nothing whatever to do with the shabby suburbs that had engulfed me since my birth. (p. 70)

He goes on to describe how this beauty "filled me with an excitement, almost an exultation, that I could tell nobody about".

These feelings of spirituality and of isolation are stressed even more when he concludes: "I moved through the newly-discovered world breathless and alone, like Adam in a new Eden, and I felt almost as if I had to walk on tiptoe wherever this shining place extended" (p. 70).

Again, we may listen to the thoughts of Steve, in The Pea

Pickers: "'Now, in my adolescence' I thought, 'I worship, as is fit, the first aesthetic gods of the world. In my maturity, what shall I, the race, worship?'"IO -115-

The most striking quality of these four illustrations is their emphasis on the newness of the experience so that the existing world is not merely seen afresh by each protagonist, as if it had never existed before, but is endowed also with an extraordinary uniqueness11 and with a beauty that is paradisial. Beauty becomes a god which the adolescent, in his exalted state, reveres and worships.

"I can talk to God when I can talk to nobody else"

An adolescent speaking, in Hurlock, Adolescent Development.

It is easy to see, then, that it is not a far step for the adolescent to move from aesthetic reverence to religious ecstasy or, indeed, to combine them in a kind of mystical union. Lowe expresses this, in writing of Robin, the eighteen year old boy in Salute to

Freedom: "He believed with all his soul that he had found God, and that God was Beauty" (p.88). Many other writers make the point that adolescence is, as Nichols suggests, a peak period for religious conversions, based frequently on an emotional rather than an intellect- ual conviction (p.66). The adolescent tends to look to God as the one who may solve his personal problems and assuage his feelings of anxiety and guilt, especially in relation to sex. Often He is the only person with whom the adolescent can communicate. Thea Astley presents, in her novel, Girl with a Monkey, 12 a vivid picture of the adolescent girl, tormented with sexual fears, grasping desperately at the temporary relief - "until Saturday week" - which the priest's acceptance and God's forgiveness bring.

The strong need for renunciation of worldly goods and the call of the flesh, which can accompany a religious conversion at this time, -116-

is one not often apparent in the literature of our study. Its most explicit representation comes from Jack Lindsay's autobiography when he says of his adolescence:

I felt an urgent need of some renunciatory act, some way of life absolutely opposed to a world of personally-owned things. Sell all and give it to the poor. But I had nothing to sell. I had only a contrite heart to offer on a nameless altarp and later:

I ate as little as possible; I walked long unnecessary distances; I enjoyed the fall of the shower-water over my lean ribs. I stood at the river-edge taking long measured breaths and my body seemed a slight amenable thing which I could throw away without a second thought at the signal, the call to bear witness. (pp.102-103)

For most of the adolescents portrayed in our survey, religion is only a passing phase, an escape from the world of reality, a temporary "prop" to be abandoned when their immediate problems are solved, often by their own growth to self-realisation or, as indicated in the following excerpt, when they find someone else to love.

Hetherington writes in The Morning was Shining:

I think I can pretty well pinpoint the time at which I entered adolescence. I must have been nearing fourteen and for some months just then I lived in a state of minor religious ecstasy, my mind filled with thoughts of God and His everlasting mercy and of the rich life awaiting all true believers when we passed on from this world and its follies. (p.258)

Later, he comments: "Life went on in the usual way and my reserves of religious ecstasy were running low when I fell in love and

God had to take a back seat" (p.259).

It is significant that, in commenting on his adolescent sex -117-

life falling far short of what it should have been, Hetherington adds:

"Perhaps all that religious ecstasy got in the way at the start and spoilt my run" (p. 261).

Boyd expresses an even more extreme link between religion and his sexual feelings; the latter he was able to sublimate entirely for some years, as he explains in the following passage:

When I was thirteen I was tormented by sexual desires and for six months or so my mind seethed with erotic images. Then I was confirmed at school and my eroticism was sublimated. The devil, if this instinct is the devil, left me for a number of years and I went through my schooldays vaguely aware that there was such a thing as sex, but quite untroubled by its urgency. 13

What a contrast this extract provides, with its picture of an adolescent "untroubled" by the "urgency" of sexual drives, to the descriptions of those "haunted" creatures whom we looked at in Chapter

Three! Boyd's case is an unusual one and tempts us to think that he may well have suppressed, consciously or otherwise, some of his memories about this aspect of his life. That he was seventy two when the book was written could also be relevant, in this context.

In a variety of ways, the relationship between sexual and religious feelings can be very close in the adolescent but it is manifested more in the fiction of the pre-nineteen thirties or in the autobiographical works which, though written later, cover the author's adolescence during the earlier period. In our study, religion as an important force in the life of the adolescent is not widely reflected in the later works.

Simon goes so far as to say that the main distinction between the nineteenth and twentieth century adolescent as portrayed in fiction -118- is the unquestioning acceptance of God by the former, together with a relative freedom from anxiety (p.58). There is not enough evidence in our survey to suggest that these two factors are necessarily related.

One can only note that, in the later literature, there is a great deal of anxiety present in the portrayal of the adolescent, with a decreasing religious influence.

In the examples of the repudiation of religion, is substant­ iated the further statement of Nichols to the effect that adolescence is also a peak period for the rejection of religious belief (p.66), just as it is a period of questioning and doubt about many philosophies of life, especially those valued by parents. We are reminded of young

Robert in Redheap, forced to attend church with his family, but carrying out his own secret act of rebellion by taking with him a copy of Don

Juan, disguised in a hymn-book cover, "as a resource against local preachers"; though, as Lindsay comments, "Haidee, the mistress of dreams, is wooed a little vaguely to the tune of hymns" (p.12).

Horne' s act of rebellion is more overt and he instances this with both humour and succinctness when he shocks his mother by announc­ ing that he is an agnostic and enters into many arguments with his father on the existence of God:

The Great Debate ended in Dad shouting so loudly that I thought he was going to hit me. He thumped the table instead, making the honey pot that looked like a beehive rattle in its plate and upsetting the china toast rack that was designed to look like rustic wood. He jumped up from his chair and ran out of the room. Mum and I finished breakfast together. She asked me to stop talking about God when we were having breakfast. (p.142)

We have seen the relationship of religious feelings in the adolescent to the beauty of the world around him and to the development -119-

of his own self-concept. Sometimes these feelings are also linked closely with the beauty of words, in the singing of psalms and hymns, in prayers and in the Bible. Lowe says of Robin's adolescence that it was "during this period of restless yearning that he discovered the beauty of Bible poetry" and then goes on to say: "That the pleasure he derived from his reading was purely sensual he would not have believed, nor did it occur to him that with the assuaging of his mental thirst his bodily needs became less" (p.88).

Edmund Gosse was only ten when, as he writes, "a miracle had been revealed to me, the incalcuable, the amazing beauty which could exist in the sound of verses" . 14

This quotation leads us on to another important element in the adolescent's search for identity, one which is, not surprisingly, very strongly manifested in the literature that we are examining: that is, the use of reading and writing as a means both of understanding and expressing his own nature and sometimes as a means of escaping from it. Kiell, in The Universal Experience of Adolescence, states that a passion for reading is a universal phenomenon of adolescence (p.485).

(An extreme case, perhaps, is that of Norman Lindsay who, at one stage, wagged school for a whole year and whose education was obtained almost entirely from reading.)

Learning to read novels, we slowly learn to read ourselves.

Schaer, Ford Madox Ford: an interpretation, in The Good Soldier

As Hurlock says of the adolescent, "reading plays an important role in the development of his stereotype of an ideal person" and, quoting Strang, continues: "it is possible that many youngsters draw upon various fictional sources for qualities which they may incorporate -120-

into their ideal selves" (p. 650) •

Sometimes, reading supplies the opportunity for experiment­ ation through the safety of vicarious experiences as well as providing, as Lowe suggests in the previous quotation from his novel, a channelling of libidinal energy. Amy Witting expresses this vicarious quality in her description of the young boy, Porter, in a short story entitled

"The Weight of a Man":

In books he found the passions and the oddities of human behaviour and the words of love and anger safely written down, losing nothing but their power to hurt and to alarm, gaining something that made them more satisfying than they were in life. 15

Reading may be a way of submerging or enlarging the self; it meets the need of the adolescent for solace and privacy as well as for the upsurge of intellectual curiosity which occurs at this time, not only about the world but about himself. 16 These needs often result in the compulsive and indiscriminate nature of his reading, as expressed in The Watcher when Porter says of his youthful "bookworm" habits":

"I am indiscriminate because I have no power of discrimination. I am lost and drugged" (p.119).

If we consider the positive part that reading plays in the adolescent's self-realisation and intellectual development, then the aphorism, "Learning to read novels, we slowly learn to read ourselves", may be said to apply more particularly to adolescence than to any other period of our lives.

Horne makes an interesting reference, in his case, to the poetry of T.S. Eliot which at first drew from him an angry response. -121-

He continues:

But the more angry I became with it, the more I was getting used to his verse. I began in some way to accept it as an expression of that low-key quality that I detested in my own life, even of the desperate ennui of adolescence. (p.190)

The opposite experience, in a way, is expressed by Jack

Lindsay in his response to Keats which, in a style typical of much of the book, reflecting the over-wrought and palpitating emotions of the adolescent, he describes in the following extract:

Like a single buffet of joy I realized the unity of the poetic image and my entire rejection of the world. For the first time I climbed right inside a music, to the sure throb of the sustain­ ing heart; I held a poem simple and complete as a flower on my palm, and knew the timeless moment, the rhythm seen as a clear structure held together by its own inner tensions. And in the words Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty, this experience was given its articulate seal, its open statement, which in turn became a demand, an inescapable demand for full allegiance. I knew my allegiance like an oath of love; in the poem I possessed an alien body which was also my own. (p.67)

Guth, in The Thundering GoodToday, also talks about "The

Grecian Urn" - "' a friend to man', and that's the warm fruition of any substantial beauty", (p.96) - in a style which forms a striking cont~ast with Lindsay's expression (and, to some extent, with Guth's also!)

Lindsay provides an extreme example17 of an adolescent's resort to reading as a means of escape from the world and from the realities of self. At the age of fourteen, he says: "It was hard to shut the world away, but I was determined to do it". In the difficult­ ies of his family situation, he shrinks "from the knowledge which imposed on me a responsibility far beyond my powers and comprehensions. -122-

My refuge was poetry". To this was added his interest in the classics

so that he could write also: "The world of Greek myth became more real

than anything in the newspapers" (p.51).

At the age of seventeen, he is still using poetry as his

means of rejecting the world, saving every penny he can to collect a

library of poets. "That one could seriously use money for any other

purpose" he writes, "never crossed my mind, and I should certainly

have starved rather than turn my expenditure from books to food" (p.94).

In this way, he attains a literary sophistication far beyond most of his contemporaries but it is a sophistication gained as an over­

compensation for the experience of living. Instead of gaining a sure

sense of his identity, he is aware only of his "fragmented self". This

awareness, however, derived, in part at least, from his reading of

Blake is, in itself, a step forward and enables him at the end "to face

the journey into the unknown".

Lindsay has described the refuge of books as a means of not

having to prove his maturity, for the author does not ask this of his

reader, as the world often does. This same refuge is also sought by

some adolescents who do not wish to prove their virility, particularly

in the field of sport which has especial significance in a country like

Australia. Both Johnston and Porter reflect this aspect in their

books when they portray the attitude of the fathers who have been

"landed" with a son who does not fit into the manly concept that they

desired. Although Porter's father - a cricketer of some renown - did

not, like Davy's, try to belt such manliness into him, this omission may

have been mere good fortune as Porter implies when, writing of his first

year at High School, he says: "My old black beast organised sport, and -123-

in the particular form of cricket, immediately appears. Father, had he seen my performance of wriggling out, would, I feel, really have battered me into insensibility" (p .146) •

Porter is eventually let off cricket for other duties - including the charge of the school library - and it is now that another landmark in his adolescence occurs. "I see" he exclaims

"what poets are"; and then continues: "I see that the poet's possessions are everyone else's, and that he is saying what everyone else cannot say or even think clearly of" (p.147).

In the Mechanics Institute - devised for adult readers, not children - he, in company with his bookworm friend, Willie Finch, consumes and remembers, "with a clarity nothing can blur", a wide range of novels and poetry, the greats and not-so-greats. When he is seventeen, his interest in the theatre leads him to do the same with drama, buoyed up as he is by his vision of himself as "the quiveringly sentient and impressible creature adolescence makes him think he is"

(p. 214) •

The non-reading fathers of Porter and Johnston share the same contempt for a son who has "his nose in a book" instead of "taking up a sport". "'You and your blasted books'", Davy's father would snarl.

"'All you're doing, my lad, is muddling your mind and ruining your eyesight. Why the devil don't you get out and do something?"' (p. 5 7)

A similar parental response, though in somewhat different circumstances, is found in The Delinquents where the young boy, Brownie, uses reading, like Jack Lindsay, as an escape from himself in an intolerable home situation. After his two elder sisters have gone, he is left with his mother and "the lodger", Bert, the cockroach exterminator who regularly thrashes him - at the mother's request: -124-

Brownie found the situation unbearable, but he was not quite thirteen, so he stayed at home and took to reading cowboy novels and the Arabian Nights. Mrs Hansen blamed this sudden interest in literature for his increasing stupidity at school. He had been a very clever little child. Now study seemed beyond him. (p. 11)

Her complete lack of understanding and the intensity of her feelings are summed up in her scathing rhetorical question as she looks scornfully at the Fitzgerald translation which Brownie is reading:

"'What good will that rubbish do you?"' (p.11). The adolescent, however, had his own answer.

I was born from writing:

before that there was only a reflection in a mirror18 ••• By writing I existed, I escaped from the grown-ups; but I existed only to write and if I said: me - that meant the me who wrote.

Sartre, Words

Perhaps no one has expressed this idea quite so fervently as

Sartre. Nevertheless, the "doing" towards which many of the adolescents portrayed in this survey were so constantly urged by their parents, the means whereby they found their true identity, often to the chagrin of those same parents, lay simply in this: - to write. Such an observ­ ation concurs with the statement promulgated by Witham as part of his generalisations about the protagonist in American novels of adolescence during 1920-60:

The protagonist is unusually sensitive and probably looking forward to a career in one of the arts, often writing. He is misunderstood by his contemporaries who do not share his abilities or comprehend his problems and often he has not the athletic ability which most of them regard as a criterion of excellence. (p.19) -125-

Such a description could be applied without reservation to

Davy, in My Brother Jack, and to many other adolescent protagonists in

Australian literature whose expression of self exists in the creative art of writing; who could say, like Sartre, "'if I said: me - that meant the me who wrote'".

The boy, Davy, is only fifteen when he has his first article, on sailing ships, published under a pseudonym in the Morning Post and receives, in payment, the princely sum of five guineas which he spends, naturally enough, on books. 19 Johnston expresses, very simply but with a strongly evocative ring, the boy's growing sense of identity as he sits in his room, the exercise-book of his poems stuffed inside the ticking of his mattress, his newly bought books around him. "I was fifteen. And I was a writer. Lonely and secretive, and desperately anonymous, but still a writer" (p. 75).

We see him here, as throughout the book, as the complete physical and emotional opposite of his brother Jack, the athletic son who, as we noted earlier, fitted the father's idea of "the criterion of excellence". Heseltine suggests rightly, I think, that their representative role of two important strands of Australian culture is one of the things that saves this book from sentimentality as well as giving it a greater complexity. 20 Part of this complexity he sees as related to a presentation of the relationship between the ordinary

Australian and the Australian artist and I would propound that it is in the section of the book dealing with Davy's adolescence that this theme is most effectively explored.

There is, however, an interesting later comment in the book, reverting to this earlier period of the brothers' lives, when Jack writes to Davy telling him of the birth of his son, then adding: -126-

I remember how I used to poke fun at you always stuck in that room with your books and those "sonky mates" of yours, and never going out, but I must admit that events have certainly proved you right. In fact nothing would please me more than if my nipper Jack turned out as good a man, and as brainy a one, as his uncle Davy. (p.322)

This change of tone in Jack is as hurtful to Davy as was

Jack's original outburst against his "sonky bloody cobbers" and his staying home and reading, for Davy now sees that he was using this behaviour "to side-step a world I didn't have the courage to face".

Nevertheless, he is forced to face the world as the result of an action, whose enormity he does not foresee when, at the age of sixteen, impulsively he buys a typewriter with the money given him to buy paints - necessary for his apprenticeship - and the door is opened by his father when he returns home, holding it in his arms. In the following outburst to both his wife and to Davy, the father rejects the identity of his son so utterly that he denies even his own fatherhood:

"'Min' he shouted. 'Min, just come and see what this damned dolt of a son of yours has brought home now!"' (p. 87).

This episode results in Davy being thrown out of the house and, more importantly, in the continuation of his development as a writer and, therefore, of himself as a person. Having become a news­ paper reporter, he says: "I had a sense of being somebody. I had a

frame around me. I was nourished by the flowing sap of green years"

(p.167).

This burgeoning sense of "being somebody" is delightfully portrayed also in the description of the young Porter in The watcher when, as a cadet reporter for The Bairnsdale Advertiser, and not yet

sixteen, he sets off on his first day in his blue-twill knickerbocker

suit and his new grey felt hat: -127-

He carries a pad clearly lettered Reporter's Note Book so held that the lettering faces the public and his hand does not hide it. Clipped into his breast-pocket are two well­ sharpened pencils, one cylindrical and H.B., one hexagonal and B.B., each with a piece of india-rubber set in the end. (p.179)

His new identity, however, displayed as he sees later with such affectation and cheap pride, is to receive a cruel blow in the fonn of the Macgregor children, shouting from behind the roses and safe in the country of childhood whose ties he has so ostentatiously attempted to sever: "'Where dija get that hat? Where dija get that hat?'" and then, the final indignity: "'Silly old Porter! Silly old

Porter!"' (p.179). He continues, a chastened and wiser youth, as "he nonchalantly and as though by the most ordinary movement turns the pad towards his body. His fingers cover the proud lettering" (p.179) •

Already, in his first year at High School, it has been impossible, as he says, "to stop myself from writing" (p.150) , and he wins his first "First Prize" when The Bairnsdale Advertiser holds a short story competition for children. He has also gone through the letter-writing stage, bombarding his beloved Olwen with letters

"enclosed in envelopes bearing in their sealed flaps the letters

S.W.A.L.K. (Sealed with a loving kiss) or T.O.I.L. (To one I love)"

(p.168).

Then, after several years of what he refers to as "mastur­ bation poetry" and "poems of lies which I think I think I mean, about dreams I do not have, and a desire I have not formulated" (p.169), he reaches the stage when a clearer sense of purpose eventuates.

"I want to be a real author, a poet, writing with the ink of my heart, not a country town newspaper reporter emasculating and re-arranging the truth in journal~se" (p.195) • -128-

Robert, also, in Redheap, pours the same feelings of love, aloneness and despair that characterised Porter's efforts into his poetry, of which the following is a fair sample:

Better the red blast of madness, Of Passions we scorn to control, Than clouds of dark sorrow and sadness, Engulphing all pleasure and gladness, Entombing the soul. (p.44)

There is a delightful "dig" at this propensity in the adolescent in the scene between Mr Bandparts and Robert when the latter appears for his first tutoring session. Having established that he is a smoker:

'Read poetry?' went on Mr Bandparts, with a cross­ examining air. That induction admitted, he added relentlessly:

'Write it too, don't you?'

'Well, a bit', said Robert, secretly astonished at this evidence of divination.

'You'll get over that in time', said Mr Bandparts tolerantly.

Robert made some sounds of negation. He wished it understood that Poetry would be his life's passion, but Mr Bandparts seemed to think he knew better. (p.79)

Robert also writes letters to his friend in Melbourne and keeps a Diary, in both of which he tends to reproduce an ideal self rather than the actuality he knows to exist. To his Diary - "the secret Chronicle of his existence" - he confides a mixture of truth and imagination about his daily activities, often concluding with a sage reflection on "life", that is usually followed by a pithy comment from Lindsay.

The following extract occurs near the beginning of the book, -129- its contents "written", as Lindsay says, "with a neatness attesting the writer's sense of their importance" - the date, Swiday, 1896:

Church in the morning. Mankletoe preached. After church, home. Dr Niven to dinner. A skite. After dinner, got out my stick, and went for a walk. At the lake met George and Jubber. They had been down at old Bill 's last night. Regret I was not there, as it appears they had fun after, shifting gates, etc. Called for Ruby c. in evening, but she would not come out. Home 10 o'cl. weather. Warm day, lovely night. Smoked during the day four pipes, one Swiss cigar. N.B. Read Byron in church. Mero. George tells me he had the ginger-headed slavey from the Royal out Sat. night. Promised to lend him Tom Paine's "Age of Reason". (p.34)

Lindsay comments: "which raises the question, at least, of exactly how much a chronicler may know of the true significance in a day's events" (p. 34).

When Robert leaves home at the end - to become a Journalist in Melbourne - "when the real business of life was about to commence", he hides the Diary21 in a dark hole behind the skirting board in his bedroom, in case he should need it in future when it "might one day become portentous as the records of a Great Man's Youth" (p.318).

It is in the excerpts from Donald Home's Diary, too, that he often comes closest to the revelations of himself as an adolescent boy and to establishing a close rapport with the reader. He, again, sees himself in the role of writer, with an interesting emphasis on his relationship to his country in this regard. At the age of sixteen, he confides to his Diary: "If I write I want to write literature. I want to write for Australian literature too" (p.173).

The work which combines the adult viewpoint with that of the adolescent, the latter evoked through the reproduction of letters, Diaries,

( ' -130-

poems from the author's own adolescence,seems usually more successful than the book produced by the writer about his adolescence which he is, at that moment, experiencing. 22 Nevertheless, Harry's Child has some interest as being written by a nineteen year old girl, whose reply to the question: "What do you want most in all the world?" would epitomise the feelings of the protagonists whom we have been discussing:

Maybe to understand myself, maybe to be cherished and to be someone's beloved person, maybe to comprehend the ulterior motives behind my actions, maybe to have someone to make happy above all else, maybe to set a rrvst brilliant standard in writing • • • (p.82)

On the whole, however, this novel remains little more than a naive, cathartic effort in a search for self-identity.

At the other extreme, lies The Man Who Loved Children, a novel which contains the most profound and imaginative study of the adolescent reader and writer, as portrayed in the young girl, Louie. Like Teresa in For Love Alone,23 Louie is an avid reader; they are both, as Geering says, "inspired by literature to seek new worlds in which to fulfill (sic) their imaginings and desires". 24 As he points out further, it is largely because of the inner security of her imaginative life that Louisa is able to survive, more or less unscathed, on the family battlefield (p.100).

She is the most prolific and original writer, perhaps, of all our adolescent protagonists for we see the evidence of her creative and artistic impulses in her poetry25 - including her ambitious "Aiden

Cycle", composed in honour of her teacher, Miss Aiden - in the play which

she writes in an invented language for her father's birthday, in her

Diary and in her letters to her friend, Clare. Each of these express, in

a different way, some aspect of her identity crisis as well as her -131-

creative ability. Of her letters to Clare - the girls write night and morning though they see one another every day at school - Stead comments that they are:

Stuff almost without meaning, but yet which seemed to have the entire meaning of life for her, and which made Clare exclaim a dozen times. 'Oh, Louie, I can't believe it, when I get your letters, you are the same person: when I meet you at school I keep looking at you in surprise!'

Louie would quietly reply, hanging her head. 'Oh, I am afraid that I will go from the head down; I think I will go mad', to which Clare again replied, 'I would give the top of my head to have the madness of your little finger'. (p.439)

This passage, as well as the letter quoted preceding it, contains an interesting reference to the discrepancy that often exists in the adolescent between his outer and inner self. Outwardly, Louie is plain, fat, awkward and, as she says in her letter, viewed by others as "sullen, surly, sulky, grim". In her creative, inner existence, she attains heights of beauty and grace, liberation and potential, expressed in her phrases in the same letter:

I am Atlantis risen from the sea, the Western Isles of infinite promise, the apples of the Hesperides and daily make the voyage to Cytherea, island of snaky trees and abundant shade with leaves large and dripping juice, the fruit that is my heart.... (p.439)

When she says, later, in an angry outburst to her tormenting family, 26 "'I'm the ugly duckling, you'll see"' (p.487), we have little doubt that she will eventually blossom and change into a swan. For her voyage towards creativity and maturity has indeed begun. As Geering again comments: "The budding artist is a commonplace in twentieth­ century fiction. Louisa is exceptional because her story provides the -132-

evidence we need in order to confirm the promise of literary genius"

(p.100). We recall, at the end, the almost complacent confidence of her pre-adolescent words, "'If I did not know I was a genius, I would die: why live?"' (p.87). Louisa, amongst all our adolescents, seems to have the greatest right to make such a claim.

Her play, also, - aptly named the Tragedy of the Snake Man, or Father - provides a cogent example of her emotional state and of her depth of perception in seeing the nature of her father's relationship towards her. In this play, she projects her own feelings about her father, firstly in an invented language but, under pressure from the family, in English. In it the daughter, Megara, cries out to the father,

Anteios, who is trying to embrace her, "'You are killing me. Murderer:

Murderer: Mother: '" And Anteios replies, " 'I am only embracing you.

My beloved daughter'. (But he hisses)." (p.409); and strangled, she dies.

It is a wonderfully vivid and moving picture, a revelation which both frightens and angers Sam, the lover of reptiles though haunted by them in his dreams. For he is the father who, under the guise of love, has tried to stifle his children's individuality and growth, to strangle their hold on life. The play is a foretaste of what could happen. But Louisa is strong enough not to die; she lives to overcome the horror, summed up with a terrifying terseness and an awesome awareness in one single entry in her Diary: "Everyday exper­ ience which is misery degrades me" (p. 369).

It is in this novel, surely, that the products of the adolescent's creative drive are not only among the most memorable but are most closely integrated within the framework and imagery of the book itself. Here, also, can be most explicitly seen what is inherent -133-

in many of the other novels we have been discussing; what, in fact,

Stead herself said of her other work, For Love Alone: "This struggle for self-creation and self-realisation in the very highest sense is the really moral view of the story". 2 7

In tracing this process through its manifestations in the adolescent's intellectual and emotional development, we have been made aware of how closely it is related to his feelings about his family. we shall now look, in detail, at what is, perhaps, the central pivot of the adolescent's gyrations - his relationship with his parents. -134-

Parent-Adolescent Relationships: The Conflict of Generations

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts; You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.

Kahlil Gibran

ROPES

How can I grow up when they won't let me? They are binding me to my childhood With ropes of caring and reason But I want to be free! I don't want to be cautious I want to breathe and dare a little, I want to be a little frightened To do things before I'm experienced at them "Don't you trust my judgement?" she asks. "I trust it but I don't want it!" I reply viciously I have to hurt her Try to make her see To let me be me!

Fiona Leverington (aged 15)

To my son on his sixteenth birthday

or if you find my presence irksome, take the plunge, go overboard and storm another ship to be its captain; I will stand aside and let you go. Robert Clark

The field of parent-adolescent relationships in literature is, in many ways, the most meaningful and the most rewarding of all areas in a study of adolescence. A period which is fraught with passion, -135-

misunderstandings and a profoundly complex love/hate syndrome, it reflects the deep unconscious drives which motivate both adolescents and parents at that time. Adolescence is a stage in the child's life that the parent may dread because of its difficulties, many of which stem from his own inadequacies. It is one, also, that he often envies because, while he is usually undergoing the transition from relative youth to middle-age, or even middle-age to incipient old age, the adolescent is moving towards "the prime of life" in almost all phases of his development, of which his sexual potency is likely to arouse the greatest jealousy.

For the way in which the adolescent sees his aging parents, we might turn again to Halfway to Anywhere for Lindsay's comment on

Bill's and Waldo's opinion:

When one is fifteen and a half, parents who have already produced adult offspring have become petrified in middle age and never could have been any other age. Adventure with girls, the startling innovation of your present being, could surely never have touched the inhumanly remote past of parents. (p. 80)

For some, nevertheless, adolescence is an experience from which they often wish they could escape, one which a few, perhaps, wish to avoid entirely, 28 but one from which they must eventually move on as part of the growth towards maturity and self-detennination.

Kiel 1, in fact, says what the poem, "Ropes" , quoted above , expresses so vividly: "The essence of the adolescent's struggle for identity is the struggle from the opinions of grown-ups". 2 9 {Not too many parents are able to "stand aside" and "let go" as Clark, in his poem, somewhat sententiously pronounces.) It is not surprising, therefore, as Kiell also reiterates, that: "Perhaps more has been -136-

written about the conflicts between adolescents and their parents than almost any other phase of adolescent development" (p.262). This is a conclusion with which the present study certainly concurs.

We have glimpsed already some of the vicissitudes encountered by the adolescent in his relations with his parents and we shall now go on to examine this relationship in more detail, especially the role of the mother as it is projected in Australian literature.

Father Clears Out

This title, taken from the collection of short stories by

Hackston, might well epitomi'Ee the situation for, in many of the works in our survey, there is no father present during the protagonist's adolescence. In those cases where he does exist, we find that he is often drunk or ineffectual while it is the mother who is the dominant character in the family. 30 It is difficult to see why this should be so. 31 What one does see clearly, however, are the repercussions of this situation on the growing child, especially the young boy, already imbued with a strong fixation to the mother under "normal" circumstances. This factor certainly plays an important part in his identity search and often increases his struggle towards an ideal self because he has no father figure, or no acceptable father, either to rebel against or to mould himself upon. Another complexity is introduced into this kind of situation when one considers that, in his commitment to a satisfactory identity, the adolescent is greatly influenced by his early life and, in particular, the relations with his mother. In "re-living", so to speak, his earlier years, the boy often has no other like-sex model whereby this process may be balanced.

We have seen how Jack Lindsay used poetry as a refuge from -137-

the family responsibilities he was not ready or able to undertake. Of his feelings at the age of fourteen, in a situation where the father had left home when his son was nine and where the mother, in this case, was not a strong figure, he writes:

In our family, truncated of its father, I was the eldest male. Now I half-realised that fact, in a revulsion of anger and confused distaste. I knew that my mother was unhappy and didn't know what to do with herself; but I shrank from the knowledge which imposed on me a responsibility far beyond my powers and comprehensions. (p.51)

Lindsay makes some very interesting connnents on the relation- ship with his mother; with his aunt, who became a kind of mother sub­ stitute and was a dominant family figure in his life at that time,and with his father with whom he became acquainted again in late adolescence and towards whom he had strongly ambivalent feelings. He analyses these feelings in a passage which throws a great deal of light on the question of identity and its relationship to child-parent relationships:

Part of the childhood-drama was the conviction (based on much fact) that the children had come between the parents, sundering their embrace and finally driving them apart. In such a situation the loyalties are divided. The son feels that he must now defend the mother whom he has taken away, or must meet and overcome the father by becoming the latter more than he is himself - i.e. must absorb the essential qualities that make the father, and carry them to a position of yet greater power. Thus surrender masks a rivalry, which itself holds a contradiction. The son cannot in fact go beyond the father while imitating him, for imitation cannot become creation; in so far as his effort to imitate drives him in fact into creation, he becomes diff­ erent from the father. This was the conflict now in embryo, but later to become acute. (p.175)

Douvan, in her study of adolescents, makes a distinction between those who have been deserted by the father and those who have lost a father through death, concluding that the latter appear little -138- different from those in an intact family (p.265). In our study, this conclusion is borne out in The Mango Tree, one of the few novels where the father is dead; where the adolescent boy has, in fact, lost both parents at an early age and is raised by a strong grandmother, with little damage, one feels, to his self-image. As an only child with few responsibilities, his case is different from Lew's in The Passage where the conflict with his mother arises partly from the resentment he experiences, from time to time, at having to be the breadwinner and family head from boyhood. When Uncle Tony goes to hospital and asks him to take responsibility for his oyster beds and fishing boat, Lew's mind goes back to those earlier days:

And he pondered on what he had suffered, as a growing boy, from the knowledge that the family depended on him, and that if he were laid on his back by an accident they would all be on the rocks. A continual struggle to make ends meet and provide a little surplus for the ones going out in the world! It had been a relief to feel he had done with that, and that his life was becoming his own. Why should he let Uncle Tony thrust him into another struggle that most likely would be harder and longer than the first? But deep down within him he understood and sympathised with the old man's instinct to keep his name and memory alive along the Passage. A man didn't want to feel that he was being entirely blotted out by the incoming tide! And Uncle Tony had been as much a part of the Passage as the whitish-grey sandbanks and the gulls that wheeled over them. (p.108)

This excerpt is valuable because it not only exemplifies Lew's feelings about his life "becoming his own" but it shows, also, his growing maturity in being able to understand what another person may feel, and, in addition, how a sense of identity may be obtained almost as strongly through a close association with a place as with a person.

This passage forms an interesting contrast to the following -139-

scene in which the conflict and the almost complete lack of rapport which exist between Lew and his mother are revealed.

After he has found himself unable to confess to her why he

wants to go to Brisbane - (to hear a violinist and to see the girl,

Clem, to whom he is attracted) - her only response is to continue to

ask why he wants to go away now, when the fishing is so good. Palmer

continues:

He went on mending a huge gap in the net, where a captured ray had slashed wickedly with the tiny saw in his tail, but the darkness behind his eyes made his fingers clumsy. That exasperating sense of being in conflict with his mother had come back, working up to the surface like a sharp pebble in the lining of a sandshoe. (pp.67-68)

The simplicity and universality of the last simile which

stresses Lew's reactions of irritation and exasperation are matched in

the description at the beginning of the passage where one has the same

sense of the destruction wrought by such a small object - suggested in

the phrases, "the tiny saw" and the "huge gap"; and where one extrapolates

from the net image, the picture of Lew's life as he sees it, slashed and

difficult to repair.

A somewhat similar presentation of adolescent responsibility

is seen in both Season of Youth32 and My Brother Jack33 where, although

the father is present, his drinking and quarrelling make the sons feel,

increasingly, the need to "take charge" and to stay at home in order to

protect the mother - actions which are fraught with difficulties and

fears which only delay the movement towards self-identity.

A further factor in this delaying process occurs when the

mother is unduly possessive and clings to the son, either because she has -140- no husband or because her relationship with the husband is an unsatis­ factory one. She wants to prolong the child's dependence on her and, though this selfishness may often be an unconscious one, the effect on the adolescent is the same. She cannot, or will not, release her hold on him and free him to "be himself".

One sees this possessiveness in The Young Desire It, a book where the son does not remember his father who has been a drinker and is presented in an unfavourable light by his wife. In the scene with

Charles and his mother when he returns home from boarding school, she

"accuses" him of changing. He replies:

'Yes - started to grow up.'

'You're not grown up yet, my child', she said. 'Don't think it.' 'All right', he said.'You want to keep me not grown up, I think. Can't I live my own life now? I always used to and you didn't mind then. Why do you mind now? ' 'You don't love me any more.' 'Oh, I do', he cried exasperated. (p. 298)

The same kind of possessiveness, masquerading as love and laved with tears, appears in the following extract from Salute to

Freedom. In this family there is a father, but neither the son, Robin, nor the mother can relate to himJthough he makes tentative and rather pathetic attempts to reach them. This scene demonstrates the boy's awareness of his mother's "act" but he is not strong enough ultimately to resist it. At first, he tries to hold out against her persuasion to stay home for the Christmas holidays instead of going to India with his uncle: -141-

Robin said patiently 'No Mother, I can't stay. Uncle Brand is expecting me to go with him.' She flamed into sudden rage. 'Go then!' She flung his hand from her; a gesture that struck Robin, even then, as theatrical and forced. 'If he means more to you than I do, go with him# Brand Stewart', she was in earnest now, her voice bitterly contemptuous, 'A drunken wastrel - unstable as water - and you will grow like him; like his father!' She buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. 'Robin, Robin', she sobbed, and again he had the uncomfortable feeling that she was acting but could not be sure. 'You'll break my heart.' He stood up beside her chair. He noticed, looking down at her bent head that her hair was very grey. He put his hand down, covering it. 'I'll stay', he said. (p.77)

Though it is portrayed only superficially and often with humour, the similar pattern of a strong mother and a weak and, in this case, somewhat strange father is to be found in Redheap where, in the opening pages, we are presented with a picture of the whole family at

Sunday dinner. Mrs Piper sits at ane end of the table and carves the joint, liberally dispensing food to the large assembly. However:

Mr Piper made no presence at his own table at all. He was a silent, abstracted diner, one of those parents who lack the power of communicating their personalities to children and become nonentities in their own households. The proximity of Mr Piper did not necessarily mean his inclusion in the conversation. Guests caught easily the infection of his family's indifference •••• (p. 22)

As a draper, he possesses a habit of mental abstraction which causes him to touch the objects about him as if measuring their distance apart. When crises arrive within his family, he sits feverishly measur­ ing anything within sight whilst Mrs Piper assumes command of the situation. -142-

It is of his mother that Robert, the adolescent youth, is intermittently afraid and by whom he is, to some extent, ruled, though he is aged nineteen. The way she sees him - and one which Lindsay equates with all other mothers - is well expressed in the following passage:

Mrs Piper's vision of her son Robert was the negative vision of any other parent. It embraced chiefly the things he was not doing. Harbouring the universal prejudice, she supposed the existence of those about her depended on the peculiar phenomenon of her own eye-sight. As a consequence, Robert's existence presented a frequency of blank spaces. {p.67)

Robert's solution to her commands to stay home to study at night is to "make the best of those blank spaces in Mrs Piper's optical vision of his existence by such expedients as the town afforded".

Later, when she hears reports of these "expedients", she is greatly disturbed:

As the only means at hand of attacking the problem of having a son nineteen years of age, Mrs Piper had what she called 'a serious talk' with Robert. In his diary, Robert described this procedure as 'a hell of a jawing'. From either aspect it was hardly successful in solving the problem of Robert's age. That problem, indeed, was not exactly in Mrs Piper's hands. Even tadpoles become frogs in time and sound a hoarse note of rebellion from the duck­ pond. Nature, in these matters, is singularly indifferent to maternal anxiety, though Mrs Piper did her best to force some sort of responsibility on Nature by looking at Robert whenever she could catch his eye, with a very creditable effect of suffering sadness, which Robert rendered ineff­ ective by annotating in private as 'utter bloody rot'. Having such a good mother he had to protect him- self against her somehow. (pp.75-76)

As can be seen, Robert's relationship with both his parents

appears to have little effect on him and he is able to leave home at -143-

the end, with never a tug at the heart or a backward glance. This, however, does not assume his maturity. He remains, not only a somewhat superficial character in depiction, but also in reality. He has not yet been able to establish, either through his relationships with his parents or anyone else, any real understanding of himself or of others.

Robert's experiences lack what is, perhaps, an essential ingredient of maturity, a sense of tragedy or at least of loss. 34 This is to be found in Porter's portrayal of the adolescent in The Watcher, through his relationship partly with his father but primarily with his mother, a portrayal that is often profound and moving in its intensity and understanding.

Again, it is the mother who is the dominant character in this relationship, the person of whom Porter says: "I appear now, looking back, to have catalogued Mother more than any human being", (p.62) so that at times in the book, his own story becomes that of his mother.

Their relationship remains the central core of the book, making of it, structurally, an artistic whole. She exists as a character, warm and sympathetic, creating an illusion of abundance in so many ways, singing and miming the music-hall songs of the day with a humour, sometimes gay, sometimes sardonic, shouting and swearing in her inimitable way. Always her love and pride for her son came through, always she accepts him in a way his father never could. Porter becomes, as we noted earlier, an enthusiastic reader. "'Bookworm' says Mother - there is her pride in me somewhere, her love suggests. Father looks 'Bookworm!' at me - there is his contempt of me somewhere, his look suggests" (p.119). -144-

There is comparatively very little said of the father-son relationship but, as this brief excerpt indicates, its influence is strongly felt by the growing boy and is shown to have a strong effect on the creation of his own self-image. He gradually ceases to look for affection in this man who, he says, "bowled down other human beings as though they were wickets and he fate" (p. 91) ; a man, of whom he says by the age of ten: "I am dubious of the weight of his honesty and the safety of his sympathy" (p.92). It is on him that he places full responsibility for his own ceasing to ask "serious questions ever, even of myself". Only his mother's death breaks down the defence which he needs to use in his other relationships and which arises, presumably, out of his unsatisfactory father relationship - a defence he reiterates in the three, poignant words, "I don't care". It is his mother's death which, for one aware of many "first experiences", provides the first experience of death, perhaps of real suffering, certainly of "caring".

At the age of eighteen, when his first impulse is to flee backward into the past, back to the security and comfort of the cast-iron balcony in the days when his mother seemed immortal, her death as impossible as his own, he comes to the conclusion that "God is dead, love is dead, all that I was is dead" (p.254-255). He has not reached the maturity that comes with a conscious understanding and acceptance of death though he is reaching towards an awareness of a personal relationship between death and himself. Only later, as the watcher looking back, can he say:

"I do not know that, not only have I not started to die, I have not started to live" (p.255).

The mother-son relationship portrayed in this autobiography is one of the most vivid and moving of this nature in all the litera­ ture we have been discussing. It is evoked with a sense both of detachment and involvement which allows no room for sentimentality but -145-

creates, at times, an overwhelming empathic response from the reader.

Another book which shows the more positive mother/son relation­ ship, though it forms only a background to the story, is Looking for a wave. In the concluding scene Mark, now twenty and having come to a greater understanding of himself, largely through his experience with

Lin, the girl with whom he has fallen in love, is talking to his mother, the acknowledged "centre" of the family, about his future. He tells her somewhat tentatively about his plan to marry and possibly to look after the baby of Lin's unmarried sister, a proposition which he thinks may well incur his mother's annoyance. She replies, with humour and affection:

'Annoyed? to hear that you're growing up? To hear of a good girl? Young men' she said 'are idle creatures, and it's the best protection they can get, a real nice girl. And these days, it seems, they might need it sooner than usual.' (p.140)

Here is one mother who is ready to "let go".

Ilbarana, where the boy is taken from his mother in early adolescence, provides, of course, another exception - (in his background, a rule) - to the excessive possessiveness that we have seen illustrated in so many of the works in this survey.

Whether the relationship, however, is positive or negative, the pattern of a dominant mother figure is a recurring theme in the family relationships portrayed in our study, just as it is the mother who is often the character, (other than the protagonist), who is most vividly portrayed, whether briefly but memorably, as in Wild Cat Falling or as an integral part of the novel as in The Watcher. The feelings of many of the sons might well be summed up in the comment, from an Italian -146-

literary source, about the adolescent Agostino in the short novel of that name: "Though he did not confess it to himself, his most urgent aim was to feel himself for ever independent of his mother's love"

(p.69).

The presentation of the father-son relationship, where it is in evidence, is centred mainly round the sexual "enlightenment" scenes which are equally embarrassing and difficult for both parties. Typical examples can be seen in the novel5.,A11 the Green Year (pp.111-12), and

The Morning was Shining (p.258), where the dangers, diseases and dire consequences of sexual relations are stressed - much to the detriment of their delights - in conversations that lack any real communication or intimacy (including, as we mentioned earlier, any information on essent­ ial facts which are often the most needed) and where the father seems reticent and ashamed to broach the subject at all. There is an interest­ ing scene in The Tree of Man where the father tries to reach his son,Ray, by talking to him - the boy immediately dreading that it might be about sex - but the gap between them cannot be bridged. When the father says,

"'We don't know each other too well, do we, Ray?'", they are both unhappy. '"What is .there to know, anyway?'" is Ray's response, and, comments White wryly, "The father could not answer that one" (p.221).

They can get no further. "There beneath that tree", concludes

White, "under which they had pulled up, a gnarled, difficult native with harsh, staring leaves, the man and the boy were resenting each other for their separateness" (p.222). So the father is left with a sense of his own failure.

Hurlock quotes the following observation that "adolescents who report close relationships with their fathers are more likely to have high-esteem and stable self-images than those who describe their -147- relationships as more distant" (p.653). In the literature studied, we have seen how seldom this closeness is apparent - where, of course, a father exists at all. Even Boyd,in Day of My Delight, reporting that

"my relations with my father were polite and amiable" and that "he was always absolutely just",adds "but we were never close friends" (p.21).

Finding a father 35 is another title in one of the books in our survey and one thinks, in this connection, of Thomas Wolfe's words in The Story of a Novel:

The deepest search in life, it seemed to me, the living thing that in one way or another was central was man's search to find a father, not merely the father of his flesh, not merely the lost father of his youth, but the image of a strength and a wisdom external to his need and superior to his hunger, to which the belief and power of his own life could be united. 36

In actual fact, however, in an examination of the literature under discussion one is reminded more often of White's words that: I "Fathers are no more than the price you have to pay for life, the tickets of admission". 37 Such a situation exists in the works which are autobiographical, semi-autobiographical and purely fictional and seems to be related partly, perhaps,to the author's own needs, partly to the condition that a conflict in relationships makes more interesting reading, partly to the fact that the lack of understanding between parents and adolescents and the inability to communicate are often seen to be universal components of this period of life. 38

So far, we have been looking particularly at the relationship of the boy with both his mother and father. Although there are relatively few books in this su:.-vey with a female protagonist, a very similar picture emerges in the sense, firstly, that the mother is the only or dominant figure in the story and secondly, that the adolescent girl's relationship -148-

with her is fraught with difficulties which present a barrier towards her self-fulfilment.

In Descant for Gossips, to which we referred earlier, Vinny's father - also a drinker - has left home and her mother, though well­ intentioned, perhaps, is unable to help Vinny towards a satisfactory self-identity so that she does, in fact, obliterate her self by suicide.

In The Delinquents and Morning in Queensland, the parents are separated; in Harp in the South, Mumma is undoubtedly the stronger character (again, with a drunken husband); in The Fringe Dwellers, as we noted earlier, neither parent is capable of understanding how their girls feel in a situation where an identity with race and culture is important as well as a personal sense of "self".

A rather atypical slant in the mother/daughter relationship is seen in Foveaux where the father dies and the mother is a very weak, dependent character who, instead of antagonising her daughter, seems to bring out, at least overtly, a mothering quality in her that she is prepared to accept. Linda does, in fact, find her own identity in this role reversal and she always treats her mother "as though she were a petulant but delightful small girl" (p.177).

Only in Yaralie do we find a strong and positive father/daughter relationship, together with the support of the kindly substitute mother figure of Mrs Mendoza, so that by the age of fifteen, the aboriginal girl has been able to establish a strong sense of identity and to express herself freely and happily in her love for the boy, Raymond.

In The Pea Pickers, there are no parents but there is an interesting mother figure whom the girl, Steve, loves, the Black Serpent, as she calls her. When she returns to Gippsland at the end of the book, -149-

despondent at the loss of her lover, she eulogises:

The passionate strength of the Black Serpent's good arms closing around me, and her direct kiss, heartened me. I felt that she could save me and return my lover to me. And although I had nothing, not even love, I was strong and rich with the sense of the long years of youth. Time moved slowly and it seemed that life would never end. (p.378)

In this brief reference, is projected an image of the strong, sensual, loving mother, the archetype of the life-giving force, who transfers, by her touch, her strength and will to live, despite all adversity. She appears as the desired mother so seldom seen in the reality of the other works.

Emily, in The Long Prospect, finds a not very satisfactory mother substitute in her grandmother, in a family where the parents are separated for most of the book and the father is not a strong character.

Elizabeth Harrower's other novel, The Watch Tower, opens at the point where the father has just died and the two sisters, aged sixteen and nine, are left with the mother. Not long after, when Laura, the elder one, has married a man nearly twenty years older than herself, the mother rejects them, both emotionally and physically, by returning to England.

Harrower brings out well the feeling of being "cheated" that is experienced, particularly, by the younger girl, Clare.

They had all been cheated. She and Laura had never been loved, and certainly not by this woman. Nor for years had she, Clare, felt the slightest affection for her. But not to care that they were parting! Not to care! Her heart was torn to think of all that they had missed. (p.43)

Earlier, following her father's death, she had been overwhelmed with a desire to go back to their former home, "pushing with her mind -150-

against the knowledge that she had really nowhere to want to go" (p.7).

Just as she has no home with which to identify, so she has no parent through which, even by rebellion, she can achieve a sense of her own identity. In a way, it is her elder sister, Laura, with whom she continues to live after the former's marriage, who provides a substitute mother figure, even to the extent of trying to blackmail her into staying

(because of her own needs arising out of the inadequacy of her marriage) when Clare first attempts to leave the intolerable home atmosphere.

Clare's capacity to deal with this situation is due partly to the very strong awareness of self which she possesses, despite her upbringing or, maybe, as with some of the other adolescents we have seen, because of it. This capacity to preserve one's inner self, regardless of the face one presents to the world, is excellently presented in the picture of the young girl, (in the same scene examined in Chapter Three), when she visits the doctor for an examination. She is standing naked before him except for her high-heeled shoes. He touches first one breast and then the other:

In the sober, dignified room, Clare's body could have felt conspicuous had she not perceived some years before that she and it were by no means the same person. Though she had been dissected and her skeleton and vital organs exposed to a multitude, still, it did seem to her, they would not have seen her. (p.72)

So, after her quarrel with Laura, following her abortive attempt to leave, she is able to recover from her almost unbearable unhappiness by finding consolation in the outside world and in herself.

Rising from the bed on which she has been sobbing, she stands at the window - her Watch Tower - and looks out into the black, windswept night.

"The wind was clean and undemanding. Blotted out in the tremendous night, in the midst of it, she was at home. In a way, all she had was -151-

herself and the sky" (p. 99) •

Clare's ability to know and to realize herself so clearly -

(has her name been chosen, I wonder, for this significance?) - is an unusual one in an adolescent and is set forcefully against Laura's increasing self-deception. It is this ability that enables her finally to take the step forward at the end of the book and to break from a relationship, more complicated than the normal mother/daughter one, but possessing many of its characteristics. It might be noted also that

Clare represents, in her youthful and strong affirmation of life, the positive element in the web of dark and stultifying relationships within the book. As she says of Felix, in some ways a kind of pseudo-father figure: "There's only death at the back of his mind. He's jealous of anything living. Death's all he wants to spread" (p.198).

It is not a far cry from this family of bitter tensions and atrophying relationships to that of the Pollits in The Man Who wved

Children. One of the things that Felix and Sam share in common is that they are both still adolescent themselves and it is basically Sam's immaturity that makes his relationship with the adolescent Louie such a difficult and, at times, a terrifying one. He does possess, however, a capacity to love, misdirected though it be, an attribute which is almost totally lacking in Felix. We have already mentioned that one of the worst features of Sam's role as father is his inability to let his children grow and develop an identity of their own. He wants to inter­ fere in their lives, direct their development, share their secrets and innermost thoughts; he tries by mockery, humiliation and anger to batter them into submission, to mould them into what he wants them to become.

It is this bulwark that Louie, as the adolescent in the story, -152-

must storm; it is this regressive father against whom she must struggle to establish her own identity and from whom she must eventually escape in flight. The struggle that this entails, the torments she suffers are evidenced in almost every scene with her father. When he reads her poetry and her diary, which as we noted earlier, reflect an important stage in her development and are a cherished part of her "self", he violates that self as well as deriding her creative talent. The terrible vividness of these scenes makes us identify with Louie, to an almost

W1bearable extent, at times, as she re-acts with anger and confusion as one indignity is heaped upon another. Almost worse than his teasing and humiliations are his sermonising and moralising, welling up from his complacent egocentricity: "the great I-am", as Henny, his wife, calls him. This aspect is well portrayed in the scene following his reading of

Louie's Diary where the daughter, no longer able to bear her father's talking, writes down her outcry against him while he is still speaking:

"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, I can't stand your gassing, oh, what a windbag, what will shut you up, shut up, shut up" (p.372).

Of course, he must look at this, too, and his reaction is one of terrible hurt. He lashes out at her, thrusting her shoulder back physically as he does so, accusing her of being mean and full of hate, telling her she looks like "some mean cur in the street", "a mean gutter rat".

'What can I do' [lie conclud~, 'with a girl like you? You have no looks, and instead of trying to light up your sullen face with a smile, and beaming on people as I always do, you sit there scowling with a hang-dog expression. Get out of my sight: go to bed. I don't understand you.' Half smiling, bursting with confusion, the hulking child rose, gathered together her papers, and went into her bedroom •••• She put her head in her hands and, not even crying, groaned, 'What can I do? What will be the end of me?' (p.372) -153-

Later that night, she asks if she can go away. Her father is astounded that she can think of going just when he is trying to bring her closer to him, as he puts it. He continues:

'It must never be Louie - a woman must not leave her father's home till she goes to her husband: that is what I am here for, to look after you. ' 'But all these quarrels - we don't under­ stand each other' Louie said sadly. 'Yes we do, Looloo girl' he answered gently. 'Yes we do: these are just little storms in a tea-cup that will pass over.' (p.373)

The poignancy of this scene emanates not just from the confusion and suffering of the girl - note that she cannot even cry, and how terrible is that one word, "groaned", - it emanates also from the confusion and suffering of Sam. Louie already has an insight into both her own and his behaviour that it is impossible for him ever to attain. And because he is limited, because there is an underlying affection which both father and daughter feel towards one another, their relationship becomes so much more real and more moving to the reader.

Among the many other passages in the novel which illustrate with vividness and immediacy this strange father/daughter relationship, is the one where Sam has a "heart-to-heart" talk with Louie on sexual enlightenment. Though, as we have already noted, this kind of talk is common enough in the novel of adolescence, this scene in The Man Who

Loved Children has a uniqueness all its own. Such uniqueness springs from its bordering on the levels of humour and tragedy; it is contained in the balance between the sheer audacity of Sam's almost perverted thinking about sex and the strength and instinctive "rightness" of

Louie's feelings about love. It is interesting and, of course, typical of him, that he emphasises the negative relationship between sex and self-realisation: -154-

'Now, you must know without my telling you, Looloo-girl, that temptation in sex, which comes to some early and some late and to some happy ones not at all, can betray us into being not ourselves... Remember that self-control is our only safeguard and that the abuses of the instinct lead to - either waste of energy and emotion and the finer feelings, or indiscriminate recourse to members of the other sex, upon which follows vereal disease... Promise me Looloo (this is a strange thing to be talking about in such a wild, pure dawn, between night and day, between sea and sky), that if you are thinking of a man or boy, you will not think seriously of him without marriage; or if you must, if you must ever go with man or boy, Looloo - I leave it to you, it seems inadvisable to me, understanding these things so much better than you - that you will first demand a medical certificate from him.' Louie laughed, 'I will never do that.' 'Never promise?' 'Never do it. It's so silly.' 'You know not whereof you speak,' said Sam huskily. 'I love, I love, I only know about love,' cried Louie madly, bursting into tears. 'What has that to do with it? You keep out of it. ' 'Hush, Looloo: I was speaking to Ernie too tonight, and I told him when he begins to think about girls he must tell me.' Louie said bitterly, 'There is one thing I am quite sure of: he never will. Not one of the children will ever confide in you.' (p.478)

This excerpt illustrates, perhaps, the extremity and depths of his obsession to possess Louie and gain control of her innermost thoughts and feelings. Louie herself feels this, for, bursting into tears, she cries out "'You must let me leave you'" ••• "'you must give me some freedom'". As in her previous outburst, this only antagonises Sam further who sternly reiterates that she must never leave him, that they

"'must cleave together through the storms to come'". The vicious circle of all their quarrels begins again. Louie stubbornly asserts that she wants to leave home and that he must give her money to do so. This is the final straw for Sam: -155-

'I must, I must!' he replies. 'I won't. You're still in tutelage, thank God, and I hope still to make you more amenable! I won't have this cussed obstinacy. I'll break that miserable dogged spirit of yours: it will get you nowhere.' {p.480)

And then he reverts, as in the previously quoted scene, to a mean denigration of her physical appearance. Louie's spirit, however, is hard to break. It is dogged and unbending. Like Clare in her relationship with Laura in The Watch Tower, Louie's concept of self seems to thrive on difficulty and obstacles, and they are both able to move forward towards freedom at the end of each book. Louie is able to resist Sam's appeal to her to stay by him forever on the grounds that he has had too many burdens to bear and needs her support: "poor little

Dad" as he calls himself, amongst other self-pitying nomenclatures. He I is, of course, too concerned with himself to see her resistance. As they walk back towards the house at the end of the scene quoted above

{p.482}, with the dawn - Louie's dawn, in one sense - breaking clear in the wind-swept sky, he takes her silence as submission and, in his perpetual self-centredness, brushes away his sorrows and cheerfully returns to the other children.

Both this and many other scenes between Louie and Sam show/ with insight and penetration how Louie's growth to self-realisation ~ develops out of her relationship with her father while he remains a pathetic adolescent, weighed down by his unshakable "monumental self­ assurance1139 and his stultifying egocentricity.

Louie's mother has died when she was a child and Henny, Sam's second wife, provides the other half of the parental relationship.

Louie does, in fact, look upon her as a mother but her association with her is of a different kind than the one she bears with Sam. Henny uses -156-

Louie as a household drudge - in a large family with very little money - and, although one feels that she does not dislike the girl personally, she takes out on Louie her own unhappiness and hatred of Sam. Her very presence, her fatness, her plainness, her signs of pubescence, drive

Henny into uncontrollable rages. She calls her names - "a big lumbering sheep" - shouts at her to get out of her sight because she cannot bear to look at her, all culminating, as we saw earlier, in her hysterical outburst against her very existence. But she, too, has her softer side.

She has moments when she would like to do something for Louie, give her nice dresses and teach her social graces. When Henny stays with her sister, Hassy, she asks her if she can take home to her step-daughter the two Dresden figures which she knows Louie had adored since a child.

"' It is a rotten shame' she says 'when I think that the poor kid is dragged into all our rotten messes'" (p.455).

Unbalanced, cruel, bewildering though Henny is in her treatment of Louie, she does not, we feel, wreak on the girl the damage her father does. Of Sam, his wife is able to say: "' I wish he'd stop playing his silly monkey tricks with the children and let them grow up'" (p.474).

This novel is unusual in many ways. One interesting aspect of it, in relation to adolescence, is that Louie actually plans to do - and half succeeds in doing - what many adolescents dream of or wish: to get rid of their parents. 40 She prepares in a cup a poison mixture for both Sam and Henny, considering this act as the only way out of the storm-stressed, intense domestic agony which, she has enough awareness to see, is damaging all the children and "ruining their moral natures"

(p.343). Before she can administer it, however, Henny comes into the kitchen and, sensing what the girl is about to do, gratefully picks up the cup, drinks the poison and thereby kills herself. Louie's later -157- confession to Sam is received, typically, by him as an example of her addled imagination, not to be considered seriously. Thus, Louie takes up the reins of life again and is sufficiently well established in her sense of identity to break with her father. She has the strength and courage to liberate herself from the strangle-hold with which he embraces her.

Teresa, in For Love Alone, is an older adolescent than Louie and, in that novel, Stead is more concerned with her love relationships and her journey into adulthood which we shall be discussing in Chapter

Five. It is worth noting here, however, that Andrew Hawkins, Teresa's father, - (her mother is dead) - is, in many ways, similar to Sam although he plays a much smaller part in the book. Teresa's capacity to handle her father, seen in the ironic comments she makes to him, for example, in the opening scene of the novel, is greater than Louie's.

More sophisticated, however, as she is, she still suffers,and her out­ bursts of hate are almost as strong as those of the younger girl.

As the most unusual adolescent of all, perhaps, certainly the one with the most unusual parents - (though Sam and Henny would run a very close second) - Barbara Glover, in A Dutiful Daughter, might well sum up the essence of many of the difficulties which we have seen presented in all these novels about the Australian adolescent and his relationships with his parents. She says:

What I am trying to point out I'm not sure. It has a lot to do with parents making sweeping judgements on their children ••• They, the parents, ought to become human at an earlier stage than they do. (p.78)

Indeed, this would help. One needs to be aware, however, that some difficulties during adolescence are not only normal but also -158- desirable. Many psychologists, of which Jarvis is one, would postulate that differences between parent and adolescent are both an unavoidable accessory to personality development and an essential ingredient to growth (p.13). It is not a commendable aim for the parent to wish, as

Goethe said in a slightly different context, "to spare the young those circuitous paths, on which he himself had lost his way". 41 (Even if it were possible.) The point to which we have drawn notice before is that many of the adolescents in our survey seem to have had more than their fair share of difficulties with their parents - or parent - and could, we feel, have been spared some, at least, of those "circuitous paths". Nevertheless, one of the dominant characteristics of the adolescent is his resilience and, as we have seen in most of our examples, the urge to survive has been strong, sometimes, it would appear, in direct relationship to the amount of hardship suffered. The integrity of character which these adolescents have attained may not often mean, as Erikson defines it, "a new and different love of one's parents, free of the wish that they should have been different", though it is possible that this kind of realisation might come in their fuller maturity. What it usually has meant, to conclude Erikson's statement, is "an acceptance

of the fact that one's life is one's own responsibility 11 • 42

This acceptance, combined with the establishment of a satis­ factory self-image, has been reached gradually through the adolescent's interaction with one or both parents. The other important relationship which influences the adolescent's life is seen, most commonly1 to be that with his peers and we shall now go on to examine the part which they, together with his siblings and the older friend, play in his search for identity. -159-

c) Siblings, peers and the older friend

Adolescents look towards each other rather than to the adult cormnunity for their social rewards.

J.S. Coleman, The Adolescent Society

'We don't understand older people, I suppose.' She said passionately, 'We! They don't understand us.'

Charles and Margaret in The Young Desire It

'For the love of Pete', I said, 'is there anybody over twenty-five that isn't a bloody humbug, for God's sake?'

Guth to Limp in The Thundering Good Today

We have seen, in many previous examples, how the adolescent needs to be loved and accepted; universal feelings, perhaps, but, as

Kie1143 points out, at no time more emphatically felt than at adolescence.

This is the age, then, of intense friendships, occasionally with a brother or sister but more often with a friend of the same age who is experiencing

similar feelings, undergoing similar changes and seeking a mutual re­

assurance and support, as each struggles towards his own self-definition.

Sometimes, the adolescent seeks the security of a large number

of friends, or at least associates, in the "gang" situation where his

identity - ranging from the physical conformity of clothes44 and hair­

style to the behaviour he manifests - is to be found only in the group

itself. The group also provides an opportunity for him to indulge in

what he sees as "heroic" exploits, sometimes of an anti-social kind,

indicative of an urge often present in adolescence. An outlet may be

found, in a more socially acceptable way, in sporting activities or in

individual feats of prowess whereby the need to prove himself can be -160-

acconnnodated. In some levels of society, this need may be related to academic prowess, as is evidenced for example, in a recent examination by Harper45 of the privileged adolescents in Australia where the author stresses the link between academic achievement, with its accompanying implication of material success, and the formation of an adequate self­ concept.

The kind of "heroic deed" syndrome which is often present in adolescence - if not in actuality, at least in day-dreams - finds a counterpart, too, in the hero worship which the adolescent feels, some­ times towards a popular but personally unknown figure; sometimes towards an older person, frequently a teacher, to whom he becomes attached and upon whom he tries to model himself.

We shall now proceed to examine, in the literature under dis­ cussion, these aspects of adolescence, all of which are apparent to some degree, either in the form of direct representation or within a more complex, metaphorical framework.

Within the family, there is often too much competition among siblings, for parental or outside social approval, for close associations to be formed during adolescence. This is instanced, for example, in the story which Nancy Adams tells in Family Fresco of her older sister, so much better looking than she and more admired, accordingly, by the young men (p.86). It is sometimes when there is a large gap between a younger adolescent and an older sibling that one sees not, of course, a peer relationship but a tendency to idealise the older brother or sister.

This is shown in The Harp in the South when the young Dolour is awaiting her elder sister's return from her honeymoon: -161-

Dolour was so excited on the day Roie was coming home that she could hardly sit still in school. All her little memories of her sister merged into one enchanting whole; she felt that never had there been anyone as beautiful or romantic as Roie. Even her named ~ic] seemed as distant and unusual as that of a film star. 'Rowena Darcy,' muttered Dolour into her geography book. 'Rowena Rothe.' That sounded even queerer. How could Roie have discarded her own name for that of her husband, so easily and unresentfully? Dolour felt suddenly very upset and angry. She was on the threshold of womanhood, borne this way and that by conflicting tides of feeling, and often her muddled yearnings and dreamings dissolved into storms of furious tears. She felt angry with and disdainful of Roie, because she had been so weak. She, Dolour, would never fall in love; she felt fierce and pure and fortified against the soft call of the flesh. (p.208)

This extract is interesting because it shows the typical

"muddlements of adolescents" whereby the young girl is, almost at the same moment, both romanticising her sister and her marriage and yet disdainful of and angry at Roie's weakness, thereby disclaiming temporarily her own role as one leading to marriage. The name which, in writing down, she sees as the indicator of Roie's lost and new-found self (the latter incorporating her husband also) can be an important metaphor in the identity theme of adolescence but is one not often apparent in our study. 46

The most interesting example of its use comes from The Pea

Pickers,by Eve Langley,where we have two older sisters, Steve and Blue, aged eighteen and nineteen who, being closer together in age and separated from their family environment are, therefore, able to function well in a sibling relationship. For Steve, the name is an indication of the thoughts which she brings to consciousness at that time of her life:

I knew that I was a woman, but I thought I should have been a man. I knew that I was comical but I thought I was serious and beautiful as well. It was tragic to be only -162-

a comical woman when I longed above all things to be a serious and handsome man. (p.6)

With this wish goes her desire, "amounting to an obsession",

to be loved. The author reveals the pathos of her falling in love but

fighting her desire and maintaining the "purity" of her love by becoming more and more masculine, always wearing men's clothes, shooting, swearing,

finding her identity as "Steve", but all the time suffering for it.

In Porter's book, The Watcher, siblings play a small part in

the story and, apparently, in the boy's development. Though he has a

total of five brothers and sisters, none of them assumes any sense of

individuality or reality. Early in the story, Porter refers to his one

sister and brother, saying they "are as clear cut and unimportant to me

as ever. I obediently love them. I do not much like them" (p. 48).

They continue to be only occasionally mentioned, usually in the context

of arriving as babies, without significance or seeming relevance to his

life. 47 One is left feeling, in this case, that Porter has deliberately

cut out the wider implications which interaction with his brothers and

sisters must have entailed in order to emphasise the central relationship

in the book - that between the boy and his mother.

Two books which do use the sibling relationship as part of the

adolescent's identity search are those of almost identical name though

they differ a great deal in quality: My Brother Tom, 48 by G. Aldridge,

and My Brother Jack, to which reference has already been made. The

former does, in fact, contain much lively humour and some perception

about the period of adolescence but it has none of the depth of insight

or complexity of style and presentation of the latter.

My Brother Jack, though ostensibly the story of Davy as told -163- by himself, is really the story of Davy's movement towards self­ definition largely through using Jack as a frame of reference. As a result, one may be left at the end with a far more vivid picture of

Jack and a far greater sense of involvement with Jack's life and feel­ ings than with his younger brother. Jack is, in many ways, his "alter ego", the representation of a self which Davy both aspires to and rejects. In his maturity, Davy uses the image, enviously, of Jack as

"a sunburnt Icarus, a free man, buoyant and soaring in his own air, in the clear and boundless space of an element familiar and yet new born for his realisation of his true self" (p.279). This is the Jack of Davy's adolescence, the boy whose philosophy of life was swnmed up in his exhortation to his younger brother:"'Listen, Nipper, you got to have a go at it. Even if you know you can't bloody win you still got to have a go'" (p. 34) •

The irony at the end of the book is that Jack has now come to lose his own identity, to live vicariously through Davy, so that the latter is faced with the frightening revelation "that I had become surrogate for my own brother. He had given up, and he limped, and he had invested all his brave pride and passion and purpose in me. I had become his brother Davy!" (pp. 345-6).

This book delves further than most into the complexities of self-definition and covers, of course, the period of maturity as well as adolescence, showing clearly that the former grows inevitably out of the latter in the case of both Davy and Jack. In addition, as we have already intimated, it examines the relationship between the ordinary

Australian and the Australian artist. In the presentation of Jack as

"the ordinary Australian" and the development of his identity along these -164- linesr Johnston has shown a nice balance, I think, of subjectivj_ty and objectivity which saves his character from becoming sentimentalised, a charge put forward by F.H. Mares when he says of Jack, "this noble

savage is sentimentalised11 • 49 The fact that Jack has been an Icarus, the fact that he has tried to fly even though he has, to some extent failed, is indicative of the vitality of adolescence reaching towards maturity.

There is an interesting reference to the meaning of the Icarus legend in Man and His Symbols which is particularly relevant to

Johnston's use of it in this connection. In the section entitled

"Ancient myths and modern man", J.L. Henderson writes:

The idealism of youth, which drives one so hard, is bound to lead to over-confidence: The human ego can be exalted to experience god-like attributes, but only at the cost of over-reaching itself and falling to disaster •.• All the same, the youthful ego must always run this risk, for if a young man does not strive for a higher goal than he can safely reach, he cannot surmount the obstacles between adolescence and maturity. (pp.121-122}

Few writers in our survey have endowed the themes of adolescence, and particularly that of identity, with the complexity and interest that Johnston brings to this novel.

Outstanding, however, is Stead's presentation of a family, with all its tensions and rivalries, in The Man Who Loved Children.

We have already examined the nature of the parent relationship between

Louie and her father and step-mother. Though it is true that Louie f;tands apart in some ways from her half-brothers and half-sister and is, in fact, the only adolescent among them, this book would have the distinction of being the sole one in our study that presents and -165-

analyses, in any detail, the full sibling relationships within the family as a whole. As R. Jarrell says in the Introduction to the novel, it "knows as few 'books have ever known - knows specifically, profoundly, exhaustively - what a family is" (p.5). The pendulum between love and hate that swings continually through the whole family, is seen in the younger children's reactions to Louie and in her responses to them, though these are not as strong as in their relationships with the father. One of the terrible experiences to which Louie is frequently exposed is the "ganging up" of the children with their father against her, made more horrible by the fact that they are often innocent of what they are doing. This is explicitly and horrifically shown in one of the last scenes of the book when the children join with Sam in a cruel assault on Louie, mocking her dancing, as they had done in an earlier scene, and shrieking with laughter as they do so. The young girl, bursting into loud, raucous sobs, rushes from the house and is followed by her younger brother, Tommy, who runs after her. "'What are you crying for Louie?' he said patting her on the arm. 'Don't cry, Louie, don't cry! He's only fooling'. 'What is fun to you is death to me,' said Louie" (p. 488) •

In these words - from the story of the frog that she has told the children earlier - is summed up her whole family relationship. Her father has polluted even the innocent warmth and love that the younger children might have brought her so that she needs to establish her identity despite her sibling relationships rather than through them.

we should note here that the other sibling relationship of especial interest, the one that occurs in The Watch Tower, has already been treated in the section on parent relationships because the major part of the book seemed, to me, to stress Laura's role as a mother surrogate to Clare rather than as a sister. -166-

• • • had I a friend - one who knew, who had suffered and understood, one in whom I could lose myself, one on whom I could lean - I might have grown a nicer character. But in all the wide world there was not a soul to hold out a hand to me

Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career

I live alone, and I am a young girl. I write long letters and do not know anyone to send them to. Most tender things speak in my heart And I can only say them to the bamboo in the garden

E. Powys Mathers: "A Street Song of Annam"

In these poignant lines, 50 as in one of the more serious moments of confession from the sixteen year old Miles Franklin, is expressed the essence of loneliness. To be without a friend is indeed a tragedy for the adolescent. For someone with a family background like

Louie, her friendship with Clare, her "alter ego" as she is described, the "tall, vigorous, yellow-haired girl with boy's curls and a splendid medallion face" (p.349), is one important mainstay in the distress of her adolescent life. They are both fourteen and, although Clare has, like Louie, little to look forward to, she has a strength of purpose that is conveyed in descriptions such as this: "Clare would open her arms wide, spreading the loose garments that fell about her, with a gesture that somehow recalled the surf beating on a coast, the surf of time or of sorrows" (p. 353) •

It is to Clare that Louie goes at the end to see if she will run away with her but her friend cannot go. "' I have my little sister"' she says. "'I suppose if I had any decency' said Louie slowly, 'I'd think of my little sister and brothers"' (p.522). But there is a stronger pull for her, the desperate desire to escape to freedom, to find her true identity, without her friend, if need be. -167-

Both of Couper's books, The Thundering Good Today and Looking for a Wave, provide lively studies of the friendships between adolescents and their search for identity in a contemporary setting that includes problems relating to the call-up of eighteen year olds for the Vietnam war, drugs and promiscuity and the general question of adolescent responsibilities. Both books, however, are slight in length and none of the characters develops sufficiently or, at times, remains consistent enough to contribute a great deal to the theme of friendship.

This is true also of Redheap where Robert's friend at Melbourne

University is only briefly mentioned but he does, nevertheless, serve a useful and necessary purpose in terms of the adolescent self-image. He is Robert's Fidus Achates, with whom he corresponds industriously.

This was, &rites Lindsay], his intellectual other half, a friendship which both saw preserved in the literary annals of a revering posterity. They wrote each other long inflated epistles of an outstanding insincerity, inspired by a passionate self-adoration, which saw its wondrous content mirrored in a friend. (p.125)

To him, Robert is able to present himself as the dashing, sophisticated lover, blase from many conquests, the image of what he would like to be. The contents of his letters give a delightful picture of his inflated ego, matched only by his inflated style. Telling of his meeting with Millie - where, in reality, of course, he has been tongue­ tied and gauche - he writes:

However, I am glad to say that I had sufficient strength of will to let the affair end in kisses. You, cynical old devil that you are, will smile at this, but after all such men as ourselves are apt to get a bit passe as regards the virtues. I am no saint myself, as God, or rather the Devil, knows. I have made good resolutions before, and, I confess, have failed to keep them. Women and drink have ever played the devil with me, and though, like you, I laugh cynically at the -168-

moralit;y of parsons, I frankly admit; t;o you, who, like myself, have experienced t;he fierce glamour of women, t;hat; I'm glad I spared her. (p.126)

A friend indeed! More so, no doubt, in being absent, so that each can boost his own and the other's ego without admitting to the possibilities of reality, or of being found out.

A more complex and original examination of the part which friendship plays in the adolescent's search for identity is seen in

Koch's novel_.The Boys in t;he Island. There is, first of all, the friendship which the young protagonist, Francis, experiences with

Shane and Lewie, neither of whom is able to supply a positive self­ image for the boy, though it is partly through his relationships with them that he attains a kind of maturity by the end of the book. Lewie, like Francis's ideal adult figure, Terry O'Brien, is an essentially immature character for he sees life as being "child's play" and his intent is "t;o play at; being rut;hless like a game" (p.186). Only after the violent ending does Francis come to realise that "t;he Game was over" (p. 249).

Shane wants to regress even further than childhood, back to the womb itself. When he and Francis are discussing what it would be like to drown, Shane says, "' I t;hink it;' d be a beaut;iful deat;h like being in a womb'" (p.163). Shane refuses to grow up. The only realis­ ation he comes to is that "not;hing happens" and, therefore, he chooses suicide as a way out. Again, part of Francis's corning to maturity lies in his acceptance of life while, at the same time, accepting the exist- ence of death. Formerly, he had not been able to do this as is brought out in a conversation with Heather earlier in the novel: -169-

'We'll be dead too, some day', ]}Ieatherj whispered. She was awed by their love to-night, as he was. 'No' said Francis, 'not us'. And he believed it. They would not die. Only old people. (p.135)

He still finds Shane's death difficult to accept - "that doesn't happen" he says - but, by the conclusion of the novel when he returns home to Tasmania, he has been able to see the futility of

Shane's action, one which - pessimistic though he still is about his own future - is to be avoided.

Depression and suicidal fantasies are known to be frequent accompaniments of this period when the adolescent is faced with problems revolving around his need to establish his self-identity. Kiell, in discussing these phenomena in The Universal Experience of Adolescence, suggests that every step in the adolescent's giving up of his old life is, in fact, a kind of death and is unconsciously linked with suicidal fantasies (p.715). The same idea is vividly expressed in Benjy's letter to Duddy in Richler's novel, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, when he writes: "a boy can be two, three, four potential people but a man is only one. He murders the others". 51 Sometimes the symbolic act, examples of which we noted earlier in the rites of the Australian Abor- igines, becomes, as with Shane, a reality.

Francis's friendships have not been entirely happy ones but, though their outcome is expressed in negative terms, their influence on him has been positive, at least to the extent of his being able to accept himself with some sense of purpose and with the possibility, remote though it seems to the boy at the time, of a more optimistic future. -170-

The other friend whom Francis has is his imaginary, though

none the less real, playmate, Lad, who "talked in the boy's head all

the time and at sixteen, Francis still listened to Lad, believing the

things Lad said, which he had no words for" (p.48). This is an

interesting technical device to which we shall be referring in more

detail in a later chapter but it is worth noting here as indicating a phenomenon., rare in literatureI but common in the reality of adolescence • In his attempts to discover who he is, not only does the adolescent,

like Francis, converse with his friends but also with himself, or with

another person whom he feels is within himself and who may become a very

real entity for him. This latter kind of behaviour belongs to the dream world in which the adolescent lives from time to time and from which he

needs to sever himself if he is to enter the world of reality.

The Boys in the Island, in its dealing with Lad and Francis,

emphasises, as Heseltine suggests, "the private world of the imagin­

ation rather than relationships with others [and]the sense that there

is something special and irreplaceable in the experience of childhood

and youth". 52 I would add, however, that the almost complete isol-

ation in which Francis lives in Tasmania, as though he had no past or

present as far as his parents and his home are concerned, seems to me a

weakness of the book and, at times, makes his relationships with others

such as Lewie, for example, unreal and difficult to accept within a

framework of actuality.

The lighter side of friendship between two young boys at the

very beginning of adolescence is demonstrated in Norman Lindsay's book,

Saturdee, where there is an amusing, but nevertheless apt, comment on

the subject of suicide which, in this case, is to be used as a form of

parental punishment. (Indubitably, this element is an important part

of all adolescent acts or fantasies about suicide. It is seen, too, in -171-

Descant for Gossips when Vinny, envisaging her own suicide, thinks:

"She would punish them all. Later Mrs Striebel would hear and would be sorry too late" (p. 262).)

Peter and Bill determine one day to leave home because they are "fed up" with their punishment for various misdemeanours and then, having done so and decided late that night to return, are only punished further. The following day, Bill is trying to find some way of "getting even" with his parents for such cruel and unaccountable behaviour:

'What about chuckin' stones on the roof?' suggested Peter. 'Chuckin' stones on roofs is only good enough for kids' said Bill with gloom. 'No, a bloke wants to get even with them so they'll know they've gone too far now, an' that's one up against their duckhouse. So how'd it be if a bloke committed suicide by layin' with his stomach on the sharp edge of the fence?' Peter excused himself from this system of reprisals on the home, but Bill's darkened soul required a Roman end to injustice; so he committed suicide by hanging himself over a paling fence in an attitude of extreme discomfort for fully five minutes. (pp.90-91)

A quite different view of friendship is presented in Henry

Handel Richardson's two books, Myself When Young and The Getting of

Wisdom, of which the former, only, falls chronologically into this survey. The first is an autobiography, the second is written in the third person as the story of Laura, and they both cover, in rather different ways, the same period of the author's life, including her friendship with an older girl, Evelyn, aged eighteen, when they were at boarding school together. In both books, also, this friendship is presented in a tantalising way, with little insight given into the feelings of the young girl in her early teens, although there are some indications of what this friendship entailed. Richardson says, for -172-

example, in Myself When Young, that she continued to share a room with

Evelyn "even when i't must have been clear to the blindest where I was

heading"; and, again: "the attraction this girl had for me was so

strong that few others have surpassed it" (p.71). She leaves school,

"still raw and bleeding from the break with Evelyn" (p. 74), and with

so little sense of her own identity that she writes of herself at that

time: "few young things can have felt so lost and bewildered as she"

(p.73). The hints at a lesbian relationship, the profundity of her

feelings contained in her references to Evelyn's attraction for her and

the extent of her suffering, indicated by the scarifying words, "raw" and

"bleeding"; the implications of isolation and loneliness contained in the

phrase, "few young things" and in the desolation of the one word, "lost" -

all these are left undeveloped. They remain mere hints and inferences

about a friendship with which the reader is fascinated; they point to an

understanding about and a sensitivity towards an adolescent experience

that is never fully revealed.

From our reading, we can only conclude that a detailed recount­

ing of intense friendships at peer level - with or without lesbian or

homosexual overtones53 - does not form a significant part of the liter­

ature under survey, though such relationships exist and are often vitally

important for many adolescents as part of their growth towards finding a

satisfactory and acceptable self-image. One must bear in mind, however,

that many of the boy/girl relationships, to which we have already

referred in a sexual context, fulfil also the needs which the adolescent

usually feels so strongly for friendship with those of his own age group.

Sometimes, when he is cut off from other companions of his own

age, the adolescent finds a substitute in animals or in nature. One of

the best examples of this kind of substitute "friend" is seen in

The Mango Tree where the young boy, Jamie, uses the tree itself in the -173-

way that many other adolescents use their peers. The author describes it in this way:

The mango tree was a friend, a challenge, a peace, a game, a place to sulk, a place to sing impossible songs a'bove the strings and flutes of scraping leaves. And as he grew, in that mysterious transition from childhood, a weed seeking the sun, the tree became a dreaming place, a confessional where the winds snatched his words and carried them away and the answers never came back. (p.14}

The changes that take place in the tree and in the kind of fruit it bears, its survival in the hurricane, the friendly solace it provides until Jamie grows up and leaves it altogether, appear to me as part of the metaphor of adolescence, with special reference to the role of friendship and the search for identity.

The Cardigan Street Push ••• was a social wart of a kind familiar to the streets of Sydney.

L. Stone, Jonah

In looking at peer relationships within the group, we see examples ranging from the violent young larrikins portrayed in

Stone's novel in 1911, through the lively but less extreme "push" in the country town of Redheap in the 1890s, through the more sophisticated interactions of "the select circle of five" in a country High School to which Hal Porter belongs in the 1920s, to the "hoods" of the sixties portrayed in Dick's novel, Naked Prodigal. 54 In common, these groups satisfy a side of the adolescent's nature which is, to use Porter's words in The Watcher, "the belonging-to-a-clique side". In his case, the group acts to fulfil the frivolous part of his nature rather than -174-

the more violent emotions which are expressed in the wild exploits of the "gangs". In most cases, however, the members of the group, though finding at least a temporary identity within it, do not form deep or lasting relations with one another. As Porter, again, says: "It is indicative of the effervescent shallowness of our relations with each other than we never have a deep enough affection even to bicker" (p.162).

In looking at Colin Johnson's novel, Wild Cat Falling, it is of interest to observe that the protagonist there has no concept of friendship in the normally accepted sense. Towards the end of the book, when he is beginning to experience some feeling of fusion - if only with the car he is driving - he explains that he has "to remind myself how I am always separate and alien from everything and everyone" (p.111).

When his mother refers to "a friend" telling her that he was in jail, he says quickly, "'What friend?' 'That pimply-faced boy.' 'He's an acquaintance. I don't have any friends'" (p.112).

In his last "job" with Jeff, his bodgie accomplice, he can only despise him because Jeff is looking to him as the model. He muses bitterly, "He thinks it will be alright because I have told him so!"

(p.113).

This book holds some interest, also, in the fact that the protagonist seeks his identity in two apparently opposing peer groups, but neither can provide him with stability, truth or even refuge. As he tells Jeff, the University mob have turned out to be "a worse fake than the bodgie gang - only rich enough to get away with it" (p.105). Again, the slightness of this novel leaves room for a development of themes such as this which are inherently valuable to a study of adolescence.

The potential, however, is realised even less in novels such as Naked

Prodigal and Seed55 where the relationships of a group of teenagers with

one another are stated rather than explored and the depiction of the boys -175-

and their actions is flat and stereotyped. Certainly, the car stealing

exploit at the end of Seed - "for kicks" - reflects an assertion of the group's identity and acts as an outlet for the boys' aggressive feelings towards adult society: manifestations of a behaviour which is increasing­

ly apparent56 to-day amongst middle and upper-class adolescent groups but which has been barely touched on as yet in the Australian novel of

adolescence.

Ultimately, the adolescent must find an identity which is not dependent on the group alone if he is to mature fully. 57 "The larrikin", writes Stone, referring to the name given to the push members in Jonah,

"never grows up" (p.4), and when Jonah feels secure enough to give up

this kind of life to marry Ada, he is able to dismiss his adolescence with the words, "'the push be damned!'" (p.48).

Outside of the group, a more prolific area for examination of

identity is seen in the adolescent's relationships with an older person

who is often closer in age to the adolescent than his parents are but

who is usually mature enough to provide a model with whom he can identify

and whom he can love in a "safe", non-sexual situation. (This kind of person is the main exception to the adolescent's rejection of the "over

twenty-fives".)

Such a relationship is delineated between Rob and his older

cousin, Rick, in his late twenties, in Stew's novel, The Merry-go-round

in the Sea. It is a relationship which so often ends, as this one does,

in the loss of the older person. In the scene between them, after Rob

hears of Rick's going to England, we are shown his initial anger and

bitterness: -176-

'We always liked you' the boy said angrily. 'Don't you care if people like you?' 'Oh, kid,' Rick said, reining the old gelding in, and riding knee to knee with the boy, 'I know how you feel. I was your age myself. And I try to be the sort of bloke you think I am, but I'm not.' 'I don't know what sort of bloke I think you are', the boy said. The road was going through a yellow stubble field, like a courtyard between walls of grey-green scrub. 'We're being pretty honest with each other' Rick said. 'You love me, don't you, Rob?' 'No' said the boy, bitterly. 'Not if you're going to leave me to grow up all by myself.' (p.282)

Later comes his realisation, in a first step towards maturity, that he always has been and must continue to be an individual, able to stand on his own, however perilous the future may seem.

Another interesting relationship, this time between a young girl and an older man, is explored by Elizabeth Harrower, in The Long

Prospect, between Emily and Max, the latter providing the girl with a father and mother figure, in one sense - (as she lives with her grand­ mother, her parents being separated). Even more than this, however, the experience with Max succeeds in giving her a sense of her own identity which enables her to emerge as "the youthful human creature who had lately come to life through being known to be alive" (p. 81).

After meeting him, her earlier idols, film-stars and the like, are displaced and relegated "to barbaric - albeit revered - pre-history"

(p.73), and she no longer envies the once jealously witnessed joys of her school friends going home to their mother, for she sees them now as young and ignorant. How profoundly the author examines the complexities of Emily's feelings for Max, showing her youth and immaturity coming to terms with her attempts at an increasing understanding and maturity! -177-

Emily cannot define her feeling for Max. "She had no word for it; she simply knew what it was not. It was not what girls of her age felt for boys or girls of her age, or for their teachers" (p.90). From here, she tries to analyse Max's feelings for her and comes to a realisation, which we have seen as the core of self-definition, revealed in her triumphant cry: "She was valued! She was valued!" (p.92). The sexual overtones in this relationship, as evidenced in the idyllic scene when she and Max are stretched out on the grass under the plum trees

(p.133), are contrasted implicitly with the other"love" relationships in the book with a fine degree of balance and pathos, culminating in the scene where Max is accused of an "unnatural" relationship with Emily.

I would agree here with the criticism, put forward by R.G. Geering in

Southerly, that

the final stages of Emily's journey to self­ awareness seem hurried. The reader has to take too much for granted in the last couple of chapters, and is left wondering about the processes by which Emily has reached the situ­ ation depicted at the end. 58

I concur also with his view, in this same article, that there is a degree of failure in the presentation of Max as a convincing character (p.136). Nevertheless, as a study of a young girl's growth to self-realisation through an unusual but not unnatural relationship, this novel shows a perception and subtlety not often apparent in many of the other books under discussion.

Some of these deal, in differing approaches, with the relation- ship between the adolescent and a teacher - a common occurrence during this period, and one that often affects his developing self-image. (As we have seen in The Mango Tree, it is not always a "safe" situation.

Jamie's visits to his teacher, Miss Pringle, after school, ostensibly

to have further instruction in French, result, instead, in an increase -178-

in sexual prowess.)

In Redheap, young Robert is drawn towards his Tutor,

Mr Bandparts, "a heavy portly gentleman arriving at middle age with some reluctance" (p.76), with whom, however, Robert can identify because of Mr Bandparts'sebullient and irreverent attacks on the shortcomings of social and family attitudes and practices. Whether he is holding forth against young men's beards or the splitting of the atom, he is equally vociferous; as he tosses out of the window the cup of cocoa which his mother has brought into him - (he prefers beer) - he represents for

Robert the essence of adolescent rebellion. He talks to Robert as an equal. Micawber-like, and sometimes as amusing, he represents the type of older friend who would prefer, as his description above implies, to return to youth himself rather than the kind of mature person on whom the adolescent aspires to model his character.

The teacher/adolescent theme is given only slight treatment in

Hetherington's autobiography, The Morning was Shining, but the brief scene on the final page shows how an older person can, sometimes, in one conspiratorial moment, help the adolescent to understand and to accept at least one feature of the world around him, together with his place within it. In this passage, the boy is talking with the organist and Choir

Master, Cocky Inge, when he suddenly asks the older man if he likes school.

"He smiled and for that fleeting instant I caught a glimpse of him as he must have been when a boy; somehow I had never thought of him as a boy"

(p. 269) •

When he leaves, he is, in his own words, "feeling closer to

Cocky Inge than I ever had before". And then he adds: "It was some­

thing to know that we both felt the story grown-ups tell about the

surpassing happiness of school days is a fable invented by the old to

fool the young" (p. 269). -179-

Another idea expressed here - that of the adolescent's inability to comprehend that an older person has ever been young - is a common one, which we noted earlier in the chapter. In a different errotional atmosphere, it is epitomil.ed in Charles's bitter remark59 to his mother in The Young Desire It: "'You don't understand. You make me feel you've never been young"' (p. 298). It is only when the older person - rarely the parent - does show his understanding of the adol­ escent that the latter is able to believe that he once experienced some of his own feelings and can, therefore, identify with him.

Charles's relationship with the school master, Penworth, in this same book, provides an interesting study as well as "a delicate and perceptive treatment",60 to use R.G. Geering's phrase, of the kind of association where the sexual undertones - in this case, homosexual ones - become overt and destroy the love and understanding which formerly existed. The scene where Penworth takes hold of Charles is skilfully and sensitively handled:

'Let go please,' he said again firmly. 'Please don't do this. It spoils everything. ' What he meant by that he did not afterwards know; but it caused Penworth to laugh shakily. 'You talk like a damned schoolgirl being seduced.' 'I'm not a girl' Charles said slowly, 'even if I do look like one.' (p.255)

He realises, then,painfully but with relief, that his identity is not to be found in this way.

Vinny's relationship with the school teacher, Hele~ Striebel, in Descant for Gossips, is less satisfactory because of its unevenness of treatment and its flatness, at times, of presentation. In the scene, for example, where the girl asks Helen for a book on "babies", the teacher does show some understanding, but there is a triteness in the -180-

last sentence which conveys none of the passion or anxiety of Vinny's feelings. Helen replies:

'Being thirteen can be very difficult' she said. 'I didn't like it much myself, I remember. All sorts of ups and downs and feeling out of everything. I think I can get you a book or two you might like to read. I know they'll help. Only I'll have to ring my sister and get her to send them if she can get hold of them.' Vinny raised her eyes for a moment. 'Thank you, Mrs Striebel,' she said. But more than 'thank you' was in her heart. (p. 238)

In this novel, also, the parallel of Vinny's sexual awakening and her search for an identity., with the love affair of Helen and Moller/ is not, I think, handled with the same perspicacity and subtlety as we find in a similar situation in The Long Prospect, discussed earlier in this section. We might note here, too, an excellent exposition of this kind in the American novel, Member of the Wedding, by Carson Mccullers.

In the early part of Descant for Gossips, the closeness of

Vinny's relationship with her teacher is certainly suggested but this closeness is denied by Vinny after she meets Tommy at the school dance.

Again, what jars upon us is not the fact that such a step would be unbelievable in an adolescent but the logic with which it is expressed.

Nevertheless, the following passage does give some insight into Vinny's feelings at this time, though the use of the word "tiny" to convey what one might see, instead, as the enormity of her situation, seems a strange anomaly:

For her the night had been a turning point. Until this moment she had been conscious, frighteningly so, of having one friend only. And yet she could not really call a mature woman twenty years her senior a friend. The pupil-teacher relationship made that imposs- ible. She did not include her family in her -181-

estimate of what made understanding and amicable companionship, because always there was the fear that love was displayed through duty, that concern was parental conscience. Her reasoning was not evolved in those terms but it all came down to the same tiny meaning. Yet now, at this moment and under the slow saraband of tree shadow along the out-of-town roads, she felt she had won what for years had been absent from the purpose of her day, a friend who liked her in spite of her dress, her face, her clumsy manner. (pp.203-204)

This seeming purposefulness, however, cannot overcome her inability to find an identification with either her mother, her teacher or the youthful Tommy. This inability leads, in her case, to suicide, to a literal killing of the self with whom, like Shane in The Boys in the Island, she has been unable to come to terms. Again, one is not made to see and feel the logicality or inevitability of this act as it is presented in the novel, and her death does, in fact, take the reader by surprise. we must conclude that the potentialities of this book for an interesting and sensitive study of an adolescent's search for, and inability to find, a viable, satisfactory identity are, unfortunately, not fully realised.

A brief but important part of The Man Who Loved Children is woven around the relationship of Louie with the new school teacher,

Miss Aiden, an attractive figure, "tall, limber, with deep gold hair

and a fresh sonorous voice [who] always wore a red swagger coat" (p. 346).

She comes into Louie's life at a time of intense domestic agony at home~

and the young girl worships her as someone who has suddenly filled her

being with joy and triumphant love. It is no accident that she is an

English teacher and strikes a chord, therefore, in Louie's strong and

growing creative activity. Louie forms the magnificent project of the

Aiden Cycle which "would consist of a poem of every conceivable metre -182-

in the English language, each and every one, of course, in honour of

Miss Aiden" (p.350). Such is her devotion that she is able to stand up to her family's teasing and to her father's jealousy; she forms a secret society at school whose members wear white ribbons with gold letters, S.S.A.A. (Secret Society for the Adoration of Aiden), but only she remains as an active participant. The ridiculousness of the situ- ation is apparent to everyone but her:

She was by this time a mere barrel of lard, as everyone said; and nothing was more clownish on earth than Louisa with 'her spiny grey eyes, long ass's face, lip of a motherless foal, mountainous body, sullen scowl, and silly smile' (as Benny remarked), going into ecstasies over Miss Aiden and forever scribbling about love. (p.356)

When her father asks what else besides this foolishness is going on in her head, she is silent, "trying to recall anything she thought about besides Miss Aiden" (p. 356).

She continues "mooning and moping" over the teacher until the whole family thinks the child is queer. Her murderous revenge against her father continues to flame. "Against this went her terrible passion for Miss Aiden, childish in its ignorance, adult in its turbulency. At school she was in heaven, at home she was in a torture chamber" (p. 388) •

It is interesting that, up to this point, this relationship has been seen only through Louie's eyes. She has made her teacher into a goddess who sits on high. Then, one warm day, during a lesson out of doors, Louie with great daring recites:

'Spirit of Beauty, that does consecrate with thine own hues all thou dost shine upon'. Miss Aiden, with a gentle smile remarked, 'Love begets love they say!' For a moment, sensation ran through Louie like a sweet summer river, but afterwards she felt a little disappointed in Miss Aiden; it was improper in the goddess to respond. -183-

Stead then comments, with perception but, perhaps, in an unnecessary intrusion: "Miss Aiden, in fact, did not understand

(having only just come from College) that all the best gods are made of stone and say nothing" (p.412).

Soon after, Miss Aiden goes to dinner at Louie's place and is appalled at the squalor of her home and disappointed with the whole visit. "'Your father is very amusing' said Miss Aiden, patronizingly.

For the first time, Louie found the shadow of a ghost of a fault in

Miss Aiden 's manner" (p. 427) •

The increasing upheaval at home, however, ending in Henny's suicide, breaks the link that had temporarily supported - perhaps strengthened - Louie. When she leaves home and says good-bye to Clare, her last question is: "'I won't see Miss Aiden any more, will I?"'

(p.523). But she is firm in her resolve that she will never come back.

The exploration of this relationship is, like the rest of the book, full of insight and intensity, throwing a brilliant light on this turbulent phase of adolescence in a way which illuminates not only

Louisa's strange and troubled life but that of many adolescents who try to find in a teacher the identity for which they seek.

d) The heroic gesture and the bid for life

By my hope and faith, I conjure ye, Throw not away the hero in your soul.

Nietzsche

It is significant that these lines are among the mottoes which

Louie has attached to the wall of her bedroom for just as she begins to I I\ '""i .. ::, Q) 0 I ::r, !/) Q) 1-l 1-l ::, ,,ft ,f ::, 0 \ "I"-\ ::r, Q) ' 8 C: "§ 0 ·..; !/) ►' ~ ... ~ \ 2 Q) I .... r I ' .. Q) ·..; ,c:: ,c:: :.::;

-~ Q) .> ~:S , I 't:I ::r, C: n:, ·\ '·: n:, ~ n:, ~~ O 0 ,c:: C: ::r, ~ E: 0 ~~ -184-

sense that hero worship may be a transient and vulnerable pastime, so she comes to value more the hero in her own soul. Despite the many pressures to which she is subjected, she retains the resilience and vitality, the courage and fortitude of the heroic prototype. For the adolescent, this vital force is often released in physical activity, especially of the competitive or "heroic" kind, whereby he can project an image of himself as hero, as part of his struggle for self- definition.

As we have seen evidenced in the assertions of writers in an earlier chapter, this force is not, of course, confined to the physical side. Sometimes it is identified with a vague,though none the less important1 goal as may be illustrated in Steve's words in The Pea Pickers:

"A madness of being and high purpose burnt in me, and I fancied that I was being prepared for a task of genius" (p.361).

Nevertheless, the need to "prove" oneself is often seen in the socially acceptable outlet of sporting activities, perhaps partic­ ularly appropriate to the Australian environment but widely used in the literature of other countries. 61

Mackenzie captures this feeling well in his description of the boys on the School Sports day in The Young Desire It:

The desire to conquer and to destroy, translated into countless curious channels, gave a dangerous edge to their words, and shone in their lively eyes like a knife, in this hour. The incipient moral conscience of adolescence made many offer the gesture of fairness to the others, to the victor whom they hated and to the other vanquished, for whom their contempt knew no measure; but still they raged in a frenzy they could not have understood. (p. 268) -185-

We see this same kind of frenzy instanced in other circum­ stances; in All the Green Year, for example, when Charlie feels he must defend his honour by fighting the local lout, "Big Simmons"; or in

Morn of Youth62 when the young lad needs to prove himself by climbing the topmast.

In the scene of the fire which destroys the MacGibbon's house in My Brother Tom, there is an amusing example of the adolescent's heroic role. The seventeen year old Tom, being in love with Peg

MacGibbon, rushes into the house and comes out with a charred ironing board, much to the amazement of Mrs MacGibbon and his younger brother who is telling the story:

'You're crazy,' I shouted at him. 'You're just showing off.' 'You don't even understand', he said, and then walked away in disgust. (p.14)

As Henderson comments in discussing the heroic myth:

Once the individual has passed his initial test and can enter the mature phase of life, the hero myth loses its relevance. The hero's symbolic death becomes, as it were, the achievement of that maturity. 63

We must again point out, however, that such a statement is more readily applicable to those in a society with clearly defined rites and beliefs. In terms of our modern society, the hero myth may still exist but such group or individual acts of "proving" oneself as do occur often need repetition in many other forms or at many other stages of the adolescent's development before he can be considered mature.

It may be pertinent to note here that, in the literature of this survey, we do not find such an identification with the anti-hero -186- myth as has developed in modern American fiction and is epitomized in a novel such as The Catcher in the Rye. Douvan, writing in 1966, describes the more extreme anti-type as "leather-jacketed, sinister, cruel, amoral, he is the nemesis-hero of a new genre of fiction and film" (p. 2). We see an approximation to this kind of figure only, perhaps, in The Chantic

Bird and Wild Cat Falling, novels which are exceptional in the sense that the protagonist in the first is severely disturbed and, in the second, is placed in a position of abnormal conflict with society. The American pattern may well be related to the failure of the early "American dream" with its adolescent quality of glory and heroic immortality. 65 One can only say that this kind of disillusionment, where it does exist in

Australian literature, has not resulted in the use of a metaphor similar to its American anti-hero counterpart.

On the more positive side, the heroic tests which the adolescent forces himself to undertake must result in positive achievement. Just as he cannot be saved from the difficulties of his relationships with his parents so, as New says:

For a boy to become a man, he must esteem fully the value of life and for him to reach this position he must pass alone through danger and survive his contact with the violent realities of mortal existence. (p.111}

In this chapter, we have traced the most common factors in the life of the adolescent which influence him to "esteem fully the value of life" for, to do this, he must esteem himself also. We have seen that, in the process of crystallising his identity, he needs other people, including those of his own generation, to act, in Douvan's words, "as models, mirrors, helpers, testers, foils" (p .178} •

Lindsay expresses, in Halfway to Anywhere, the same idea in -187-

his comment on friendship after Bill and Waldo have "made up" after a quarrel:

For a bloke must have a friend; one intimate with his private thoughts, so that he may give actuality to existence by voicing them in speech. Lacking a friend as a mirror on which to reflect the wonder of his beingr he wanders in a partial vacuum, deprived of that assurance of reality which mankind gains by making sounds with the human voice within hearing of another pair of human ears. (pp.112-113)

In these two extracts, is found the image most frequently employed in the writer's exploration and projection of the protagonist's search for self-definition: the mirror. We shall now proceed to examine the way s in which this image is applied in the Australian literature of adolescence. -188-

IV. The Mirror Image and the "Looking-Glass Self". 66

Mirror, mirror, on the wall Who is the fairest of them all?

The wicked Queen in Snowwhite

Didn't I know rightly, I was handsome, though it was the divil's own mirror we had beyond, would twist a squint across an angel's brow.

Christy in The Playboy of the western World

I face also, and too often, the looking-glass. There I am.

Porter in The Watcher

In fairy tales, as in the modern novel, the mirror has been used as a symbol not only to reveal the physical image of the seeker after truth but to answer the oft-posed question of the adolescent,

"Who am I?" Like the magic mirror of the fairy tales, it may enhance the questioner's complacency if he does not wish to look beyond the superficial reflection; like "the divil 's own mirror', it may distort or blur his image. It may be dashed to the ground if it provides an unpleasant truth, as in the deposition scene in Shakespeare's Richard II.

It may, like the gilded mirrors at Xanadu, lead "by subtle, receding steps far beyond the bounds of vision". 67

As a literary symbol, it may be utilised to reveal the adolescent, (or the maturing adult), to himself as he sees himself with greater clarity, accepting his physical image as he accepts his inner

self, just as it records his change and growth as he works towards that

end. In discussing the self, emerging as it takes on new roles, Edgar

says: -189-

As the individual objectifies the self through the social feedback he gets from significant others (cf. Cooley's "looking-glass self") he learns the limits of his selfhood. Each new role he enters presents a new image of self which has to be incorporated into the general image of "the competent self". 68

This term, the "looking-glass self", which we used at the head of this section, seems to me a particularly apt one in relation to our study, and we shall now illustrate the relevance which this concept has to the imagery of the adolescent's search for identity as presented

in the works under discussion.

Nichols, in commenting upon the difficulties of defining the

self in any set of psychological concepts - because it is so particular

and individual a reality - suggests that the literary artist, with his

concern for the concrete and irranediate, is sometimes able to succeed where

the psychologist fails. (p.10)

One might carry this idea further, in the way that Sullivan

does, to suggest that "the novel, as a work of art, functions as a mirror

to expose to the reader, by means of the metaphor, that measure of truth

which is permanent,and pertinent to his own condition". 69 I think that

many of the following passages will serve to substantiate these two

propositions.

Very often the adolescent will go to a mirror following a

change or an upheaval in his life to see if he is the same person, to

verify, as it were, his new sense of personal identity or the new role

which he is undertaking, or sometimes has had forced upon him.

All the Green Year provides a good example of this kind of

experience when Charlie is recovering from a fight he has been in - of

particular significance because it was over a girl - and the bandage he -190-

has worn over his eyes for some days is finally removed, accentuating, of course, the image of his "seeing" himself in a new and unfamiliar light, one that is not yet entirely clear:

I went to a mirror for the first time and found myself scarcely recognisable. My eyes were black and the eyeballs themselves were red; my hair had been combed forward in a peculiar Edwardian sort of way by my grand­ mother. Even though my reflection was blurred I saw, too, that I should commence shaving. Either I had forgotten how advanced my beard was or it had appeared in a matter of days. While I looked at myself my grandmother came into the room. She said as if reading my thoughts, 'I think you should perhaps use this - it was your grandfather's'. She handed me a cut-throat razor. (p.113}

The reference to the need to shave - which we have seen as a significant symbol in the adolescent's path to maturity - is succinctly and amusingly balanced in the final sentence with its implication of the dangers and threats of such a path.

In The Mango Tree, Jamie also uses the mirror, initially to assess, as it were, the new experience he had undergone - that of touching Miss Pringle's long hair - and later, after his first sexual experience with her, to verify himself in his new role. With the typically egocentric attitude of the adolescent, Jamie believes that others are as preoccupied with his appearance and behaviour as he is and the boy is sure, therefore, that he must, indeed, look different to everyone else. He locks himself in his room and then:

He approached the mirror, yet frightened to face it. Edged up to it as if it would strike him, not knowing what he would see but expecting a mark, a sign, some disfigurement he would never be able to cover or hide. A brand he would never keep from Grandmother or Pearl or a sneering world. They stared at each other, two in the silent room. Stared secretly, furtively. Afraid. (p.186) -191-

The word, "two", is valuable in this context because here

McKie externalises and vitalises the other self, the boy that Jamie had been before his experience which was of a kind that typifies, so often,

the break between youth and maturity. Prominent, also, is the sense of shame implicit in the furtiveness and secretness of the atmosphere;

and of fear, isolated in the one word, "afraid"; not just the fear of being found out or even of being laughed at but the dread, one feels, of

the death of the boy in the mirror. These impressions are clarified

further as the scene progresses and the nascent maturity of the youth

emerges. On closer study, Jamie realises that he does look the same and

is inexpressibly relieved. He wipes the pin-prick of blood from his ear

which Miss Pringle has too enthusiastically kissed and, with that

gesture, disappears the dread of a mark or disfigurement which he had

earlier expected to be irremovable.

He returned to the mirror. Unmarked. Unchanged. As he had been before it happened. He smiled and the boy no longer smiled back. He began to laugh. Quietly and uncontrollably. He laughed so much he was almost sick. {p.187)

This passage expresses his almost hysterical relief at finding

that he is the same - or in thinking that he is. There is a deft touch

in the words, "and the boy no longer smiled back". Jamie has incorp­

orated his emergent self into his old self, almost automatically. He

has yet to learn that the two are one but not the same.

When Dolour, in The Harp in the South, is suddenly placed, at

the age of fourteen, in a new role, first in the negative sense of

"losing" her sister and then, almost as suddenly, of seeing herself in

the positive role of being an "auntie", her immediate reaction is to

rush to the mirror and to examine her face minutely. Now, she is going -192-

even further in an effort to establish her identity and fuse its component parts by projecting her self on to the unborn baby; she is trying to see her true reflection, not only in the mirror, but in the new life of Roie's baby, and she invokes a magic spell in order to make her image a perfect one. Roie has just told Dolour about the baby, significantly, as an indication of their relationship, before she has told anyone else:

Dolour, her heart sinking, and her stomach feeling slightly unstable, stood looking after her. Slowly but surely a wall seemed to be building between Roie and herself. Then all at once she felt glad. It would be nice to have a baby to look after and play with; it might even look like its auntie. Dolour rushed to the glass and examined her face minutely. Melancholy-featured and sallow with adolescence it looked back at her, but Dolour thought her mouth rather pretty, and her eye­ brows not too bad at all. They would look well on a baby. She peered at a spot on her chin and rubbed it painstakingly with her finger, as though to erase it. Then she picked up the tube of toothpaste, said solemnly, 'This is a magic cream from the East', and rubbed a little into the spot. She went down­ stairs feeling spellbound, and sure that when next she looked the pimple would be gone. (p.210)

A more complex use of the mirror image occurs in The Long

Prospect. It is introduced, initially, when Emily begins to realise that she is being valued for the first time, when Max treats her as a person. Note here, also, the importance which her name, stated and then repeated, suddenly assumes as part of a positive self-image, an aspect of adolescence previously mentioned in this chapter.

And to know that she, Emily Lawrence, whose name alone - Emily Lawrence - could sound like a phrase meaning stupid and lazy, was thought to be worthy of Max's thought, made her eye herself in the mirror with an altogether new respect. (pp.83-84) -193-

This image is used in the novel in a recurring fashion, to emphasise the development of Emily's self at different stages of her growth and her concomitant awareness of this. Towards the end of the book, she is packing to return to live with her parents, after the impasse with Max, talking with her friend, Patty, who is sitting in front of the mirror:

Patty said in an absorbed voice, 'My skin's as soft as soft'. She caressed her pretty round cheeks with her finger-tips and smiled. Swinging round on the stool she looked at Emily with flattering attention. 'And I like your nice dark shiny hair, Em.' Shiny dark hair. It sounded like poetry. Emily had to go to the mirror. 'And the way you look sometimes, you know, the way your eyes look - I like that. I think we're both rather unusual and inter­ esting, don't you?' Solemnly, side by side, they gazed. Forehead, nose, mouth, teeth, ears, neck, shoulders, red jumper suit, shiny dark hair: it was all there, and all right, but eyes Emily went away. Eyes knew too much. {pp.193-4)

Here we see her acceptance of her physical image but she is unable yet to synthesise with it her concept of her inner self which has recently suffered such a traumatic experience. She cannot face the eyes which look inward as well as outward. Later, as she begins to feel she can accept responsibility for her actions, there is a final

"mirror" scene in the bathroom:

Emily dried her hands and looked at her face in the mirror. 'Hullo', she said. 'How are you?' For some seconds she and her reflection commiserated kindly with each other. To it she confided her marks in to-day's test. Did it think, she asked it, that she would ever find a friend at school? Now, she sat alone. The rest were all as good as married. Exactly even. Twos and twos. -194-

Still! her reflection said, as if it mattered. And it ceased to matter. (p. 205)

This passage, with its two-way "conversation", provides an interesting example of the self-splitting referred to earlier and forms an excellent culmination to the sensitive use of an image as a means of analyzing and revealing a psychological process: in this case, a young girl's growth towards an understanding and acceptance of self, though the prospect ahead be long and arduous.

Not many of the novels in our survey utilise this image in such an integrated way though they may incorporate it to good effect in one scene only.

There is a brilliantly drawn scene, for example, in White's book, The Aunt's Story, following Theodora's talk with the Headmistress of the boarding school to which she has just been sent. Here again, the technique of the two-way intercourse between the protagonist and the mirror is used as if the reflection were the "other" self, the object with whom the subject can converse. In this passage, the sense of "suffocation" which Theodora feels - a word expressing the total, overwhelming nature of this feeling because she cannot see the final outcome of either her physical or spiritual selves which are just beginning to take shape - is imaginatively enhanced by the dimming of her vision in the mirror-face as she recognises that the questions she asks are, in fact, unanswerable:

Theodora listened to the strong "boots of Miss Spofforth squeak away across the polished floor. The distance increased, bat it had been great upon the stairs. Sometimes the distance is very great. -195-

I shall never overcome the distances, felt Theodora. And because she was like this, she found consolation in the deal mirror in the room for four. When she was alone she spoke to the face that had now begun to form, its bone. Since she had come to Spofforths' Theodora Goodman had begun to take shape, for what if anything she had not yet discovered, and for this reason she could sometimes suffo­ cate. Her breath dimmed the mirror-face, the dark eyes asking the unanswerable questions. Because it was the face to which nothing had yet happened, it could not take its final shape. It was a vessel waiting for experience to fill it, and then the face finally would show. 'For goodness' sake, looking in the mirror!' said Una Russell, coming in. Una Russell hated Theodora. She could not under­ stand her silences. 'Yes', said Theodora. 'I do not like my face'. 'But you look', said Una. 'I sometimes wonder.' 'My mother once knew a very ugly woman who married an Englishman. He had a large house in the country. She did very well.' 'I don't want to marry' said Theodora. 'Why ever not? There is nothing else to do.' 'I want to do nothing yet. I want to see.' (pp. 53-54)

The description of her face as "a vessel waiting for experience to fill it", with its overtones of life being poured like water to its brim, is a wonderfully vivid image of the state of adolescence before an identity has been established, an identity which, however, in contrast to Una's goal, Theodora even now makes clear will not include the role of marriage. Her final statement in this quotation, "I want to see", reinforces the earlier mirror image while, at the same time, adding a new dimension, and is a prelude to White's concluding statement in this scene, after Una Russell has gone out of the room, her bangles express­ ing her CO!ltempt: "Theodora had begun to accept both the contempt and the distances. Because there were also the moments of insight" (p. 54) • -196-

The rest of the book proceeds to reveal the intense and mystical insight with which the maturing Theodora responds to life and to the people and experiences which deeply influence her.

As we have seen, the mirror image is frequently used of the early stages of adolescence when the rapidity of development or the sudden emanation of new aspects of the self make it difficult for the adolescent to keep up with his outward appearance, to know in fact what he looks like, as well to try to understand who he now is. In this situation, the real concept of self, as Hurlock, echoing Cooley's

"looking-glass self", puts it:

is a 'mirror image' of what the adolescent believes significant people in his life - his parents, teachers, peers - think of him, both physically and psychologically. How they treat him and how they appraise him will determine, to a large extent, how he will appraise himself. (p.651)

In this regard, we are reminded of an interesting passage in

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when the youthful Stephen has been called a "lazy little schemer" by the prefect of studies and has been pandied accordingly. He broods on the humiliation and unfairness of his punishment until he begins to wonder whether there might not really be "something in his face which made him look like a schemer and he wished he had a little mirror to see" (p.53).

This need to use a mirror to verify if, in fact, he is as others see him70 is matched by the adolescent's attempts to see himself as he appears to others, a desire that he often thinks can only be achieved - albeit in a necessarily limited way - by looking in the mirror. 71 Horne refers to these aspects when he describes his feelings

during adolescence: -197-

I wondered what I looked like to other people and peered at parts of my face from unusual angles in mirrors and worried about what I saw••• One day at school I saw one of the boys imitating the way I walked. Did I really walk in such an exaggerated style? I tried to watch my reflection in shop windows, to find out how I did walk. (p.117)

Porter expresses a similar view when he says: "Adolescence forces me to watch every move and gesture I make physically and socially, to weigh every word I utter" (p.177). He has already expressed the view that, though it is difficult for the adolescent to see his inner self with any clarity, he does see his physical self

"with unnecessary and amazed clearness", "with greater clarity than before or since" (p.176). Porter continues to use the mirror image consistently throughout the book as part of this theme. He describes, with humour and vividness, the universal phenomenon of a fifteen year old adolescent in front of the mirror, looking for himself, searching for a self other than what he sees, trying out "new selves" in the safety of his room:

I face also, and too often, the looking glass. There I am. There is the appalling secret: while, yesterday, I was what I wanted to be and look like, to-day I am not what I want to be and look like. My hair is fair: it should be blue-black as a rook and in amaranthine curls. My eyes? Blue. Oh, for eyes of deep green speckled with gold! Daily examining the length of my eyelashes and nose, the colour and shape of my teeth, the quality of a variety of tried-out smiles and head-cockings and melting glances and quizzical ones, I seek for signs of physical beauty for my own pleasure as much as for the pleasure of others ••• (p.176)

"Ah yes", he concludes, "I seek for the one who existed contentedly yesterday and who will exist contentedly to-morrow but who is, to-day, a secret" (p.177). -198-

Later, as a young man of seventeen, being ogled by an older, attractive woman, he writes: "She's a bold one, I think, smiling back in a way I consider charming, trying out a lop-sided one practised in my shaving mirror" (p.220).

By the end of the book, he is still seeking for his self but there is now a bitterness, a cynicism in his detachment that have not existed before. When his mother dies, he looks in the mirror "seeking marks of suffering. I see that I am momentarily good-looking in an

'interesting way' - thinner cheeks, distended pupils, black shadows under my eyes" (p.245).

An interesting contrast to the fifteen year old Porter in the earlier extract quoted above is seen in a brief excerpt from Redheap where the twenty-year old Ethel has already acquired a sophistication which allows her to cut herself off, as it were, from any part of her self that she does not want to see. Following a quarrel with her sister,

Hetty, who has accused her of having an affair with a married man as well as of trying to take her own young man away from her - both accusations being true and as readily denied by Ethel - she is left alone in the room:

The mirror reflected an expression of calculation and relief, which she effaced with a grimace at herself in the glass. Thereafter she stood for some time, studying herself with an air of speculative interest, as if this were a polite stranger in whose affairs she felt a distant curiosity. (p.215)

A more complex and imaginative use of the mirror image is made by White in The Tree of Man in a series of links between the portrait of

Thelma on the threshold of adolescence and then, later, at the time of her leaving her country home for the city. In the first instance, her -199-

father has just returned from the war - almost a stranger to his children - and she and her brother, Ray, are sent off to bed:

The little girl looked out of the window for a time without noticing the beauty of the night, because she was obsessed by the problem of herself. She fetched a little bottle of French scent that her father had brought her and smelled it several times. Only then was she drenched with peace and beauty. The mystical flower of her face shone in the mirror as she said her prayers from behind the long, unopened bud of her hands. (p.2V)

It seems as if the peace and beauty of this moment, expressed in the lotus-like image of the young girl on the verge of flowering, of

"becoming", are contained only in the refle,:tion in the mirror, not in the reality of her life. Soon after, when she has reached adolescence and is planning to go to College in the city, there is a scene which shows her, full of her O'Wil importance, aware of her emergence into a new self and yet still needing the reassurance of the mirror to confirm, if only temporarily, this new found image:

Thelma came in, throwing back the leaf of the door with ease. She could afford to. She had been reading the ridiculous things she had written in a notebook when younger. She was tingling with her present superiority to all that was childish and laughable. 'Aren't we going to have some tea?' she asked loudly. She looked in the mirror to watch herself speak, and was pleased with what she saw, for that moment anyway. (p. 244)

In a later episode, on her way to College, Thelma, now a thin reserved adolescent "in a grey suit and neat hat" settles down, as the I train departs from the station1 "to her own reflection in other people's faces. It was a new and voluptuous sensation to try to solve its mystery in such mirrors" (p. 250) • -200-

Still concerned with the problem of self, she is looking to

find herself in the faces of others but this she will never do. The

lotus flower will never open for her. All that the mirror will ever

show are her obsessive neatness and cleanliness. In the city at night

she goes for long tram rides, "looking down from her compartment into

the windows of people's lives" but, though not yet certain of her

direction in life, she knows that, unlike them, "she would not be

surprised in awkward attitudes" (p.251).

The rest of Thelma's life will show us that you cannot see your true self in other people's eyes unless you first reveal yourself openly to them. As White says of her, in a continuation of the flower

image, "Her camellia graces were not of the generous blowing order, but

tight and small, greenish-white, and not for picking" (p.242).

In order to point up an experience in the adolescent's life

that has not been touched upon so explicitly in any previous illustrations of the use of the mirror image, we must turn to Elizabeth Harrower, this

time in The Watch Tower. This experience occurs when Clare realises that

someone else has thought of her when she was not present. She sees it

as an entirely new occurrence and, in order to relate it to a reality

within her previous experience, she returns to her childhood:

She felt a little the way she had when, as a very small child staring into a mirror, she realised for the first time that she was not of necessity observed by others full face, that she had these unknown sides to her face, that, even when her eyes were not fixed in someone else's, they could look at her. It made her feel oddly as if there was more of her and, also, as she grew older, that people in this way deceived and were deceived. People thought they could possess you when you were not looking and listening, and perhaps you thought the same. (p.83) -201-

This kind of self-insight which enables the adolescent first to envisage that he is perceived by others in this way and then, as

Clare says, to realise that there is "more of her" which, in fact, no outward or inward mirror can ever show, is, in her case, followed by a glimpse of the possibilities and the dangers which such a revelation suggests. Whether the adolescent sees the possibilities positively or negatively, such a realisation as the one described above is necessary if he is to form a satisfactory self-concept. Clare is, in this regard, one of the most mature adolescents described in this survey, just as

Elizabeth Harrower's use of imagery to "explain" her is amongst the most perceptive and clarifying of its kind.

There are two further instances of the mirror image in this novel which both add considerably to our understanding of the concept of adolescent identity. The first concems Laura, Clare's older sister, who, with aspirations to be an opera singer or a doctor, has been forced by circumstances to apply for a job at a Box Factory:

Laura had her light-brown sun-streaked plaits cut the same afternoon, and her hair hung in loose natural waves to her shoulders. Out of startled blue eyes she looked at her new face. She felt a sensation that was hard to identify. She half thought to put it down to the loss of her hair, which had never been cut before. But it was only that reality, in the sound of a few words, had twisted her heart. (p.11)

The second one concerns Clare who also has her hair cut even though she expects to stay at school. When this becomes impossible, she thinks to herself: "And, anyway, she had no choice. Her hair was cut so that it hung straight to her shoulders" (p.53).

In the first passage, the mirror acts as a reflection of

Laura's state of mind in showing her the "newness" of her physical -202-

appearance as well as of her inner self. So strong is this response that

she is at first tempted to think it is the new hair style alone which has prompted her unfamiliar feelings about herself. She cannot "identify" the sensation clearly - a word which implies that it is equally difficult to comprehend her own, new identity. The last phrase, in all its alliterative and onomatopaeic thrust, denies bitterly the possibility of her accepting the superficial change of hair style as the reason for her

changed self.

The second passage contains a reference to mirror imagery by

implication only but it is a particularly interesting example because it

suggests that a change in a person's appearance, brought about, for

example, by the cutting of his hair, 72 can, in fact, make him what he must become. The full repercussions of this idea are traced throughout the novel in the exposition of Clare's search to establish an identity

of her own. We might note here, also, that the symbol of the window,

close, in many ways, to that of the mirror, is used in an important way

in this book. Clare uses the window as her lookout tower on the world, as a means of insight both into the many parts of her self and of others:

"All windows were part of the look-out tower. All of the girl looked

out of the windows alroc,st all the time, wherever she happened to be,

whatever she might be doing" (p.52).

The symbolic use of the window is shown in a similar way in

The Boys in the Island when Francis says as a young boy:

Grandma Cullen ••• knew what it was like, out through the window where the lights had come on. This was because she was allowed to be a part of the city. But he had never been out through that window. (p.24-25)

Sometimes the mirror may serve as a reminder that the adolescent -203-

has not yet grown-up, particularly when he sees himself in relation to older people. White expresses this well in Riders in the Chariot where he is describing the salon evenings in Germany attended by young girls and boys, together with:

a few real young men, often the sons of cavalry officers. These absolute phenomena, themselves cadets, always knew what to do, with the result that younger boys would listen humiliated to their own crude, breaking voices, and mirrors reminded them that the pimples were still lurking in their tufts of down. (pp.118-119)

At other times, the mirror may be viewed as a means of con­ firming an identity which an adolescent has been "trying out" and now wishes to accept; or it may be used as an alter-ego on which the adolescent can practice before he tries himself out on his family or friends in his new role, as Porter does in The Watcher. In The White

Thorntree, we find an example representative of each of these aspects, though the image occurs only in an isolated description of the characters concerned and is not integrated into a study of their development.

With reference to the latter usage, Davison writes of Jeff's and Norma's adolescence:

They each at the turn of puberty had discovered the fascination of a looking-glass - the inner ego peering interestedly at the image of the visible one - and had spent solitary half-hours before their mirrors, either making earnest love to the creature observed, grimacing experiment­ ally, or anxiously seeking self-endorsement as a prelude to seeking that of others. (p.54)

In the following extract about the thirteen year old Shirley, there is a dichotomy between Davison's interpretation of her feelings and her own for it seems unlikely that a girl of her age and intelligence -204-

would express herself so coherently or, in fact, be able to see herself so clearly.

After her first sexual experience with three youths, she returns to the same spot later on, hoping to meet them again but no one is there.

She stopped and took out her powder compact, ostensibly to powder her nose, but more especially to take reassuring stock of herself in the tiny mirror and, after the way of women, confirm the fact of her continued existence. (p.162)

She comes to the conclusion, in reviewing the experience, that she has no moral regrets, for she knows instinctively that she is one of "the

sexually driven" and must make her own rules. "Having completed a more

than satisfactory inspection of her face, she closed her compact and moved off again, her thoughts hopefully employed" (p.162).

Though both these passages are somewhat flat and undistinguished

in style, especially in contrast to the former extracts, they are worth

including, I feel, because they do add something to an understanding of

the adolescent's efforts at self-definition and of the variety of ways in

which a literary image can function for this purpose.

The implications of such an image as we have been discussing

are not always confined to the use of the mirror symbol, though we have

taken our examples primarily from that quarter. The essential element

of the mirror which has meaning for the adolescent is its quality of

reflection, its power to depict his physical image in a variety of ways

and to show him, at the same time, something of his inner self as well.

As Von Franz says, in Man and his Symbols, "the mirror symbolises the

much-needed faculty of true, inward-looking reflection" (p.217). -205-

There are, of course, many other surfaces which reflect but the mirror appears to be the one least liable to distortion - {unless it be a deliberate distortion by breathor "the divil") - and perhaps this is why, apart from its archetypal significance, it is used so frequently in relation to the theme of identity both in literature generally and in the literature of adolescence in particular.

One of the best examples of an image of a reflective surface other than a mirror, as part of the identity theme, is found in The

Young Desire It,in the scene where Charles is standing by the bank of the river with Margaret before he makes love to her:

The heads of the low, thick trees met above the water; his own face peered back at him, green-white, and he looked through the mirrored eyes to the soundless stir and shift of the sandy bottom, where all sorts of small disturbances were for ever taking place. In the middle the current was strong. (p.312)

In this brief passage, Mackenzie has sensitively created the essence of communion between Charles's two selves, the distinction and separation emphasised here by the green-whiteness of the face in the river. And it is through his mirrored eyes, not his own, that he sees into the depths of his inner self, equated with such empathic delicacy in the wonderfully alliterative phrase, "the soundless stir and shift of the sandy bottom". In this moment of uncertainty when, in one sense, he is about to lose his identity in that of the girl, he is never more aware of the "small disturbances forever taking place" within his own depths. But the strength of the river's current suggests that his own will is strong, too, and from this experience will come a sense of new identity towards which he has been groping. -206-

In the preceding examples, we have seen the value of a literary image as a means of elucidating a theme, in this case, the adolescent's search for self-realisation. As he moves on towards maturity and gains a clearer grasp of who he is, he enters the next stage of transition, this time from adolescence to adulthood. In examining this movement in the adolescent's progression, we find, as might be expected, that it is the image of the voyage which predominates. We will now join him on this journey which is often long and arduous but which is embarked upon, like most voyages, with the doubts and hopes, the excitement and exhilaration that are all part of his glorious bid for freedom. -207-

NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR

1. Josselyn stresses this point, adding that, for at least a short period, the adolescent's "emotional state borders on panic". The Adolescent and his World, p.24.

2. Nene Gare {London, 1961).

3. C. Johnson (Harmondsworth, 1966).

4. In Man and his Symbols, op. cit., p.157.

5. Quoted by Mary Durack in Foreword to Wild Cat Falling, p.17.

6. Quoted by Nichols, op. cit., pp.66-67.

7. D.H. Lawrence {Harmondsworth, 1968), p.283.

8. From "Life and Duty" by Ellen Sturgis Hooper. The second line of this somewhat odd little poem is also particularly relevant to the state of adolescence and ensuing maturity: "I woke and found that life was Duty"[:]

9. See, e.g. J. Lindsay, Life Rarely Tells, p.78.

10. Eve Langley (Sydney, 1958), p.361.

11. S. de Beauvoir expresses this well when she says: "When I went away the landscape fell to pieces, and no longer existed for anyone; it no longer existed at all." {p.125).

12. Girl With a Monkey {Sydney, 1958), pp.129-130.

13. Martin Boyd, Day of my Delight {Melbourne, 1965), p.22.

14. Father and Son (Harmondsworth, 1970), p.116.

15. In Short Stories of Australia: The Moderns, chosen by B. Davis (Sydney, 1967) , pp. 282-293 (p. 289).

16. S. de Beauvoir saw adult books as a means of transition. "Thanks to them", she writes, "I broke free from the bonds of childhood and entered a complicated, adventurous and unpredict­ able world." (p.110).

17. A more "normal" example might be seen in The Young Desire It where Charles uses reading as a means of temporarily losing his identity,with its particular problems, in the impersonality of study. {p. 248)

18. See end of chapter for discussion of the mirror imagery so often used about the adolescent's search for identity. -208-

19. There is a delightful scene later when he meets the editor who is expecting to find an old, retired sea captain.

20. H. Heseltine, "Two Ways of Writing a Novel", Meanjin XXIII, 2 (1964~ 220-222(222).

21. It is of interest to note that Lindsay actually reproduced parts of a youthful diary written by his brother Lionel.

22. A recent English novel, Coronet Among the Weeds (London, 1963) by Charlotte Bingham - also a late adolescent - supports this assumption. Miles Franklin's autobiography, My Brilliant Career (Sydney, 1966), written at 21 in 1901, is a more lively and promising piece of work.

23. c. Stead (Sydney, 1966).

24. R.G. Geering, Christina Stead (New York, 1969}, p.106.

25. The difference between her adolescent efforts and, say, Robert's in Redheap and Porter's in The Watcher, can be glimpsed in the following extract: Pearlshell, pearl and madrepore, Purple wampum, rich fish dyes, Of gold and silver a great store, In megaron, in mattamore; But Rosalind, thou art much more. (p.428}

26. It would be hard to find another adolescent in our study who was called such cruel names by her parents and who had to fight so hard to develop an acceptable physical self-image.

27. Quoted by c. Roderick in "Christina Stead", Southerly, VII, 2(1946) 87-92 (90}. I 28. One cannot fail to recall here Butler's words in The Way of All Flesh (New York, 1935} p.81:

Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa and mumma have not only left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows ••••

29. The Universal Experience of Adolescence, p.280.

30. The same phenomenon is noted in America by I. Melito in Themes of Adolescence: Studies in American fiction of adolescence (University of Denver, 1965), p.125. Unpub. Dissertation. One might note also that Craig McGregor in Profile of Australia (London, 1966), p.342, refers to the mother as playing an important role in Australian society, dominating the family circle. Anna Freud sees this as a "generally accepted view", in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, ed. R. Eissler. (New York, 1959) , p. 266. -209-

31. One is tempted to put forward the tentative suggestion that, owing to the highly autobiographical nature of many of these works, the adolescent who lacks a strong father figure - or any at all - is more likely to feel the need "to write out" his adolescence in literature. The final analysis must be left to the psychologists. Douvan {op.cit.) is one who sees a strong "urge to create" in the adolescent who is either fatherless or lacks a close relationship with his father. {p.265).

32. J. Waten {Melbourne, 1966).

33. Johnston writes: "I can hardly recall a night when I was not wakened in panic by the stormy violence of my parents' quarrels. " {p. 40).

34. Green, in discussing Lindsay's work, suggests that "tragedy lies outside his scope, for real tragedy involves a belief in elements in life which for Lindsay did not exist, and a despair at their loss which is correspondingly deep." A History of Australian Literature, Val.II, p.1060.

35. G. Mcinnes (London, 1967).

36. {New York, 1936), p. 39.

37. The Solid Mandala (London, 1966), p.77.

38. Kiel!, in The Universal Experience of Adolescence, stresses this last factor strongly, emphasising the similarity of excerpts about adolescence from a wide variety of sources over a period of two thousand years. He says: "Parents and their adolescent children are generally separated by light-years of differences, regardless of the century in which they find themselves." (p. 278).

39. R.G. Geering's phrase, in Christina Stead, op.cit., p.95.

40. Freud, of course, was one of the first to postulate that we have an unconscious wish to kill our fathers. Synge's play, The Playboy of the Western World (London, 1963),is one that explores this theme through the character of Christy, in many ways still an adolescent, though he might not be considered one in chron­ ological terms.

41. Quoted in S.T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (New York, 1951), p.109.

42. "The Course of Healthy Personality Development", p.234, in The Adolescent:A Book of Readings, ed. J.M. Seidman.

43. The Universal Experience of Adolescence, p.335.

44. See L. Stone, Jonah, p.51, for a vivid description of "the pushes" in the early part of this century.

45. Problems of the Privileged Adolescent (Macquarie University, 1971). Unpub. M.A. Thesis. -210-

46. Hurlock, op.cit., pp.267-70, comments on this feature of adolescence and quotes the following verse as an example of the different identities which an adolescent may assume in relation to different persons: Mother calls me William Auntie calls me Will, Sister calls me Willie, But Dad calls me Bill.

47. Of the last arrival he writes significantly: "It does not go with my conception of myself which is that I am brilliantly clever, and far too worldly and sophisticated to be the brother of something that cannot utter a word." (p.163).

48. (London, 1966) •

49. F .H. Mares, "Review of Recent Novels", Southerly, XXIV, 4 (1964), 244-247 (245).

50. Quoted in H. & B. Overstreet, The Mind Alive (London, 1956), p.36. The authors proceed to say what we have already indicated earlier in this chapter, as being true of both girls and boys:

Many adolescent girls who do not live alone, but who feel alone with their emergent womanhood, similarly resort to a process of writing out. Night after night, in the privacy of their rooms, they confide to a diary what they could not bring themselves to say to their parents or even their closest friends.

51. M. Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (Boston and Toronto, 1959), p.328. (Quoted by New, op.cit., p.321.)

52. "Australian Fiction since 1920" in The Literature of Australia, op.cit., p.213.

53. Porter's association with Alex Macalister is briefly described in this context in The Watcher, as we noted in Chapter Three.

54. (Melbourne, 1969).

55. P. Cowan (Sydney, 1966).

56. See e.g., D. Dunphy, Cliques, Crowds and Gangs: Group life of Sydney adolescents (Melbourne, 1970), for a contemporary study.

57. A common criticism of members of the armed services, of football teams, RSL clubs, masonic bodies and similar organisations is that many of them behave still like adolescents and have not fully accepted an adult role. The following comment is of interest in this connection: In societies where the transition to adulthood is unusually painful, young people often form their own "youth culture" with a special set of anti-adult values and institutions in which they can at least temporarily negate the feared life of the adult. But somehow children must be induced -211-

to accept their roles as adults if the society is to continue. Alienation: A Casebook, ed. D.J. Burrows. From: Psycho-Sources: A Psychology Resource Catalog, Eds. CRM Inc. {Toronto, New York, London, 1973), p.3.

58. "Elizabeth Harrower's Novels: A Survey", Southerly, XXX, 2 {1970), 131-147 {135).

59. A similar remark is made by Rice about his father: "My father could not understand. He had leapt from childhood into middle age". I Came out of the 18th Century, p.185.

60. R.G. Geering, "Seaforth Mackenzie's Fiction: Another view", Southerly, XXVI, 1 {1966), 25-39 {26).

61. One might think, e.g. of Christy in The Playboy of the Western World, where Synge uses "the games", with strong heroic overtones, as one means by which Christy develops a new self image.

62. R.S. Close, Collected Short Stories {Melbourne, 1948).

63. In Man and his Symbols, op.cit., p.112.

64. {London, 1968).

65. As described by G.B. Gunn, "Bernard Malamud and the high cost of living", in Adversity and Grace: Studies in Recent American Literature, ed. by Nathan A. Scott (Chicago, 1968).

66. The phrase is taken from C.H. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (1902), quoted by D.E. Edgar in "Competence, Autonomy and Conformity in Adolescent Socialization", Paper presented at the Sociology of Education Section, S.A.A.N.Z., Brisbane, May, 1971, p.4.

67. Riders in the Chariot, op.cit., p.21.

68. D.E. Edgar, op.cit., p.4. See also p.10 ff for further discussion on "the significant others" - primarily parents, peers and teachers - and their relationship to the self as "object".

69. P.W. Sullivan, Study of the Adolescent as Metaphor in Four 18th Century French Novels (Uni. of Oregon, 1970). Unpub. Ph.D. Thesis. This quotation is from a summary of Sullivan's thesis in Dissertation Abstracts International, Part IV, Vol.31, 1971, (5427-A).

70. One recalls, too, in The Playboy, Christy's repeated cry of amazement: " 'Is it me?' '' in response to the way he is seen by others - particularly Pegeen.

71. Von Franz makes the interesting observation that: In dreams a mirror can symbolise the -power of the unconscious to "mirror" the individual objectively - giving him a view of himself that he may never have had before. Only through the unconscious can such a view (which often shocks and upsets the conscious mind) be obtained. "The Process of Individuation", in Man and his Symbols, pp.158-229 (205). -212-

72. The importance of hair/both in a social and psychological context, is often noted in relation to the forming of an identity pattern. Francis says to Heather in The Boys in the Island when she changes her hair style and looks older, "I liked you how you were; because he is ambivalent about her new identity. (p.145). The fashion of long hair for boys, over the last few years, raises some potentially interesting images of identity.

73. A good example of its use in relation to an adult is seen in My Brother Jack when Davy, now a grown man, re-appraises himself in a "moment of truth" as he looks in the baroque mirror at the Palace of Caserta. (p.319)

74. There is also a very graphic image in For Love Alone of the unmarried girls in their twenties who seek to find their identity only in marriage: "There was a glass pane in the breast of each girl; there every other girl could see the rat gnawing at her, the fear of being on the shelf" (p.74). -212-

72. The importance of hair~both in a social and psychological context, is often noted in relation to the forming of an identity pattern. Francis says to Heather in The Boys in the Island when she changes her hair style and looks older, "I liked you how you were; because he is ambivalent about her new identity. (p.145). The fashion of long hair for boys, over the last few years, raises some potentially interesting images of identity.

73. A good example of its use in relation to an adult is seen in My Brother Jack when Davy, now a grown man, re-appraises himself in a "moment of truth" as he looks in the baroque mirror at the Palace of Caserta. (p.319)

74. There is also a very graphic image in For Love Alone of the unmarried girls in their twenties who seek to find their identity only in marriage: "There was a glass pane in the breast of each girl; there every other girl could see the rat gnawing at her, the fear of being on the shelf" (p.74). CHAPTER FIVE

Recurring themes and images (continued)

v. Towards adulthood p.214

VI. The image of the voyage p.216 -214-

CHAPTER FIVE

V. Toward Adulthood1

When, by what test, by what indication, does manhood commence? Physically, by one criterion, legally by another, morally by a third, intellectually by a fourth - and all indefinite. Equator, absolute equator, there is none. Between the two spheres of youth and age, perfect and imperfect manhood, as in all analogous cases, there is no strict line of bisection.

Thomas De Quincey, Autobiography from 1785-1803

Mallaloo = Boy on his first initiation journey Eedja B'rirrih = Proper Man

D. Stuart, Ilbarana

As we have seen, these clearly defined demarcations in

Aboriginal society are not apparent in the culture which we have been examining where there is no sharp delineation now, as in De Quincey's time. What we have noticed, as suggested at the beginning of this study, is that the onset of adolescence is usually easier to define than its conclusion for, while puberty occurs at much the same age in most adolescents, there may be a considerable variation as to the age at which adult roles are assumed, either in different societies or even within the same society. Such a variation, as Kiell says, in The

Universal Experience of Adolescence, tends to confuse the question:

"When does an adolescent become an adult?" (p. 848) •

In our preceding discussion, we have observed that it is usually in late adolescence that the protagonist moves towards a more realistic and acceptable self-definition; it is then that he begins to -215-

assume both the privileges and responsibilities of his new adult role - often that of the artist - and that he abandons his attachment to his parents to find a new love object with whom he can fully relate. Many writers would see the major goal of the adolescent, (as part of his task of achieving maturity~ as his emancipation from his family and it is with this experience in the adolescent's life that we shall now be dealing.

On a relative basis, we shall find ourselves agreeing again with Kiell when he says: "The number of adolescents who leave home is legion"

(p.281}. He refers here, also, to Deutsch's statement that a character­ istic of puberty is the attempt to break ties with the parents in actual flight, sometimes a flight from one's own incestuous wishes, sometimes as a means of expressing resentment with the intention of isolating oneself, sometimes as a way of leaving an intolerable environment.

Douvan amplifies, in an interesting way, this concept of departure as one of the universals of adolescent experience. She writes of adolescence:

It is the time when the child prepares to leave home. In folklore and in heroic fiction, we find the recurring pattern - the adolescent hero, having received some sign, an inner stirring or an outer call, gets ready to leave the family. The paths to departure vary. Some must struggle to leave, others must flee for their lives; some leave vindictively, full of hate, thrashing the father or mother, while others are themselves beaten or betrayed before they leave; some leave in high expectation, carrying the family's hope for fortune or redemption, and others leave at dead of night, in disgrace, bearing the family's curse. The hero's journey begins with an ending - the breaking of the connection to home. (p.119}

We shall see instanced in the literature under discussion most of these types of "paths to departure"; we shall see, also, that if, in one sense, the journey begins with an ending - often providing, in addition, the actual finale to the book - it is very much a beginning in -216- itself. This is one reason why it is so difficult to nominate an age or even a stage of growth as the conclusion of adolescence. In the words of Jarvis: "The journey to mature adulthood is slow, precarious and never ending" (p.27); or, as Ben says to Eugene in Look homeward, angel:

"' There is one voyage, the first, the last, the only one. '" 3

The very nature of this movement towards adulthood suggests that it be described in the metaphor of the journey, while the adolescent is the traveller who, as Hurlock describes him, "has left one place and has not yet reached the next" (p.8). The name of Lindsay's novel,

Halfway to Anywhere, expresses this state very aptly in relation to the younger adolescent who is not yet capable of undertaking the final journey but who is, nevertheless, anxious to sever the family ties.

Lindsay comments on Bill and Waldo at this stage: "You were stranded in a bog of Nowhere to Go, even though you were only two months off the mature age of sixteen, which is to be practically grown up" (p.179).

VI. The image of the voyage

One evening when the sun was down A woman came; her eyes were brown • But our child came not from the town.

From "The Child We Lost", John Shaw Neilson

Not all voyages into maturity are as brief or sudden as this.

In our study, we find the voyage metaphor utilised, sometimes throughout the whole book, as in the novel, For Love Alone, but more frequently at the end of the book when the protagonist sets out, like his hero arche­ type, on an actual journey.

The metaphor of the journey in Stead's novel is a complex one, beginning with the reference to The Odyssey in the Prologue, "Sea People", -217- where the style and the Greek allusion set the tone for Teresa's own voyage of discovery - to reach and map the continent of love. The emotional implications of Teresa's journey are expressed in the refer­ ences to Watteau' s painting, "The Embarkation for Cythera" and

Baudelaire's poem "Un Voyage a Cythere". There are her visits to her aunt at Harper's Ferry and her arduous and repetitive journeys on foot each day to the office from the Quay and back again which extend over several years as she saves the money to join her supposed lover,

Jonathan Crow, in London. Then comes her own trip overseas,where she eventually discovers the emptiness of her love for Jonathan,and her visit by train with her new lover, Harry, to Oxford where they spend the night together. Finally, she sees her marriage to James Quick, not as an end in itself but as a precursor to her future travels in love, experience and actuality when the foot of her wandering soul "would print itself on the world" (p.492).

This novel is not one that could be said, strictly, to have an adolescent protagonist as Teresa is nineteen at the beginning of the book which then goes on to cover her early twenties. It is one, however, that uses the journey metaphor as part of the theme of progression towards maturity, in a profound and exciting way that is particularly relevant to the novel of adolescence.

It seems relevant, also, to comment here that the trend for the older adolescent to leave home and travel abroad has become an increasingly strong one in more recent years. The figures in the United

States, for example, for young people travelling overseas doubled between

1963 and 1967. 4 In Australia, the figures for those in the fifteen to nineteen year old group have trebled over the period of ten years from

1962-1972.s -218-

Christina Stead, speaking in a radio interview in 1973,6 referred to the impulse to wander in the young adult, suggesting that it was particularly strong in sea-board cities such as one finds in

Australia. In our study, however, it is only in her own novel, For Love

Alone, that we find a protagonist actually leaving Australia and Teresa is, by that time, as we have already noted, not strictly adolescent as she is in her early twenties. 7 Perhaps we can expect to see this increasing trend towards a journey overseas reflected more truly in future novels as they reflect social conditions of greater affluence and spurs to travel. Until now, however, it seems as if the adolescent has been depicted as needing to find himself within his own country before he moves abroad.

What does become apparent in our survey is the trend of the adolescent to travel from the country to the city, a drift that has seemingly accelerated in Australia over the last ten to fifteen years. 8

This journey is illustrated as part of the metaphor of the voyage to maturity in some of the major novels in our survey.

The latter tendency might well have the same significance in this country which New attributes to its American counterpart. Speaking of George Willard in Winesburg, Ohio, New says:

When he moves from the small town to the city, he is taking part in a specifically contemporaneous experience, in the reaction against parochial existence and the concom­ itant attempt to achieve sophistication by finding a sense of community in city life. (p. 79)

We see this, for example in The Watcher and Redheap, two works in which the protagonist's role concords also with Willard's acceptance of the life of the artist as part of "knowing" life. -219-

One of the inherent implications of the journey metaphor, contained in oft-used expressions which depict the adolescent "poised at the crossroads of life" or "standing at the frontier of adulthood", is that relating to the direction which he will take. Again, it is to the Aboriginal we must look for explicitness of direction or, when that is lacking, for a very clear conviction that the purpose and goal of the journey will be clarified in due course. Ilbarana, in the book of that name, is told that he must not anticipate the stage of being "a proper man" and, though he finds it difficult at times "to see the pattern in its entirety, to find the meaning of all he was learning", he is confident that "it would grow clearer, the pattern, as he advanced further in the long stages of learning, and meanwhile he would do as the proper men commanded" (p. 37).

In our examination of the adolescent in Australian literature, we shall observe what is true also of much twentieth century English and

American literature, that the protagonist often lacks direction as he takes off on his flight but that he is so buoyed up by the joy of his release from the familial bond and by the anticipation of his impending freedom that he is not unduly worried by this fact. He is often imbued with the idea, like Nick in Hemingway' s short story, "The Battler", that he must "get to somewhere"; or, like George Willard in Winesburg, Ohio, he acknowledges the necessity for change without perceiving any personal aim: "'I'm going to get out of here. I don't know where I shall go or what I shall do but I'm going away"' (p.47). New, in commenting on these stories, says:

'Somewhere' is an adolescent aim, sufficient indeed for activating further search, but not a wholly adequate source of energy to light the way to maturity. The vagueness must ultimately be given specific form and the aim become clear, before it can be reached. (p.106) -220-

In most of the novels in our survey which end with an actual journey by the adolescent or in which the journey is used earlier in the book as an important landmark in his development, the protagonist is aware that his aims are still diffuse, his goals largely undirected but that he is, at least, "on the way". These feelings of intense joy and anticipation are expressed, nowhere better, perhaps, than in the follow­ ing passage from For Love Alone where Teresa, at the age of nineteen, takes her first journey in a book that contains, as we intimated earlier, a complex pattern of journeys, both literal and metaphysical.

She had never felt so well in her life. She could hear laughter, from the hills shouldering off their forests, from the rivers slipping away down, the cries of the bitter trees struggling against each other, rooted in one spot, killing the small things in their shade. Looking out over the numerous crests, rising now towards the range, she felt at once a horror of the rooted forest and its secular, aimless, but stern struggle, and a joy, a veritable jubilation in the road which had been cut through the wild, that goes down to water holes and skirts bluffs and rises to prospects, to the tops of the hills, where many ridges are only horny ripples in a withered beach long jilted by the sea. She did not know where she was going; she was outward bound. This first train journey was only the first stride on a grand perilous journey. All the other people in the train seemed to her now buried in strange debris, not really alive as she was, as her excitement increased. Alone, she found the way out, which alone does not lead to blindness, years of remorse and hungry obscurity. (p.137)

The imagery in this passage evokes, with a compelling intensity which emanates largely, I think, from its anthropomorphic quality, the clash between stasis and kinesis, imprisonment and freedom. We are made to understand Teresa's state of mind through an empathic comprehension of the contrast of the trees, "rooted in one spot", with the rivers,

"slipping away down"; of the "laughter from the hills" with "the cries -221-

of the bitter trees"; of "the horror" which Teresa experiences of this

rootedness, "secular and aimless", with her spiritual sense of "jubil­

ation" in the road, "cut through the wild", which leads to life and

refreshment (epitomized in the water holes) and to boundless vistas from

"the tops of the hills".

Another impelling element in this extract is its dream-like

quality, both frightening and cathartic, with its suggestion of the

unconscious world where natural objects assume human attributes and proportions and where the journey, as we have already pointed out, often

symbolises a spiritual pilgrimage and a fundamental change of attitude.

The fact that "she did not know where she was going" is

immaterial at this stage because Teresa knows she is "outward bound",

emerging into the light and leaving behind the atrophying shade of the

trees; she knows that this is only "the first stride"-and what a sense

of the lack of restriction, of containment and stultification issues

from this word! - "on a grand perilous journey". Stead emphasises, too,

one fundamentally important aspect of this step: that it is one which

the adolescent must ultimately take "alone", a word which, in this last

sentence, is rhythmically and assertively balanced against the exclusive­

ness of her choice as the only one which can lead to a life of spiritual

insight, of love and of affinnation, a state which springs out of the

description of its powerful and negative opposite.

Immediately preceding this quoted passage, the image of crossing

a river occurs, another frequent dream symbol for taking a new direction

in life and one often associated with the metaphor of the bridge. Stead,

in fact, uses the image of the train rattling over many bridges "where

the swollen water gushed a few feet below", a representation which links -222- up with the complex and perilous nature of Teresa's decision referred to later. For, as this bid for freedom proves, she will need to make many more journeys before success in love and self-fulfilment is achieved.

It is interesting to note that the same place name, "Harper's

Ferry", is used in The Man Who Loved Children, together with its conn­ otations of freedom and refuge and a certain strangeness that is reflected in the description of Louie going every summer "quickly and mysteriously to her mother's people" (p.177). It is, in fact, associated in her mind with the Celestial City towards which she travels, freed from Doubting Castle "by the golden key Promise - but what promise?" she asks herself:

The promise of reaching the grass uplands of youth and understanding the world. No one asked her any questions about her summer any year, and so this world was her own secret Mesopotamia and angel-guarded pleasure, the valley of roes and the land shadowing with wings, all strange countries, skies, spheres, and songs rolled into one small rock of the earth, known to others as Bolivar Heights, but to her as Louie's dreams which have put on flesh. For nine months of the year were trivial miseries, self-doubts, indecisions, and all those disgusts of pre-adolescence, when the body is dirty, the world a misfit, the moral sense qualmish, and the mind a sump of doubt: but three months of the year she lived in trust, confidence, and love. (p.189)

This kind of imagery is particularly apt, for Louie's journey is,indeed,a kind of Pilgrim's Progress where she is similarly beset by

Hills of Difficulty and Sloughs of Despond. Unlike Mistrust and

Timorous, however, she is not driven back but struggles on, as her

adolescence advances, with faith and perseverance towards the Delectable

Mountains. The nine, unhappy months of gestation lead ultimately to a joyous rebirth. -223-

It is not surprising, therefore, that when she tells her father she wishes to leave home, she asks him for money to go to

Harper's Ferry. As we have seen, he refuses: but later, when she sets out "for a walk round the world", she tells Clare that her goal is

Harper's Ferry, the symbolic goal of freedom and the beginnings of an artistic and personal maturity. We should note that Stead uses the allusion to the voyage to Cythera10 in this book also and, even more pointedly, the bridge image. Spa House, where the Pollit family resides, is close to Eastport bridge and this fact is frequently mentioned in the story, especially at times of importance to Louie as when Miss Aiden visits them and Louie rushes across the bridge to meet her (p.420).

It is at the end, of course, that this image assumes its maximum importance and relevance as an indication of a new direction.

Rising early in the morning, the young girl leaves home and crosses the bridge, now no longer the old Louie, fat and clumsy but, as an indic­ ation of her new found self, "light as a dolphin undulating through the waves, one of those beautiful, large, sleek marine mammals that plunged and wallowed with their clever eyes" (p.522). When the bridge is crossed, "she heaved a great breath"; with what a sense of relief, this new venture is undertaken! After her visit to Clare, she sets off alone, imagining what is taking place at home as they all wonder where she is;

"but as for going back towards Spa House, she never even thought of it".

And so, to the last lines of the book: "Spa House was on the other side of the bridge" (p. 523).

In this survey, these two novels by Stead are outstanding for the use she makes of the metaphor of the voyage and its accompanying image of the bridge as a means of conveying the journey of the adolescent through growth to maturity and the escape from constriction, through -224- liberating experiences,to freedom.

Jack Lindsay, in Life Rarely Tells, is another protagonist who sets off at the end of the book, "ready to face the journey into the unknown" (p.224), as he leaves Brisbane by train in his bid for personal and artistic freedom. He, in a somewhat similar way to Teresa, describes his feelings, "rising into a new dimension", as the train rattled over the Indooroopilly Bridge. Though a comparison of these two passages merely accentuates Stead's imaginative and stylistic power, there is a certain spareness in Lindsay's description and in the listing of his basic material goods which he is taking with him which is, never­ theless, effective in portraying the quality of his venture for which he is physically ill-equipped but about which he is spiritually optimistic.

Like many others, he, too, is aware of "the inner conflicts and contra­ dictions of this life which had yet to be worked out" (p.224). To cross the bridge, however, is at least the first step in a new direction.

Again, this image is used at the conclusion of Morning in

Queensland to convey Tansy's feeling of freedom, not only from her immediate family but from her inherited past. At seventeen, she goes to find her afternoon in what is, for the young girl, a new and exciting way. Her excitement mounts as the train travels across Queensland and a new world opens up for her. She remembers her grandfather saying of his large family - and she repeats his words aloud - "'They scattered to the

four corners of the State but they didn't cross the McIntyre.' She was escaping, she was free. From now on she would cross any border which she wanted to cross" (p. 252). 11

The necessity for freedom to be found in the city, as distinct

from the confinements and restrictions of a country town,is stressed in

books such as Redheap and The Watcher. As Robert says of Redheap: -225-

"What sort of a dog-box is it for a man to spend his life in?" (p.15).

His one aim is to get away to Melbourne where "life" will begin,and the book ends as he is ready to make this journey towards a goal where "all the desirable things in life lay before him - friendship, beer, tobacco, girls, literary ideals, his own latch-key; in short, a free citizenship of the life intellectual and mundane - " (p. 314) •

That Lindsay is aware that this journey is very much a beginn­ ing for Robert is seen,.not only in this listing of "desirable" ends.,but in his statement directly following Robert's question above. "His gesture at the sleepy little town expressed the vitality which has no reserve against monotony" (p. 15). Even though Mr Bandparts himself has earlier berated Redheap as a place full of petrified bumpkins where

"tl1e substance of life is merely to keep alive, not to live" (p.86), he, too, is aware that a journey in itself is not enough. He tries to suggest to Robert,out of "the calamity" of his wisdom, that the latter's sanguiness and optimism merely prompt him to offer himself "bound and helpless to the malice of the gods. They will be always leading you somewhere in order to convince you that there is nowhere to go to"

(p.309). As we have intimated before in discussing Robert as a character, it is obvious that he has a long way to go before he realises that there are other martyrdoms besides those of "Home" and that to catch a train to

Melbourne (or even to Sydney} is no guarantee of maturity.

Porter also makes his bid for freedom by catching the train to

Melbourne but he has begun his travels before then. His holidays in

Sale at his grandfather's home lead to a means of extending himself, of seeing the past as well as the present, to a beginning of thought about himself. At sixteen.,all he wants to do, like Robert, "is to escape the nest, and get to the city". With the hindsight of the grown man, Porter -226-

comments: "he tricks himself into believing that what he wants are more dazzling roads winding across a more mysterious landscape" (p.190).

His aim achieved/and accoutred with the suitable physical needs for the flight from home and for life in the city, he departs. (How well equipped this adolescent is, with underwear and socks and initialled handkerchiefs! These are the kinds of things he and his confreres remember taking with them on the start of their momentous journey.) But a gesture of independence needs to be made, perhaps more so in Porter's case because the train which bears him away from Bairnsdale to Melbourne is also bearing him towards his earliest childhood; and so, he says, it is with a

sort of almost wanton happiness that,as the train roars on complaining contentedly to itself, I make the strange and secretly showy gesture of chucking away into the undergrowth of the Haunted Hills my grey felt hat, so recently the insignia of adulthood. (p.198)

It is an exuberant and profligate display of independence in anticipation of the years ahead which, again recalling Robert's vision, are years "decorated with unimaginable delights and the almost unbearable raptures of freedom" (p.198). Porter is, surely, a step ahead of Robert at this stage but he has yet to learn that more than initialled handker- chiefs are required for the tears of experience, that throwing away one's hat is easier than abandoning one's heart. At this phase of the journey, he has not yet attained the insight which even his mother's death will not provoke but with which the man looks back upon the youth: "I do not know that, not only have I not started to die, I have not started to live" (p. 255).

The imagery of travel is used intermittently throughout The

Watch Tower in relation to Clare who sees the period of adolescence like -227

"waiting at a bus stop, a grimy bus stop with grit and traffic tearing

past" (p.68). She continues to express the sense of urgency which besets her:

She was desperate to be gone and had been waiting, it seemed, since her life began. She was staring through the grey light and grit and monochrome press of traffic and crowds, waiting for (she supposed) a bus, with longing and anxiety. (p.68)

Like many others, she is not sure what to expect but whatever

it is she knows, as time passes, that it is long overdue. "To her

heart's blood" Harrower says later, "she craved its arrival" (p.69).

Again, we note the intensity and anguish of these kinds of adolescent

feelings, portrayed repeatedly in words like "desperate", "longing",

"anxiety", and the craving,even "to her heart's blood". As we have

already seen, Clare has good cause to desire to be upon her way but the

seeming hopelessness of her situation and the obstacles in the path of

escape almost overwhelm her. "Who could break out?" she asks herself.

"Who could do more than marvel dully at survival?" And then: "What

promise had the world held out ever that there was anything to escape

to?" {p. 85) •

The uselessness of making plans or trying to take any action

at all is only reinforced in Clare's mind when Laura, as we noted earlier,

thwarts her sister's attempts to leave and virtually blackmails her into

staying on. It is only towards the end of her adolescence,when she has

found a purpose in life through being needed in her relationship with

the young man, Bernard, who has come, sick and depressed into her life

and in whom she has encouraged the will to live, that Clare gains the

confidence and the sense of direction that enable her to leave home.

She goes off, alone, by train, in this case from the city to the country: -228-

Alone in the compartment, Clare jerked the window up and leaned out into the day. The light was wonderful. Waves of air beat against her face, and it smelled of grass, or clover, or honey. Whatever it ..!:s, I remember it, she thought, breathing in. Her eyes paused here on a line of willows as they glided past, and the willows were familiar,too. She remembered it all. Yet it was funny that she should think so; for it did occur to her that she had only just arrived. (p.219}

There is an interesting contrast at the end of this novel in the significance of the respective voyages which Clare and Laura and her husband are undertaking. As R.G. Geering expresses it:

Laura and Felix are refusing to face the truth by running away to South America - a pointless journey because they cannot escape from their unchanging selves. Clare is abandoning the old life in order to make a new one in her own country. 12

This novel employs, as do most of those in our Australian study, what Douvan calls "the disengagement motif". "In disengaging", she continues, "the child escapes the fetid psycho-sexual climate of the family; at the same time he responds to a hidden psychosocial necessity, by moving forward to autonomy" (p.123}. Of all the works in our survey, the prize for the most "fetid psycho-sexual climate" ~ from which the adolescent needs both literally and psychological!¥ to escape, must go, I think, to The Man Who Loved Children with The watch

Tower a close second.

Both Douvan and Hurlock, amongst others, stress the increased mobility of adolescents in recent years as an important aspect of this move towards autonomy and postulate the owning of or access to a car

as the most common symbol of maturity,, as well as providing the means of -229-

emancipation which the adolescent needs. In our study, as we mentioned in Chapter One, the train remains the most common vehicle in which the traveller begins his autonomous journey. This could be due to the fact that, apart from the more modern American setting when contrasted with the Australian country towns from which many of the protagonists travel to the city, the major part of the novels in this survey look back to an adolescence of twenty or more years ago, to periods when the owning of a car was not such a common occurrence as it js for the affluent adol­ escent of to-day. In any case, the train symbol is often used in a very specific way, I think, to express the finality of the break which the adolescent makes with his past, the tenseness and excitement that come with the catching of the train, the comparative inability to stop or go back (especially when paralleled with the car) and the fact that the adolescent is suspended temporarily in a passive role. Having made his initial move, he is now being moved as the countryside flows past him and away. Only when the train reaches its destination and slows to a halt will he become, once more, the prime mover in his destiny.

In one of the few novels in this study that do have a contem­ porary setting, Looking for a Wave, the protagonist's journey towards maturity is made in a car from which he hitches a ride - a pointer, perhaps, to the direction which future literary symbols will take.

In Mark's case, the journey does not result in a complete disengagement from his family, despite the fact that he is already aged twenty and has commenced, at least, his sexual emancipation, for he does return home at the end. This decision is related mainly, perhaps, to conditions within his home where his family does not provide the "fetid psychosexual climate" referred to earlier, a climate which is apparent, in varying degrees, in a number of the other novels we have been discuss­ ing. -230-

In many of the examples where the train image is used as part of the metaphor to express the adolescent's escape from home and child­ hood,together with his journey into maturity and a new world, we find his "new world" expressed in an accompanying image of the landscape, as instanced to such effect in For Love Alone. This landscape is often typically Australian and reflects the mood of the protagonist at this crucial time of his development. Sometimes, though not often in the novel of adolescence, it is used, as Kiernan suggests, "to explore the individual's Romantic search for a life in harmony with Nature, the search for that fulfilment which is impossible within society". 13

This might be true both of Teresa and Louie in their visits to Harper's

Ferry which becomes for them a kind of haven between their two worlds of existence, though one not without its own hazards.

A more usual pattern, however, of the relationship between the landscape and the adolescent "en voyage", is seen, for example, in

White's pared down but incisive description of Thelma,in The Tree of Man 1 as she leaves her home in the country to go to the city. Her parents have come to the train to see her off, both aware in a subtle sense of the aridity of their relationship with their daughter. As the train gathers speed, "The girl watched the last of the handkerchief, feeling a pang for her departing childhood, that was made more poignant by the

flatness of the country streaming by" (p. 250).

The de-personalisation of Amy, the mother, who has been reduced to the handkerchief she holds, is contrasted with the personif­ ication of the countryside and its identification with Thelma's child­

hood so that we see her, not as moving forward with the train,but as

static, while the flatness of her past existence streams by. we sense

here, also, what the book later confirms, that Thelma's ensuing "voyage" -231-

towards maturity will retain this same flatness and static quality. All

the departures in this novel are brief but imbued with the same strong

sense of the Australian countryside (especially the bush) which pervades

a large part of the book and which re-acts with sensitivity to the mood

of the characters in a variety of circumstances. The use of nature to

"explain" feelings is seen in the following extract when Stan, as an

adolescent after his father's death, is confronted with the terrible possessiveness of his mother and with the need to escape - an ambival­

ence of this time of life that is well portrayed:

Then, more than at any time, the nostalgia of permanence and the fiend of motion fought inside the boy, right there at the moment when his life was ending and beginning. 'At least you will be a comfort to your mother, Stan', said Mrs Parker, her nose grown thin and pink, not so much from grief as from remembering many of those incidents which had pained her in a world that is not nice. The boy looked at her in horror, not understanding altogether what she implied but knowing for certain he could not be what she expected. Already the walls of their wooden house were being folded back. The pepper tree invaded his pillow, and the dust of the road was at his feet. One morning early, while the dew was still cold outside his boots, he got up and left, in search, if he had known it, of permanence. (p.14)

Stan is one of the few adolescents who leave home on foot and

he is followed, in this way, by his son, Ray, who makes "his getaway

from the place that had been his home" in a lull that has come in the

rain, "or it blew more than it ran, and above all the sounds were less

disturbing" (p.248). It is only later that his parents discover he has

gone, for good, and is working on a steamer on the coast. "For he had

gone" (Amy realises), "slipping from her as easily and naturally as the

seed from the pod, to become lost in the long grass" (p.249). -232-

From the imagery in these brief excerpts, emanates some of the central feelings associated with the adolescent's journey towards adulthood: the naturalness of the process, in its most basic sense, whereby the grown child leaves the protection of home, in the fulness of his time, for the confusions and mysteries the world may hold1 just as the full blown seed falls from the pod into the long grass; and the sense of loss which both mother and child experience.

A rather more obvious use of natural imagery~in association with the voyage metaphor,,is seen in Dean's short story, "The Town that

Died", where the protagonist, in coming to a full realisation of himself, leaves town on a bus, as "the fogs were lifting along the hard smooth road". 14 What is more interesting is his identification at the end with the country and his past, as part of the urge to move on, the same inherent naturalness that White expresses. "Or perhaps", Dean concludes,

"it was my own intuitive bond with this growing land that now guided me.

Whatever it was I knew it was time to leave, time to make my life"

(p. 62) •

Earlier in this story, the author has described the protagon­ ist's dreams in which the boy anticipates, in fear and trembling, the journey which he makes suddenly - and inevitably - at the end. Through his unconscious mind, his travels are seen as:

Memories of spiders' webs on my face. My swollen feet in quick sands, and hard winds beating at the trees. Sometimes I was on a desolate plain where I would run for ever and never more. Sometimes I hung by white fingers to cold black glass walls of mountains, and when I fell I screamed but nobody heard, there was nobody there. (p.50)

The nightmare qualities of this description, together with the strong sexual undercurrents, graphically reveal the fears which the -233- adolescent may suffer in relation to his future journey. We see, again, that those of isolation and desertion are strong, and the boy awakes, relieved to find security in the strip of yellow light from the hall, showing at the bottom of his door. Only at the conclusion of the story, in a moment of crisis and awareness, can he dispense with that security and embark upon his real and autonomous journey into maturity.

The identification of the adolescent with the world of nature around him is brought out vividly in The Mango Tree where the young boy,

Jamie, is infected, at the sight of the migrating birds, with the same urge to travel onwards. He has seen the parrots move south every year from the country town in which he lives in Queensland but, as he grows older, "he wanted to follow them, to probe and explore, to know more about life and girls and the things that were only hinted at in books"

(p.157). He watches the white butterflies on their journey south, the dog packs which came roaming hungrily from the north to continue onwards; even a lone crocodile which has been impelled by some mysterious drive to travel far from its usual haunts. "Why South, he asked himself? Why his own urge? was he too attracted by the force that tugged at insects and animals?" (p.162). McKie brings out here a hint at the primeval urge that drives, with "some unendurable pressure",

(a phrase he uses later), insect,animal and mankind alike. For the adolescent, especially, this pull is like a magnet drawing him, with an inexorable attraction, to further fields which do, indeed, always seem sweeter. So, true to form, Jamie leaves at the end of the book, after his grandmother's death,on his voyage into maturity, following - by train - in the path of those who, instinctively, unerringly, have made the pilgrimage by water, land and air.

There are, of course, many kinds of journeys and the ones we have dealt with so far have been mainly a part of this natural progression - -234- though often brought to a head by a crisis situation - exemplified in the adolescent's wish to escape the ties of his family and venture forth. As we have seen, this may be done either with no direction at all, other than the urge to go or, in the case of some of the protagon­ ists, in search of fulfilment in the role of artist.

In All the Green Year, we have the spectacle presented of two young adolescents who, in the face of an apparently overwhelming predicament, make different decisions. Johnno has thrown ink at the

Headmaster for ridiculing his composition. Limited though he is, the boy sees this creative effort as an expression of himself so that the teacher's public derision has hit at the very core of his being. His friend, Charlie, joins him and the episode ends in the crushing of the

Master's glasses. Charlie is secure enough to feel he can go home to face the consequences after his attempt with Johnno to run away has ended in disaster - their boat smashed, their dog drowned and Johnno lost to sight as he disappears into the bush. Johnno, whose school and home life have been always unhappy, never returns and this resolve is portrayed, in psychological terms, as a classic act of punishment towards his father, a way of "making him sorry". Though it is a slight story, with little attempt to develop the characters, Johnno remains a very real adolescent in one of the few situations which explicitly states this theme of punishment. (There would, of course, be others with an implicit element of "punishing parents" in the decisions of many adolescents to leave home.) 15 There is a poignant tone, reflecting his foray into the frightening world of adult emotions, in Charlie's observ­ ation when he returns, changed and sobered from his brief but catas­ trophic journey: "The school looked shrunken and wasn't important any more; even Lone Pine (Fis favourite meeting place with Johnn2} wasn't

the same" (p.183) • -235-

Sometimes, the refusal to escape can be as much a sign of maturity as the decision to leave, especially if the journey be a regressive one. We see this in Wild cat Falling where the protagonist, faced with "the worst thing he has done in his life", decides to "take" his gaol sentence as a beginning to life, ironical and tragic though the situation seems. For he realises that the hope he tried to stamp out was always there underneath. "It wouldn't die. And now when there's nothing to look forward to but the long drawn-out misery of trial and punishment, I want to live more than I ever knew before. I even feel I might know just a little how to live" (p.126).

For the two aboriginal girls, Trilby and Noonah, in The Fringe

Dwellers, the journeys into which they are forced by circumstance at the end of the book are regressive, in terms of the physical life to which they lead, though not in terms of their own understanding of life. Each girl holds on to hope and a desire to escape but the terrible apathy of their people and their inability to accept the movement of the girls towards liberation make for an uncertain future. In this "fringe­ dweller" culture, there is neither the joyous affirmation of the journey into adulthood that some white adolescents may make nor the proud acceptance of the journey of initiation that belonged to their ancestors.

Another variation of the journey theme and its metaphorical counterpart is seen when the adolescent returns home, after separation, as in the case of Emily in The Long Prospect, who returns to Sydney to rejoin her parents, now reunited, and to face "the long prospect" ahead.

She is, at this time, only thirteen but Emily is, as we have discovered, a precocious adolescent in terms of suffering and experience. Harrower uses the voyage image, in this instance, to convey Emily's move from

childhood to adolescence, balancing it against her earlier movement, at -236- the beginning of the book, when she writes: "She had never felt so invincible as at this moment of extraordinary change, at this incredible going fozward" (p. 53).

When she is preparing to leave her grandmother's house,

Emily wants to take with her the memory of this childhood whose physical mementos, like toys and books, she sees as "the only reliable proof she had of having existed in the past for no one but she recalled her presence then" (p.196). She is prevented by her grandmother from taking these possessions with her but she relinquishes them "without protest", in the realisation that no one can prevent her from carrying her past with her, inside herself. Emily then sets out on her literal journey by train to Sydney and, in the following words, is set out clearly the emotional tenor of her future: "The station had gone, and all external light. The train rattled and, it was to be supposed, went forward through the blackness that enclosed" (p.199) •

I feel strongly that the book should have ended at this point.

The last few pages which follow tell us nothing that is not already inherent in the bleakness of the description above, though the reference to the mirror, which we discussed in Chapter Three, is an interesting one.

This will be a journey not of affirmation and life but of sterility and blackness; of retrogression not of progression, however it may appear to others. The prospect is, indeed, long and bleak and the end of the journey which follows, from adolescence into adulthood, without joy or certainty.

A similar feeling of hopelessness is contained in Francis's voyage home at the end of The Boys in the Island, in his case because his original journey from Tasmania to Melbourne was undertaken with such high hopes and ended, as we have already observed, in disaster and death. -237-

From a child, he had seen the mainland as the answer to all problems, a kind of dream world; what he calls the "gleaming byways of an illimit­ able adult world which stopped his breath" (p.48).

His flight across the sea - he is, incidentally, the only adolescent in our survey who travels by plane - is to escape the confine­ ments of childhood. It is, however, a flight, as New comments, that "is an escapism of immature avoidance rather than a route to mature freedom"

(p.239). Melbourne is not so different from home. He hates his job and wants to escape from that, too. He works in a warehouse by an open door

"through which the boy longed to run all day, to escape. He was possessed, as he had been on the train, with a fear of endlessness. He would never escape" (p.179). After Shane's suicide, he returns home but not as an adolescent hopefully reaching out towards maturity. In fact, his profound despair and pessimism about the future are hardly less retro­ gressive than his friend's feelings which led to his last trip - to death itself. One of the weaknesses of the ending of this book lies in the fact, to which we referred earlier, that Francis's home and the parents to whom he returns are an almost complete "blank". The book has con­ centrated on the boy's inner life and experience but the journey home and the possibilities of the future lose a great deal of their meaning and significance because they are not related, in any way, to his real and immediate world. Francis's initial journey illustrates well the comment which New makes about George Willard: "To leave not knowing truth is to leave only in order to live a partial life and to be most enchained in unfruitful isolation even when the most freedom is thought to have been achieved" (p.92).

On the other hand, Steve's return home to Gippsland,at the end of The Pea Pickers,is one of affirmation and of close identification, -238-

too, with the countryside. Despite her unhappiness, she can conclude by saying: "the promise of the years to come was clear in my heart"

(p.378).

We have observed the use of the voyage metaphor in a variety of ways by which the author is trying to convey the essence of this stage of adolescence reaching towards adulthood. We have seen that it is sometimes used, as well, in the opposite sense, as a means of escape from maturity. Sometimes, the journey is a withdrawal which can be made without the adolescent removing himself physically, as in day dreams or excessive reading or in a kind of "act of will",like that of Rosie

Rosetree in Riders in the Chariot,when White writes of her: "And with­ drew into that part of her where, she had recently discovered, her parents were unable to follow1116 (p.496).

More usually, however, the imagery associated with the voyage denotes a real and a progressive journey in which the Australian adol­ escent, having broken the bonds with his home and parents - often in an act of rebellious affirmation - moves forward (archetypally, by train) towards his new world. This world is frequently the city,while the direction which he wants to take, though in detail vague and unformed, tends to be towards an artistic goal. In crossing rivers and bridges, themselves symbols of a new life and a new direction, he may look back at his childhood - as well as forward - perhaps for the first time.

This act of taking "the backward view of life", as Anderson says of

George Willard, is often the moment "when he crosses the line into manhood" (p.234).

Douvan, in suggesting that "the metaphor commonly chosen for discussion of adolescent development has the bridge as its central image", goes on to state, what is apparent in our survey: that there -239-

is no clear cut division between the worlds of childhood and maturity.

She continues:

There is a great deal of wavering, back­ tracking and even simultaneous movement in both directions (as though the youngster were trying to encompass the whole trans­ itional span by widening his step, avoiding complete commitment to either side). (p.22)

Although this kind of movement is more connnon in the early stages of adolescence, it is also true that, even when the commitment to adulthood is made, it is not a final step for, as we have seen, full maturity is rarely reached. In addition, the adult does well not to burn all his bridges behind him, so that he may retain some of the vitality, the experimentation, the courage, the sense of optimism and adventure which are needed for the adolescent's journey, while discard­ ing the retrogressive and stultifying characteristics of "the permanent adolescent" who adopts a surface maturity only. Martin Boyd, in his novel~When Blackbirds Sing, 17 makes an interesting comment, in this connection/about his protagonist Dominic who, though in his twenties,

"was still adolescent in the sense that he retained the vivid perceptions of childhood .•.• ". He continues:

He was not one of the permanent or petrified adolescents, who have come absolutely to terms with the surface of life; and who call them­ selves, with perhaps a regret for that lost glimpse of a greater reality, "old boys" until life itself is ended. He continued experimenting, emotional, searching for some kind of truth which he felt that everyone else possessed and which was the secret of happiness. So he remained adolescent, which at least gave him the chance of reaching a complete, and not merely an external, maturity. (p. 22)

The "old boys" in society, the ones who have never left home either psychologically or even physically, are the ones who have no -240-

desire to change, to venture forth into the unknown; whose life must atrophy because they maintain, to use a phrase of New's, "not the spontaneity of childhood but only the infantilism" (p.147). Who better than Samuel Pollit18 to illustrate this last maxim!

In the hands of the truly creative writer, the essence of the voyage metaphor is seen to lie in the understanding it gives to the reader about the whole spectrum of adolescence, not only its concluding stages. Its main point, perhaps, is centred in the realisation it brings that the voyage "without" has little permanent significance or fundamental impact unless it is accompanied by the voyage "within"; by the desire to come to terms with reality and a new environment, by the continuing search for the self and for each individual's ultimate "truth" in life.

We have been primarily examining this image in terms of what the journey means to the adolescent. It might be of interest to conclude this section with a note on the point of view of the parents:

Our adolescents are frontiersmen. They stand on the borders of strange territories. We have no reliable maps to give them, for so many aspects of the future are now entirely unpredictable • •• We cannot tell them where they are going. But we are giving them the resources they will use on the journey. Their present relation­ ships with us will largely determine the personal weaknesses and strengths which will encumber and support them when they have moved away from us into their brave new world. The adolescent years soon pass, to be remembered as a few fleeting moments in the brief human pilgrimage. But the accumulated experiences of these critical moments become major factors in deciding how each traveller will fare during the rest of the journey. 19

In the preceding chapters, we have used examples from particular -241-

books to trace the progress of the adolescent through all stages of his development and through the important relationships he forms during this period. From time to time, we have examined in detail the quoted passages and have discussed the contribution of various authors to an understanding of the adolescent through creative literature. In the following chapter, we shall make a critical survey of all the works included in this study, with particular reference to their structure, their style, and their establishment of the "point of view", a device that is of especial relevance to the literature of adolescence. -242-

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE

1. Title borrowed from last chapter of N. Kiell, The Universal Experience of Adolescence.

2. Helene Deutsch, The Psychology of Women (New York, 1944), p.37.

3. T. Wolfe, Look homeward, angel; a story of the buried life. In Selections from the work of Thomas Wolfe (Great Britain, 1952), p.624, ed. M. Geismar.

4. As quoted by H. Sebald, op.cit., p.116.

5. This statement is based on figures supplied by the Bureau of Census and Statistics in April, 1974, and includes the necessary adjustment made for the population increase over the same period.

6. Australian Broadcasting Commission, August 13, 1973.

7. It is of interest to note that the movement overseas has trebled also in the age-group 20-24, over the ten years, 1962-1972.

8. There are no figures available for the whole of Australia to support this contention but studies of individual areas and the publicity given to the decline in rural industry generally would seem to lend it some substance.

9. For further elaboration, see Henderson in Man and his Symbols, op.cit., p.152.

10. In ForLoveAlone it is used with reference to Watteau's painting and Baudelaire's poem.

11. This kind of image is used to good effect also by Moravia in Agostino at the time when the boy is dually beset by the need to break free from his mother and from the frightening experiences of his new and untried world. "There arose in him", he writes, "a vague and desperate desire to ford the river and walk down the coast, leaving far behind the boys, Saro, his mother and the old life" (p.53). This represents a journey, not into adulthood, but, as the rest of the quotation shows, out of the realities of life where, as he thinks, there would be a chance to block out the past and start afresh.

12. R.G. Geering, "Elizabeth Harrower's Novels: A Survey", Southerly, XXX, 2(1970), 131-147 (145).

13. B. Kiernan, Images of Society and Nature (Sydney, 1971), p.176.

14. G.F. Dean, "The Town that Died", in Coast to Coast 1969-70, selected by Thea Astley, p.61.

15. See also pp.170-171 of this thesis. -243-

16. There is also a dramatic illustration of this kind of escape in the scene between the 17 year old Eugene and his mother, Eliza, in Look homeward, angel, when Eugene declares that he shall find the way out of the jungle of life, alone: "'Alone?' said Eliza, with the old suspicion. 'Where are you going'? 'Ah', he said, 'you were not looking, were you? I've gone. ' " In Selections from the work of Thomas Wolfe, op.cit., p.172.

17. Martin Boyd, When Blackbirds Sing (London, 1962).

18. In The Man Who Loved Children.

19. w. Jarvis, The Adolescent Years, p.96. CHAPTER SIX

Australian literature of adolescence, 1924-1974:

A critical assessment.

I. The novel and autobiography

a) Some statistical observations p.245

b) A critical survey p.250

c) Point of view p.268

II. The short story p.284

Statistical Table Follows p.298 -245-

CHAPTER SIX

Australian literature of adolescence, 1924-74: A critical assessment

To reconstruct one's adolescence is a precarious process, for it is marked by the triple pitfalls of forgetting, distortion and selective remembering ••• What we fail to recover, as a rule, is the atmosphere in which the adolescent lives.

Kiell, The Universal Experience of Adolescence

I. The novel and autobiography a) Some statistical observations

Before examining the works in this survey to estimate the contribution which they have made over the past fifty years to the presentation and the understanding of the adolescent, and before analys­ ing the specific stylistic devices which they tend to use, it is of interest, I think, to look at some of the general trends which a statistical study reveals.

A commonly held precept about the novel of adolescence is that it is usually a first novel. Witham states in his generalisations about

American novels of adolescence, 1920-1960, that "the majority which emphasise the adolescence of the protagonist are first novels" (p.17).

Tindall takes this view even further when he says, about the British novel, that "from 1903 onwards, almost every first novel by a serious novelist was a novel of adolescence". 1

These conclusions are at variance with the Australian pattern where slightly less than a quarter of the works under review are first -246- novels. In looking at a break down in ages within this "first novel"

group, we find that one book was written when the author was nineteen, three books when the author was in his twenties, two in his thirties,

three in his forties and one each in his fifties, sixties and eighties, with one author of age unknown. This, in many ways, rather surprising

result is related to the general age range of all the authors in the

survey which is spread out over a broad spectrum, with the heaviest

concentration in the fifty year old group. 2 Such a result is a far cry

from the presupposition that the book about adolescence is the product

of a writer's youth.

One can only guess, I think, at the reason for this occurrence which appears to be so significantly Australian. I should like to put

forward the speculation,which is linked with my thesis in Chapter Two,

that an author growing up in an adolescent country may not have the same

sense of security which is evident in countries with a surer sense of

their history and their origins. As was suggested earlier, the Australian

writer appears to have felt a need to write about his external surround­

ings,3 to get to know his country in a physical sense and to find his

place in it before he could turn to probing the inner workings of the

mind - especially his own. We have noted the change that is now evident

in Australia's development, from both a social and literary point of

view, together with the increasing emergence of the adolescent as an

involved, outspoken, recognised and recognisable element in our commun­

ities and it will be interesting, therefore, to see whether the novel

of adolescence will become in future a first work for Australian writers

as it has for English and American authors.

When we look at the breakdown of figures for male and female

authors, we find that two thirds of the works have been written by men, -247-

a percentage which would seem roughly comparable to the total output of books over this period, especially when we consider that most of the significant Australian writers from both sexes are represented in this survey.

A more unusual factor is that the sex of the adolescent protag­ onist in each work corresponds, with very few exceptions, 4 to that of the author, though there may be present minor adolescent characters of an opposite sex. It would, I think, be true to say that, apart from these exceptions, the insights which we gain into the adolescent world in all these books are largely through the man's perception of the male adolescent and the woman's perception of the female. Such a view runs counter to the position in many other kinds of novels, sometimes in those written by the same authors, or even to the portrayal of adult characters within the same book as that in which the adolescent protagonist occurs.

The reason for this close relationship between the sex of the author and the protagonist lies, I feel sure, in the highly autobiographical nature of the novels in this survey. 5 About a quarter of these works might be seen as overtly autobiographical. As we indicated, however, in Chapter

One,while discussing the inclusion of such works in this research, all novels contain something of the author's life and feelings and, in the novel of adolescence especially, does the writer draw on his past experiences and emotions, even if he creates his story within a fictional framework. We have seen that adolescence is often a time of creativity, in particular for the budding artist, and it may be for this reason,also, that the mature writer wants to look back to his creative origins, the time from which, as Douvan suggests, people date their present self (p.3).

For many authors, too, as we have had occasion to observe previously, the writing out of their adolescence seems a form of catharsis, a further means of resolution for unsolved conflicts, an opportunity for insights -248-

into problems that have frequently remained on a subconscious level and which, only by distancing and a certain amount of objectivity, they are now able to face. Again, we might agree with Douvan when she says:

we force our adolescences into the auto­ biographical fictions we construct for ourselves, and in doing so, give meaning and coherence to the self's career in time. Hence we can recall even the shameful and distressing moments of adolescence, just as long as they can be placed in the narrative of identity. (p.4)

Heseltine, in a revealing comment on Australian literature in general, suggests that it is the concern of the Australian literary imagination

"to acknowledge the terror at the basis of being, to explore its uses and to build defences against its dangers". 6 I think this concept might well be extended specifically to the writer of the novel or autobiography of adolescence.

It is worth noting another factor which may be related to the autobiographical nature of these works: the areas in which they have their settings.

Frequently, the name of the town or city is actually mentioned, or barely disguised✓ and forms, therefore, a distinct and characteristic part of the book. The protagonist's reaction to his environment is often as important as his reaction to individuals within it and, as we have instanced, his flight from a particular place becomes a crucial act in his development towards maturity. In view of the fact that this flight is, on many occasions, from the country to the city and, bearing in mind the relatively high country population in Australia in the first half of the century, it is not surprising to find that almost half the novels in the survey have a country setting, with Victoria holding pride -249-

of place for the most oft occurring country location, only barely behind

Sydney which provides the most popular setting of all. Only one novel

is located outside of Australia, Stead's The Man Who Loved Children (set

in America), though there are several novels where part of the action

takes place in England, such as Stead's other novel, For wve Alone, and

Boyd's book,A difficult Young Man. To all identifiable purposes, South

Australia is the only State not represented within Australia itself. It will be of interest to see if this marked tendency towards a country

setting will continue in the future.

One final observation concerns the aboriginal content of the works in this survey. There are four novels7 about aborigines, signif­

icantly only one of whom is full blooded - Ilbarana - and there are two

half-caste aboriginal authors. 8 Each work has made a noteworthy con­

tribution to our study and, in the light of the increasing participation by and the assimilation of aborigines in Australian society, one would

hope to see, in time, more novels from this source. Such writers should

provide a particularly interesting contribution to the work of adolescence

for, unlike their contemporary white Australians, they belong to a race

whose identity within Australia was established many thousands of years

ago. Their unenviable task now is to rediscover themselves in what has

become an alien society and any comment their authors may make on this

process, as a corollary to the adolescent's search for identity in

creative fiction, could have fruitful and widespread implications. -250-

b} A critical survey

It is not possible in this survey to give more than a brief reference to most of the works under consideration but I have endeavoured to indicate: where they fall in a broad, evaluative perspective, where their main contribution to the study of adolescence lies and what are their merits and demerits as literature.

By this stage it is obvious that there are some books in this study which emerge as making an outstanding contribution to the subject under review while there are others whose offering is marginal. It has, at times, been difficult to know whether certain works should, indeed, be included at all but I have felt that their recognition by serious critics and their inclusion, for instance, in a book such as Johnston's

Annals of Australian literature.,professing to list the "noteworthy books" in Australia, have been justification enough. In addition to this, I would argue that, in a study of this kind, one needs to look at the literature that is "there" in order to form an overall picture of the whole period and that such literature will include, not only the master- pieces, but what Heseltine has called,, in his survey entitled "Australian Fiction since 1920", "the solidly competent popular fiction created by authors who make no inflated claims for their work but who do achieve a uniformly high level of craft skill" (p.222}. A few minor novelists, also, who do not sustain a uniformly high level of skill but who, nevertheless, contribute in part to our understanding of the adolescent and who show flashes of literary ability and originality are also included.

If we look at groupings of novels which fall roughly into these categories, which we may label for purposes of discussion within the framework of this study, as "outstanding" , "competent" and "minor", -251- we find, as might be expected, that the greatest number falls within the central division with an almost equal representation between the other two groups. In the middle section, especially, there is a proportion of works which may be said to vacillate at times between either the upper or lower levels of assessment. There is sometimes a gap, too, between books within the same broad evaluative category.

Starting within the lower group, we find the kind of literature that has a potential in concept or construction which is never or rarely reached. Family Fresco by Nancy Adams, Day of My Delight by Martin Boyd,

Child of the Hurricane9 by Katharine Susannah Prichard and Finding a

Father by G. Mcinnes are four autobiographical works which fall into this category. They all cover the adolescent period at some length but they tell us virtually nothing about adolescence. Their authors list facts about what they did or said, the people they met, the clothes they wore.

They touch on relationships, within the family and with others, which are simmering with potential for an honest and artistic presentation - but this we never receive. 10 Perhaps the lack of skill and the dearth of interest apparent in these books may be partly due to the age of the writers when they were published, at least in the case of Adams and Boyd, who were in their seventies,and of Prichard at the age of eighty. The last two authors, particularly, have produced better work than this. On the other hand, the age of eighty-three seemed little drawback to Rose

Lindsay. It would seem, however, that she is an exception to the fact that the writers in our study who are septuagenarians - and Henry Handel

Richardson is among these - have lost a great deal of their former skill and are, in addition, unable to reproduce or analyse their feelings as adolescents in such a way as to make a worthwhile contribution to an understanding of adolescence generally. -252-

At the opposite pole in age is Suzanne Holly Jones with her book, Harry's Child, written at nineteen. If it seems likely that it is difficult to write about one's adolescence in old age because one is too far away from it, her book would seem to illustrate the opposite tenet: that it is equally difficult to do when one is too close. In form, it is really a series of vignettes rather than a novel, with everything she has ever experienced being included for good measure, from encounters with spastic children to brief love affairs with numerous men, all immersed in a dream-like aura that is disconcerting and irritating.

Certainly, there is no attempt at exploring, "with flawless sensi ti vi ty the innermost emotions of a young girl as she awakens with adolescence into a delicate unfolding of the complex whorls of her relationship with her foster-father", as the publishers claim. Nevertheless, it is of interest for the reader to be presented with an adolescent mind of some imagination and originality and a capacity for writing which does, at times, lift this book above the level of a sophisticated Daddy-Long-Legs.

Norman Lindsay's novel, The Cousin from Fiji, is entertaining reading but it is light and frothy in its dealing with the two adolescent girls, Florence and Ella, and remains, in my opinion, one of his few minor works.

I have included two of Jon Cleary's novels in this survey,

You can't see round corners12 and The Sundowners. 13 Cleary is a popular author, considered by some to be competent, but I find him of only marginal merit. The former is actually about a twenty-one year old

"adolescent" whose hardships and unhappiness need to be felt by us in order for him to be a convincing and sympathetic character - but they rarely are. Many of his actions appear fortuitous and it is difficult to experience any horror in his murdering of the girl because we are -253- not convinced of the reason for it. The one relationship in the book which had elements of interest and might have been developed significantly was that between Frankie and his mother, for the author had begun to touch on the reality of the situation in his description of the boy's feelings

about his home. But he is unable to sustain this pitch or develop in greater depth the implications of the mother/son relationship and the writing deteriorates to a glib and superficial level, with the story ending on a trite and sentimental note. The Sundowners which, themat­

ically, is of more interest to our study because it covers the period of

a boy growing to adolescence, is of less literary merit than the former, with brief touche~ onlY, where we can feel for and with the lad, Sean.

One of these occurs actually in the last paragraph of the book, where, after the onset of Sean's sexual maturity, coinciding with his loss of

the farm and his dog, Venneker, and with the need to face up to the

reality of the economic hardships of life, we are given a vivid and momentarily moving picture of an adolescent in transition, cherishing

the sweet secret of his sexuality and the hope it holds for the future,

facing the grown-up life for what it brings. For, says Cleary, "Down

there at the farm, leaning against the hard body of Venneker, he had

cried the last remnants of childhood out of himself" (p. 320) •

The last three novels in this group are ones that I would

consider as bordering, at times at least, on the central "competent"

section: Seed, by Peter Cowan, My Brother Tom by J. Aldridge and

Naked Prodigal by w. Dick. The first of these tells a story of a group

of teenagers and their parents;with a great deal of potential for

exploring the problems which arise as a result of the tensions and

insecurities which alienate each group from one another. In writing

of Cowan's earlier work, Heseltine referred to his style as being

"stripped bare11 !4 The same bareness is apparent in this novel, to the -254-

point of flatness at times, resulting in characters who are seldom more than stereotypes. Nevertheless, there are some pungent comments on adolescent attitudes, often by the adolescents themselves, as they try to sort out their roles with one another and their relationships with their parents. "'It's bad luck they' re like that'" @alerie says, in discussing "parents" with her friend, MarleneJ "'I mean parents are a matter of luck, I suppose, and yours sort of came wrong for you out of the barrel'" (p.253-4). 15

In a different sense, Naked Prodigal remains a "minor" novel because of its style. It is a failure to the extent that it shows a crudity of technique, an inability of the author at times to know "how to write". But this failure is redeemed by the sheer weight of the feelings it contains. It is a book vibrating with life, brash, unorganised, at times confused, but with flashes of real insight and a presentation of living characters which its stylistic shortcomings cannot suppress. It is interesting for the picture which it gives of adolescent "hoods" in a slum area of Melbourne, fighting, drinking, swearing, indulging in "easy" loving; full of anger and frustration; racked with jealousy and hatred of "Snob Hill", the rich area of

Melbourne, and yet with a desire to achieve the same goals themselves, as the protagonist is on the way to doing at the end, together with a socialite girl. In this way, it provides an apt contrast to Seed where the stress of the parents on material assets drives the group of boys to car stealing "for kicks".

Naked Prodigal is not a book which seeks to explore adolescence but by the sheer force of its conception and feeling it does, in fact, explain a great deal. If the author had possessed the proficiency to bring his characters fully to life and to organise his material success- -255-

fully, it would have made a major contribution to our study.

The last novel in this section is one which makes an interest­

ing comparison with My Brother Jack as its name alone indicates: My

Brother Tom. It, also, is set in Victoria, though in a country town,

and covers a similar period: that is, the depression and pre-war years.

The protagonist - as a first person reporter of the story - is likewise a journalist, in his case on a country newspaper, reminiscent here of

Porter in The Watcher. Unlike Johnston, or Porter, however, Aldridge denies any autobiographical references, though he does admit being brought up in a country town, and one guesses that this is the kind of novel which

fits into the category of an "autobiographical fiction". Certainly some of the stories in it, like the one of the black snake being put by Tom

through his mother's mangle in order to make a snake-skin belt, deserve

to be true; while the picture of an Australian country town during the

depression and of the boy's rigid, Australian-hating father, an English

ex-vicar, is a very vivid and seemingly personal one. It is not a book

in the same class as My Brother Jack. But, in the story of the narrator

and "his brother Tom", Aldridge succeeds in bringing out, often with perception and understanding, with humour and pathos, the essence of the

adolescent years; those years when, as he says of Tom, "everything he

did mattered ••• everything elated him or everything hurt" (p. 24).

When we come to assess the middle "competent" area of our group

of novels, we find it more difficult to compartmentalise them without an

awareness of their overlapping, in some ways, the upper and lower levels.

Into the lower category, I would put, for a variety of reasons, Soldiers'

Women by Xavier Herbert, The Chantic Bird by D. Ireland, The White

Thorntree by Frank Dalby Davison, and Rose Lindsay's autobiography,

Ma and Pa. -256-

Herbert's novel is not entirely about adolescence but the

story of the fourteen year old Pudsey forms an important strand in a

story basically about herself and four other women! 7 It is in the weaving of these plots into a structural whole that some credit is due

to the author. There are times, too, when the young girl becomes for

the reader a real and sympathetic character, a very faint image of

Louisa in The Man Who Loved Children, fat and unattractive with an unhappy family background, a strong desire to be a writer and an ability

to commit murder. One important difference is that Pudsey is obsessed with sex and Herbert uses this obsession, I feel, not to show us how an

unhappy adolescent may react, but merely to add "spice" to his novel at

the crudest level, something which is lacking entirely in Stead's work.

In fact, it seems to me almost sacrilegious to mention Herbert in the

same breath as Stead. His architectural skill can barely atone for his

torrid sensationalism and his lack of control of language for, to quote

his own comment on Pudsey, he,also,is "used by words" (p.160).

Altogether, I find myself unable to agree with the significance given

to Herbert in Heseltine' s comments in "Australian Fiction since 1920"

(pp.221-222), and in his more recent book, Xavier Herbert. 18

Soldiers' Women has something in common with Davison's book,

The White Thorntree, which is also extraordinarily verbose, the first

massive volume alone having nearly six hundred pages. Davison's book,

too, is a cross between a novel and an odd kind of sex manual, with

everything in it from impotence to rape, together with the same quaint

phraseology that emerges, at times, in both books - "the maidenly fears"

and "dear ladys", expressed with a mawkish sentimentality against a

background of coarseness and lust. The adolescent sections of the book,

mainly those dealing with the primary characters, Norma and Jeff, tell

us something about the physical nature of sexual relations but very -257-

little about how and why the adolescent feels and acts as he does.

The age at which Davison wrote this book - seventy five - would seem to account for the vast difference in his ability shown between it and some of his earlier works such as Man-Shy and his short stories.

A somewhat similar kind of titillation, though over a wider range of emotions, emerges from Ireland's novel, The Chantic Bird, the story of a sixteen year old psychopath. This book has a potential for a valuable commentary,particularly, perhaps, in relation to freedom, on the extremes of adolescent feelings which often vary more in degree than in kind from those of the so-called "normal" adolescent. 19 There is an interest in the way the author presents this story which we shall discuss further in the following section on "point of view" but, if we look at this novel in terms of general critical assessment, its confusion and incongruity make it difficult to accept on a realistic basis and, at times, invest it with a certain sensationalism and shallowness. On the other hand, the irritation and sheer boredom which one feels so often in the two novels previously discussed, are not so marked in The Chantic

Bird because it does contain an imaginative approach to the subject of adolescence. It is possible also that its considerably shorter length is of some relevance in this connection.

It would be hard to find a greater contrast to these last three novels than Rose Lindsay's book, Ma and Pa. Autobiographical in content, it is structured more as a series of character sketches than as a novel, with the author recalling scenes of her childhood and adolescence. The style is direct and simple, with a great deal of lively and often humorous conversation that gives a wonderfully vivid picture of Ma and Pa dealing with an adolescent family. This is, in -258-

no sense, a profound book yet it leaves us, not only knowing something about adolescence, applicable even to to-day's society, but feeling what it was like to be an adolescent at the turn of the century.

Henry Handel Richardson's last and unfinished autobiographical work, Myself When Young, which covers her childhood and adolescence up to the time of her marriage, was written in her seventies and, like the

"late age" autobiographies to which we referred previously, tends to recount her past rather than reveal it. As we noted in Chapter Four, her presentation, especially of her relationship with Evelyn, is tantalisingly "on the surface" yet the general standard of the writing in this book and the insights she does show, limited though they are in comparison to her other works, lift it above the level of what might be classified as "minor" literature.

Three further autobiographical books are those of Jack Lindsay,

Life Rarely Tells, Donald Horne, The Education of Young Donald and John

Hetherington, The Morning was Shining. All these books are competently written and the first two, particularly, provide interesting reportage about the adolescent years of the writers as well as about adolescence in general, as we have seen from many of the extracts used in earlier chapters. Hetherington's account is the flattest of the three, lacking in style and approach the imagination which we find in the other two works whose "point of view" we shall discuss in a later section.

In a solidly competent group also, are four books which deal with the adolescence of the protagonist as a part of his life span but which relate this period, in varying degrees, to his former or later

life. The depression years of the thirties form the background to both

Judah Waten's books, Time of Conflict20 and Season of Youth,as well as

to Kylie Tennant's novel,Foveaux. In Waten's novels, the sociological -259-

aspects often smother the emergence of a viable and developing character.

In Time of Conflict, for example, we are told that Mick has changed.

We know what has happened to him physically,in terms of his life experiences during his formative adolescent years,but we are left unaware of his developing emotions, of his coming to terms with the many conflicts he faces during this period. Waten often superimposes upon

Mick's characterisation the theme of communism so that the author's political beliefs tend to destroy the novel's artistic integrity. This is a tendency which Kylie Tennant manages to avoid in a similar context in Foveaux.

Salute to Freedom has a very different background against which the boy, Robin, grows up - a large country station and, intermittently, boarding-school during the early nineteen hundreds- though he, too, becomes politically involved when he dies in the Spanish Civil War at the age of forty. Some of the scenes between himself, as an adolescent, and his mother and father are particularly well handled in this book.

Three novels which have a female protagonist and conclude their story while she is still adolescent, are Margaret Trist's

Morning in Queensland, Thea Astley's Descant for Gossips and Ruth Park's The

Harp in the South.

Trist, in her novel, does not concentrate as much, or as successfully, on the adolescent period as the other two authors,who re­ create in their books, often with insight and understanding, the experience of adolescence for the young, awakening girl. In our former comments on these two novels, we have seen how Park's emphasis is on humour and Astley's on tragedy in the exploration of their adolescent protagonist's emotions and of her relationships both within and outside the family. -260-

Two authors who take one year of a boy's life and concentrate

on an experience which is of vital importance in his development, lead-

ing him across the border of childhood into a wider world, are Charlwood

and McKie. The protagonist in All the Green Year is fourteen and the

book is set in a country town in Victoria in 1929 while Jamie.in, The

Mango Tree, is sixteen and the setting there, also in the country, is

in Queensland during the last year of the 1914 war. Both books strongly

evoke the atmosphere of their period and background1 as well as having

much to offer in terms of characterisation. We remember, particularly,

Johnna in Charlwood's book/and the grandmother in The Mango Tree1 who

tends to overshadow Jamie himself. The latter is the better novel, I

think, within a wider frame of reference1 incorporating the boy's past

and his affinity with his surroundings. It also has some imaginative

stylistic technique5ithough the rather too obvious and too frequent

imitation of Patrick White's style of incomplete sentences becomes a

rather pointless and irritating exercise at times. The novel's main

weakness, I think, lies in the author's "piling up" of dramatic events;

the packs of starving dogs, the cyclone, the influenza epidemic come

thick and fast and lessen the intensity of the reader's relationship

with Jamie as the central focus of the book. These events seem to

introduce a discordant tone into the key in which much of the novel is

written, as it re-creates, often in a sensitive and poetic style, the

young boy's awakening to love and death. This work has something in

common with three other novels which share a mutual poetic intensity:

The Pea Pickers, The Delinquents and The Boys in the Island. There is,

in all three, a curious unevenness of writing, curious because, at

their best, the authors show a delicate and imaginative style and

approach which are most moving. Langley's tendency to "over write",

Rohan's intruding bias against the police and "the welfare" and Koch's -261- lack of substantiation for Francis's behaviour and background are among their main defects. In Koch, particularly, we find a style that is metaphorically rich in its delineation of adolescence, together with an emphasis, applicable to the other two novels also, on "the private world of the imagination ••• the sense that there is something special and irreplaceable in the experience of childhood and youth". 21

We may group together also the four novels with the common subject matter of the aborigine's search for identity, with its differ­ ence in kind and in outcome, as depicted in Colin Johnson's Wild Cat

Falling, Nene Gare's The Fringe Dwellers and Donald Stuart's books,

Yaralie and Ilbarana. Although the first two are lacking in some technical skills, they vividly express the conflicts which the aboriginal suffers in a white society, at least in Johnson's case, within a partly autobiographical framework. Johnson's is the better work, I think, spare in style but illustrative of the author's flair for the telling phrase or image. It reveals, too, a depth of thought and a quality of integration which belie the outwardly simplistic form.

Both of Stuart's books, especially Yaralie, are good examples of the kind of novel which can produce a believable character as prota­ gonist while, at the same time, providing much valuable and interesting information on the background of a half-caste and a full blood aboriginal.

Though written primarily for an adolescent reader, they take their place in a survey of this kind together with Ivan Southall's two novels, Ash

Road and Matt and Jo,which may be classified in the same way. The former i~ I think, the more successful book because here the author combines well a good, adventure-type story with a personal crisis in the lives of his main adolescent characters. The fire which is the crux of the -262- narrative acts, in addition, as a kind of catalyst whereby Peter, Lorna and Graham reach the beginnings of an adolescent maturity. When Peter saves his grandmother from death, he runs into the smoke of the fire with exultation. "He knew without being able to frame the words that he was running into manhood and leaving childhood behind" (p.147).

Lorna and Graham come to sense that what they feel for one another is what grown-up people mean when they talk of love.

John Couper's two novels, The Thundering Good Today and

Looking For a Wave, would also appeal to the adolescent age group although they would attract, as well, a much wider audience. We have referred to them before as providing among the most up-to-date portray­ als of the adolescent in this survey. Couper's books look at the adolescent, "now", and present - sometimes to the detriment of characterisation - the problems with which he has to deal in to-day's society. To a certain degree, his novels resemble a moral fable, with an underlying propaganda about the ways and means of dealing with con­ temporary issues such as conscription, drugs and promiscuity. It is not, however, a blatant or highly intrusive propaganda,and his novels, written with skill and a keen ear for language, do at least make us aware of the possibilities of adolescent behaviour in the face of a contemporary, changing society.

For an adolescent facing the rigours of life in the late nineteenth century, we must turn to No:anan Lindsay's three works,

Redheap, Saturdee and Halfway to Anywhere, all of which express the revolt against established mores which is typical of adolescence and

in which Lindsay delighted, even as an adult. There is, as Green said,

"something of the adolescent about Lindsay, even at his most mature"

(p.1059). All three books contain the irrepressible humour and sense -263-

of fun, sometimes the sheer farce, which Lindsay saw in life and which are apparent, of course, in his work as an artist, especially in the illustrations he made for these novels. This delightful sense of humour about adolescence is a characteristic lacking in many of the other novels in this survey. Redheap, in particular, exemplifies, too, what

Kirkpatrick has called the "uncanny capacity" of the adolescent "for seeing his elders for what they are and classifying by his figures of speech their pomposities, rigidities and numerous other foibles". 22

There is hardly an adult character in Redheap who does not fit into this category!

It may be true, as Green has said, that tragedy lies outside

Lindsay's scope. On the other hand, we can agree with Douglas Stewart when he wrote:

Merely because Redheap is light and gay, we should not think lightly of it. We are not to suppose that because a writer views life as a comic spectacle he is not, under the surface, as serious about it as anyone else. 23

As we have seen in our illustrations from all three novels, this underlying seriousness is apparent in many of Lindsay's comments on the upbringing of adolescents and on their relationships with their parents and with one another. It is, in fact, his own insights which colour the vividness of his portraits and which capture the genuine feeling of adolescence which emanates from these books and which remains so strongly with us. Though not strictly autobiographical, 24 these novels would seem to contain a great deal of Lindsay's own youthful ideas and sensations,and Redheap, at least, is closely based on the adolescence of two of his brothers in Creswick, the country town in

Victoria where Lindsay grew up. -264-

It is this novel - the first written of the three but the last one in a chronological time span which covers the period from early to late adolescence, - which is, I think, the best. It is more cohesive as a novel, more structured in plot✓ while it offers also a greater breadth of characterisation and does not suffer from the repetition which occurs in the other two.

Taken together, however, with all their drawbacks, these three works must represent the most detailed1 and certainly the most humorous, presentation of the adolescent from twelve to nineteen in Australian literature.

I would have few reservations in agreeing with Green's con­ clusion about LindsaY_, (particularly if one stresses the Australian quality), that "through him Australian boyhood and adolescence have manifested themselves if partially yet more strongly and vividly than through any other writer" (p.1067).

In striking contrast to Lindsay is the author, Martin Boyd who, in his novel, A Difficult Young Man, 25 covers the adolescence of the story teller's elder brother, Dominic, and, to a lesser extent, the teller's own. Boyd is a much more refined writer than Lindsay, express­ ing a suave urbanity, a sophisticated witJand an almost complete detach­ ment from his subject that marks him in a very individual kind of way.

We shall be discussing later his special place in relation to "point of view" in the noveJ.,which, in his case, affects to a large degree the kind of assessment we can make of him. For it is difficult, indeed, to

see A Difficult Young Man as a novel of adolescence. Despite its emphasis on this phase of the writer's and Dominic's life, it remains a book about other things26 and other people. Boyd states in his opening

chapter that his aim is "an exploration of Dominic's immediate forebears -265-

to discover what influences had made him what he was, and above all to discover what in fact he was" (p.9). He does not succeed, I contend, in the latter goal. Dominic remains a fascinating but unknown character, due largely to the technique which Boyd employs. There is a reference towards the end of the book to a photo of Dominic "in the sultry flower of his adolescence (p.175). But he is a flower which the reader is never allowed to pluck.

Vance Palmer's novel, The Passage, may be used as a convenient link between the competent group of novels and those which, by comparison, have some outstanding quality as novels of adolescence. Palmer's style, as we have seen, is usually simple and direct,as befits his character~ but he can also use image~such as those of the sea and the Passage itsel~ in a metaphorical way to suggest the flow of time and the trans­ ition from childhood to adolescence and adolescence to maturity. There is a fusion of style and character and a sense of wholeness that make this book particularly valuable as a novel of adolescence.

Of Elizabeth Harrower's two works, The Long Prospect is, perhaps, only marginally entitled to a place in this upper category and we have already discussed some of its strengths and weaknesses. The

Watch Tower, however, achieves its place with no reservations. As a study in personal relationships and female adolescent development;_ it shows a subtlety and perception that make it one of the outstanding novels in this survey. 27

Two novels of high calibre, both dealing with the adolescence of a young boy and both with a Western Australian background, are The

Young Desire It by Mackenzie and The Merry-go-round in the Sea by Stow.

The imaginative quality of the writing and the empathy with which each -266-

author is able to convey the feelings of the developing protagonist make these memorable portrayals of an Australian adolescent.

Patrick White's two novels, The Aunt's Story and The Tree of

Man,have been included in this study because they exhibit, possibly more

than any other novels which cover the maturity as well as the youth of

their characters, the phenomenon of adolescence as an integral part of

the protagonist's life and that of other major participants in the book.

Thus, though the space allotted to the adolescent period may be relatively

small in comparison to the work as a whole, the thematic and structural value of these sections assumes a weight that cannot be measured in

isolation. His characters become what they must become. This special quality makes most of White's books, in one sense, novels of adolescence,

and adds an extra dimension to our understanding not merely of people of

all ages but of adolescence itself as an integrated part of the life span.

The theme of adolescence enmeshed in a complex symbolic pattern,

is seen, perhaps, to its greatest extent in Keneally's strange and

compelling novel, A Dutiful Daughter. Though the symbolism is not

always entirely clear, the book is a valuable one. It succeeds in us-

ing a forceful and original concept to explore the area of parent.­

adolescent relationships,while retaining a high level of reality in the

portrayal of the young girl,Barbara and her brother,Damian, as well as

of her parents, Mr and Mrs Glover- bull and cow though they may be.

We have given emphasis throughout this study to the largely

autobiographical works of Hal Porter and George Johnston, The Watcher

on the Cast-iron Balcony and My Brother Jack, respectively, for the

acuity of the insights which they show into adolescence, for their lively

and personal literary style and for their vivid and evocative creation

of an adolescent protagonist. -267-

At the top of the list I would place Stead's two novels, For

Love Alone and The Man Who Loved Children~which, though not entirely concentrated on the adolescence of the protagonist, tell us, in con- junction, more of the adolescent's feelings about love and life, both within and outside of the family, than most of the other books in this survey. Especially would this statement apply to the latter book which can be considered more a novel of adolescence than the former, as the young girl, Louisa, moves increasingly towards the centre of the story, finally to dominate it completely. Both novels are said to have some autobiographical content but again, particularly in the later book, does

Stead stand above many other writers in her capacity to make universal statements. 28 There may be some truth in the charge,sometimes brought against Stead,that these works are too long. But it is a minor critic­ ism when one considers the consistently high quality of her writing, her originality and her imagination. Above all, it is the impact of Louisa's adolescence within her strange and horrifying family that so stuns the reader.

The Man Who Loved Children remains, in my opinion, the out­ standing novel of adolescence in Australian literature, one of the few books to which I have always thought the following words of Kafka to be particularly relevant:

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a soft hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?... What we must have are those books which come upon us like ill­ fortune and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen within us. 29 -268-

c) Point of view: the search for "that elusive adjustment between the teller and the tale which holds both in perfect balance" • 3 O

The novel and autobiography of adolescence provide an especially

interesting study in literary perspective, in the relationship between the

author and his story, his characters, his ideas and his feelings. I

think the variation and complexity which we find in this area are due, partly to the overtly autobiographical nature of many of the works, partly to the close identification which, as we have seen, the author often feels with his adolescent characters even though he places them in

a fictional framework and partly to the fact that nearly half the novels

in the survey - and most of the short stories - are written in the first person, thus emphasising this personal point of view.

In the light of the high number of books narrated in the first person,it is, perhaps, surprising that there are not more which tell

their story through the eyes of an adolescent narrator in the style of

J.D. Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye, for, if well handled, 31

this approach is certainly one of sensibility and immediacy. The three

novels in our survey which do utilise this device are The Thundering

Good Today, The Chantic Bird and Wild Cat Falling. The first book is

presented through the eyes of the twenty year old Guth, reviewing his

late adolescence, though we may be tempted to challenge his question,

posed to the reader on p.105: "I've got out of my adolescence, but have

you?" One of the basic problems in this novel is that Guth does not

appear mature enough to make the somewhat weighty pronouncements,.which

he does from time to time1 on various subjects such as education (p.105)

and conscription (p.136). One feels here that it is Couper speaking.

This same criticism applies to some of the literary statements made by -269-

Guth, as, for example, when he says of Keats that he

apprehended that nothing less than all of him was needful to the execution of his poetry. And so he was steadily shedding the prurience of Romanticism: till he called his Grecian Urn 'a friend to man', and that's the warm fruition of any substantial beauty. (p.96)

That may be excellent material for a University lecturer but,

as we remarked in relation to a previous extract, it's not our Guth

talking.

Ireland who, I feel, is most influenced by the Salinger style,

falls into a somewhat similar trap with his protagonist who is presented

in a variety of idioms and states of consciousness, in addition to being

a compulsive liar, so that the reader is often in a state of confusion

rather than enlightened sympathy. One recalls here the words of Mary

Durack in a letter of advice to Colin Johnson: "Contradictions are all

right so long as the reader does not suspect it is the writer's mind

that is in a stew". 32

There is also some confusion in The Chantic Bird about to

whom the story is being told. At first, one assumes that it is the

protagonist speaking to the reader; then he appears to be addressing

directly the novelist who wants to write his life story and there are

clumsy interjections throughout, to this effect, as a reminder; a

great deal of the time he is talking to himself, while the ending

suggests that he has actually written down the novel we have been

reading. Of course, we presume that this confusion is meant to be

deliberate since we cannot accept any of the boy's statements at face

value; but, together with the sudden shifts in time and place in this

novel, this very unreliable point of view tends to become irritating -270- and intrusive rather than being an interesting and inherent expression of the protagonist's nature as a severely disturbed adolescent and a fallible narrator.

Wild Cat Falling, though the shortest and simplest of the three in appearance, is technically quite complex. It is told in the first person, with an appropriateness and consistency of idiom, through the eyes and speech of a half-caste aboriginal boy whose faulty per­ ception of the world causes him to dramatize his condition so that he thinks the world is against him. 33 In an attempt, however, to give a more objective view, Johnson occasionally uses the third person,as in the scene portrayed on pp.97-98 where, in looking back at "the youth that was me", he gains a sense of detachment and of pathos,without sentimentality, that is most effective. We shall later be examining

Porter's use of this same device in The Watcher. Johnson employs, also in common with Porter, the expedient of fluctuating between the past and present tense although, as in the scene instanced above, the past tense is not necessarily synonymous with an event recalled from the past. The flashback technique is another method experimented with, one feels, by Johnson in this novel. At its best, as in one of the last scenes when the boy is sentenced to jail again and we are then brought back to the situation of the beginnings of the robbery which will lead to his eventual imprisonment (p.103 ff.), this device, like its film counterpart, can be valuable in adding variety and dramatic intensity to the point of view from which the story is narrated. Unfortunately,

Johnson tends to over-use the flash-back technique so that it often appears obvious and contrived. Taken all in all, these three novels seem to suggest that the reason why the adolescent narrator is so seldom used is related to the fact that it is an extremely difficult device to manipulate successfully. -271-

The flash-back approach is seen also in two novels in our

survey narrated in the third person. In Salute to Freedom by Eric Lowe,

every chapter begins at an advanced point and then reverts, soon after,

to a former scene, often with some dramatic effect while giving,at the

same time, a cohesiveness and unanimity of approach to the story. The

clumsy use of flash-back in Elizabeth Harrower's novel, The Long Prospect, has been noted by Geering in his review of her work34 and stands as an

example of a contrivance by which the author makes known certain facts,

in a way quite out of keeping with the situation - the older man Max

talking, for example, to the twelve year old Emily of his marriage and

love affair.

J. Waten's novel, Season of Youth, falls into the category of a book written in the first person, though not necessarily through the

eyes of the boy himself. Waten, in his introduction to this novel,

stresses that it is not autobiographical but that "the 'I' is a necessary device for the telling of these pages". We are not, however,

convinced of either of these facts1 for his feelings about reading and writing, politics and music, come through to us on a very personal note,

rather than emanating on a believable basis from the protagonist himself.

Waten makes the same error1 of being unable to reconcile consistently the

point of view of his characters with the expression of their ideas1 in

his other novel about adolescence, Time of Conflict, though this is

narrated in the third person. It seems unlikely that a boy like Mick,

barely educated and having spent most of his early adolescent years in

the boxing ring, who, on his own admission has been unable to understand

Henry Lawson's poems, would think in the way that a sentence such as the

following suggests: "To Mick he @'ony, the young communis~j seemed to

have a remarkable amount of knowledge, an exceptionally rich intelligence

and a cynicism so complete that occasionally he thought he was a poseur"

(p.131) • -272-

A somewhat similar imbalance in point of view is seen at times in The Mango Tree, also written in the third person, when the author describes people or situations as if through the eyes of the young boy,

Jamie, but in language and concepts of which he would not be capable at that age. Sometimes there is only a small touch,as in the description of his grandmother sitting up in bed reading the Bible and "laughing quietly at the dirty bits" (p.24). Sometimes there is a whole scene, as in the one between his grandmother and the Professor {p.84 ff.), where the reader is made to feel that Jamie is describing it but where it is also clear that it is the author's voice we are really hearing.

Occasionally, too, there is confusion in the jumps which Jamie makes back into the past and forward again into the present so that we have to look carefully to see at what stage of his life the scene is being presented. Nevertheless, this is a novel which frequently succeeds very well in a third person presentation of experiences seen through the adolescent's eyes and felt within his heart.

In Southall's novel, Matt and Jo, we see an interesting combination of styles ranging from a third person narrative to a stream of consciousness presentation of both the adolescent boy and girl characters, the emphasis being on the latter technique. This book is not, of course, to be considered on the same level as Joyce's work,

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but it does at least have the distinction of being the only nove1 35 in this survey which comes close to the kind of subjective third person point of view which Henry James established and Joyce developed. It would appear that Joyce's technical innovation is, again, a difficult one to copy and, though particularly relevant one would feel to the representation of adolescence, is one that -273- has been barely touched upon as yet by Australian writers in this genre.

A variation on an objective third person style is seen in

The Boys in the Island where Koch uses the technique of the imaginary

Lad, the "other boy" in his mind with whom Francis converses and to whom he confesses his innermost thoughts. This device of the self, cormnuning, in essence, with itself, and evident elsewhere in the stream of consciousness approach, is one which portrays a phenomenon existent in most people to some extent but with a profound reality, in particular, for the developing adolescent. 36 I think it is this device, used in a rather unique way by Koch, that helps to make this book, as Heseltine has suggested, "one of the most consistently and sensitively inner­ oriented of Australian novels". 37 It is, perhaps, surprising that the ability of the adolescent to step away from himself, usually for the first time in his life, and to separate his self into subject and object, an "I" and a "me", sometimes with the hope of changing himself, 38 has been so little exploited from a stylistic point of view. In this connection, there is an interesting comment by the narrator in Aldridge's novel, My Brother Tom, when he speaks of Tom as being at the age when

"he was trying to bring the two parts of him together - the wild and wicked part, and the conscientious and gentle one" (p.9}. This book provides a good example of the kind of style which incorporates, in this case in the first person, the point of view of recall, from an adult stance, of an adolescent period of the narrator's or the protag­ onist's life, together with the kind of comment which we have quoted above. This book often shares with Charlwood's novel, All the Green

Year, (also in the first person}, the gift of combining the point of view of adult recall with that of presenting life as it appeared to the boy through his eyes during the period of adolescence. We see this particularly well done, too, in Patrick White's novel;The Aunt's Story, -274- a story of recall told largely through Theodora's eyes in the third person. The approach used by Margaret Trist in Morning in Queensland is not one of recall but is, again, a subjective third person point of view. In Life Rarely Tells by Jack Lindsay and The Pea Pickers by Eve

Langley, both first person narratives, we have, in addition, what appears to be at times a deliberately adolescent, fulsome and effusive style of writing,as if the author were carried away by his return to the adolescent period of his life and Lindsay accentuates this feeling / . by actually reproducing some of his adolescent poetry. we have already noted how the reproduction of the adolescent's writings - whether factual or not - often adds a great deal to the immediacy of the point of view around which the novel is structured as, for example, in The Watcher and

The Man Who Loved Children. In the latter, in addition to poems and letters, we have excerpts presented from Louisa's diary (p.367 ff.}.

Redheap and The Education of Young Donald are notable because the extracts from the diaries in both books are taken from life; in

Lindsay's case, he uses his brother Lionel's original diary and letters39 ) and Horne reproduces his own efforts in his autobiographical work. In all cases, these stylistic devices, as they may be called, are paramount in creating what Robert in Redheap calls "the record of adolescence" in a realistic and compelling manner, sometimes with a humour or poignancy not readily conveyed in other ways.

In Halfway to Anywhere, Lindsay keeps a nice balance between the commentary of the author in a third person narrative and the boy's point of view. He uses successfully, I think, from time to time, the approach of "when a bloke •.• ", or "if you .•• ", so that the reader is drawn into Bill's way of thinking without the need for a clumsy trans- ition from the author's personal comments. -275-

"You are Barbara's brother Damian" begins A Dutiful Daughter,

after a short prologue, and thus is set the perspective as well as the

emphasis of the book. This unusual story unfolds mainly through

Damian's eyes,although it is interspersed with chapters in the centre

of the book which reproduce Barbara's "Reflections on the Life of

Jehanne D' arque". Others recount, in a straightforward, omniscient

author style, her visit to the doctor about her supposed "mark of the beast",and the scene with Mr Glover chasing after the heifers. Keneally

manages this quite difficult shift without distortion or maladroitness

and is able to preserve, therefore, an integrity both of tone and of

viewpoint throughout the book.

It is interesting that some of the novels which are structured

around an omniscient point of view are among the best in our survey and

this is largely because they are able to create, at the same time, the

sense that events are seen and felt through the eyes of the adolescent

protagonist. The Man Who Loved Children, The watch Tower, The Tree of

Man, The Passage and The Merry-go-round in the Sea would all fall into

this category. Stew's novel, however, suffers a sudden jolt in

emphasis and viewpoint when the story shifts to Malaya, where Rick is a

prisoner of war, and in subsequent ep,isodes between Rick and Jane.

The unskilful handling of the intrusive narrator is, perhaps,

illustrated nowhere better than in The Delinquents where the author -

and we must remember this is her first book - rudely intrudes on the

delicacy and immediacy of such scenes,as that between Brownie and Lola

on p.21,to add her own comment along these lines:

What are we to do with the great overgrown lads whose bodies are a tonnent to them? Do the social workers and clergymen, well meaning though they be, really think youth clubs, organised sport, fretwork classes are of any use? Come now! (p.22)40 The soell is broken! -276-

A similar jarring note is found occasionally in Mackenzie's

novel,The Young Desire It, a book which does not easily fall into any

one classification in this kind of discussion. It has a strong auto­

biographical base but is not presented as such; it is written as a

third person, omniscient narrative but with a degree of limited

consciousness in relation to the boy, Charles, so that Mackenzie some­

times clumsily intrudes to explain that the thoughts, as presented, do

not really belong to Charles, (as on p.14); and there are occasional

lapses into the first person (as on p.154). There are also some passages, as we noted earlier in relation to Jack Lindsay and Eve

Langley, which are, as Geering puts it, "adolescent in matter and in

manner, as if Charles's experiences have swamped the omniscient

narrator and drowned him in the verbal gushings of the cheap novelette", 41

(as on p.95). Geering comments further on the uncertainty of viewpoint

and tone found in this work and on the narrative jolts and confusion

incurred at times, particularly where the character, Mawley, is involved.

Despite these technical deficiencies - all of which are not

apparent, I think, on a first reading - The Young Desire It remains a

very moving book, its "ring of personal truth", 42 its sympathetic but

never sentimental approach, combining together to create a point of

view that the reader is willing to share.

In looking further at the autobiographical works, we tend to

find two main categories: that in which there is a dispassionate

recalling of the past where most of the feelings and the essential point

of view of the adolescent have been forgotten or submerged beneath an

adult conceptual frarnework;or that wherein the author is able to make

the journey backwards,in feeling as well as time,but where he can, also,

from his adult stance, sufficiently distance himself to make mature -277-

comments and judgements on his adolescent behaviour. Into the first category fall those novels,already discussed,where we are given little more than a recounting of facts, a random patchwork of reflections, such as Family Fresco, Child of the Hurricane, The Morning was Shining and Day of My Delight. Into the second category come the two books we shall now consider - My Brother Jack and The Watcher.

Both of these employ, to a large extent, the technique of narration which opposes an enlightened first-person narrator and a naive protagonist who merge at moments of awareness and enlightenment. 43

Both use the film-like technique of a camera suddenly honing in on a scene to impress it upon the reader - and the author - in all its detail and clarity,as reader and author,alike,join together to watch the pro­ tagonist acting out his adolescent part upon the set, as, again together, they set out to rediscover his personal past. This capacity to present a dramatic moment and then comment upon it as the mature adult,without upsetting the balance and focus of the work, is a rare one and is a characteristic which both Porter and Johnston possess. There are many instances to be drawn from each work. A good example occurs in My

Brother Jac.k,in the scene referred to earlier~4 when Davy brings home the typewriter and faces such a dramatic rejection by his father.

Johnston comments : "I see how impossible it was for me, at sixteen, to have had even the faintest glimmerings of the corrosive forces which lay behind the scene that was to follow" (pp.87-88). He continues, then, to analyse his father's background and the effect it had on him, not just as an adolescent but as an adult also. This analysis makes an interesting comparison with that given by Porter of his father in

The Watcher (p.20).

In another example, Porter, after his description of the -278-

sexual encounters between Alex and himself as a young boy, conunents not only on the "truth of existence" which this experience confirmed for him but describes also his return to Bairnsdale, more than thirty years

later, his meeting again with Macalister,and the memories this evokes

(p.158 ff.). This kind of double-shafted point of view, if skilfully managed, can add a great deal to the profundity of autobiographically­

based recall because we are presented with a work that is not limited merely to the story of a boy's adolescence and the events which occurred

at that time. A second dimension is added,whereby the meaning of past

events is shown in relation to the unified whole of the author's life -

as we noted previously in White's approach - and whereby, as well, a

universal meaning is given to adolescence, drawn from the threads of one

character's life.

This is not to say, of course, that the point of view does not

remain an intensely personal one. Both Johnston and Porter have set

down and re-created, in Henry James's words, "a palpable, imaginable,

visitable past11 • 45 Proust, in discussing the art of autobiography,

suggested that the writer should use "the images offered by life" -

objects, places, sights, smells, sounds which evoke in a concrete and

individual way the sense of the past. 46 There are many of these in

Porter's and Johnston's books: from the smell of jam in Alex's breath

at the moment of consummation,to the Genoa velvet couch which proved an

uncomfortable basis for Davy's first sexual exercise; from the scented

cream sponge cakes made by Porter's mother,to the claw-like appendages

on the artificial arms propped in the corners of Davy's hallway.

These two authors use different methods to achieve the dis­

tancing effect necessary if a balance between subjectivity and object­

ivity is to be retained, if sentimentality is to be avoided and, in -279-

Porter's case especially, if the comic element is to be successful.

Johnston endows his protagonist with an immediate sense of "apartness" by calling him Davy and by suggesting, at the very beginning, that it is Davy telling the story of Jack's life, rather than of his own. The shift in emphasis,whereby the story becomes that of "Jack's brother

Davy" is well handled, for it is seen to be not just a structural shift but one of vital importance in Davy's development, in his point of view about himself and about life. There is also a movement in the book, one feels, towards a closer autobiographical approach though,in the synthesis of truth and fiction,the author sometimes vacillates disconcertingly throughout the novel.

Porter's method is more unusual and, in some ways, more interest- ing. Heseltine wrote of him, even before the publication of

The watcher: "he has conducted some of the most daring stylistic experiments of any Australian prose writer". 47 As the name of the book implies, this author is an observer in a more specific way than Johnston.

He is the watcher from his earliest memory on the cast-iron balcony up to the present moment, "a born watcher", as he says of himself, "who has not outgrown watching" (p.74) and, even more than this, one who has

"watched himself watching" (p.20). There is, then, a kind of triple point of view presented here which gives a strange intensity and often a deep pathos to many of those scenes which combine an extraordinary sense of detachment with an overwhelming sense of personal involvement.

As we commented earlier in the discussion of some of these scenes, Porter sometimes employs the added device of relating them in the third person - though he still retains the present tense which is used throughout the book - usually in those moments which are "closest

to the bone" or, in anticipation of such moments, when he discusses his -280-

"philosophy of life" (as on p.190). The fact that the most horrifying experience of all to him - his mother's death - is related in the first person and is used as the conclusion of the book, seems to suggest that he is now beginning to merge into the character of the adult narrator, even though his mature "watcher" is well aware of his limitations in his understanding of life. This scene indicates, too, that his refrain,

"I don't care", which he uses throughout the book, is merely a defence, a pose. It shows him as wel] as the reader how much he does care.

For a different kind of multiple point of view, we shall now turn to the final example in this discussion, the novel, A Difficult

Young Man, by Martin Boyd.

This story, with some autobiographical basis, is narrated in the first person by Guy Langton, in his own words,an"unreliable narrator" of the tetralogy covering the Langton's history: The Cardboard Crown,

A Difficult Young Man, Outbreak of Love and When Blackbirds Sing. The second is the only one dealing primarily with the adolescent period and it belies the trend, seen in several other major works that, in a series of books covering a protagonist's life, the one on adolescence is usually the best. 48 In The Cardboard Crown,49 for example, where several versions of the same event are sometimes given,it is true, to use

Kramer' s words, that "one acquires . • • a very strong impression of the complexity of life". 50 I would agree, also, with Heseltine that, in this book, "a subtle mastery over the technique of the multiple point of view'' 51 is achieved. I cannot agree, however, that the same is true of

A Difficult Young Man for, in this novel, the unwieldy and seemingly irrational presentation of viewpoint prevents us from receiving the picture of Dominic that the author intends to create. -281-

It is, for example, hard to justify the use of a first person technique if there are to be frequent interjections by the author explaining that he knows certain facts about Dominic because he was told them "some years later", as on pp.54-55. When he says "It is annoying to have to rely on a ribald source such as Uncle Arthur for an account of tragic happenings", (p.55}, the reader may be only too willing to agree. In addition, if the author goes to the trouble of stating these kinds of justifications, it seems even more irritating and unjustified to reproduce conversations and describe feelings about which he could not possibly have known. There are many instances of this kind of shift in point of view. When, for example, he describes the reactions of other people to Dominic's behaviour when the boy rides his horse, Tamburlaine, to death, he concludes: "Actually Dominic was not thinking at all about

Tamburlaine" (p.73). Again, when recounting Sylvia's thoughts about

Dominic, her fiance: "More than this, she felt that in exploring the dark reaches of his soul she would have a fuller and more exciting life than she would ever have with a conventional land owner ••• " {p.164).

The style here is pure omniscient author and, interleaved as it is with that of an acknowledged limited "I", its effect upon this reader is to want to ask crossly: "How do you know?" We are not assuaged, I think, by the additional authorial comment which tries to forestall this kind of reaction by making such remarks as the following:

as I proceed I must sometimes state my opinion as fact and occasionally describe scenes which I did not actually witness but can imagine from what I have heard from people who were present or from my personal knowledge of the characters concerned. {p.44)

Another shift which is uneasily executed is in that part of the book where Boyd suddenly says: "Now that we have arrived in England I -282-

must obtrude myself into the story more than I have done hitherto, and ask the reader to put Dominic out of his mind, or rather at the back of his mind for a while, and give attention to myself ••• ". The unease that he seems to feel as author is indicated when he continues:

To justify this I must repeat that I am one of the characters in this book, and that the things which have affected my emotional and intellectual growth such as it is, have consequently coloured my story, and the glasses through which I see my parents, Dominic, Colonel Rodgers and the rest of us. (p.97}

As a statement in isolation,this last one can be accepted but, when taken in relation to the book as a whole, it bears little weight.

Hence we find ourselves,in the end,knowing very little about either

Dominic or himself and, as we declared earlier, Dominic appears to be a fascinating and unusual adolescent about whom we would like to know a great deal more. Boyd tells us that "it was always difficult to know how his mind worked" (p.79) and it would seem, therefore, all the more important to lessen the difficulties in creating or representing him as a character. It may be, of course, that it is the process in his own mind, to which he refers elsewhere in the novel, which interests him ultimately more than his discovery of what Dominic really "is"; or, that what he tries,in fact, to say, is that it becomesimpossible to write a book, with any truth, about your own or someone else's adolescence - despite his earlier stated intent. In that case, the result is a novel of non-adolescence, told in a most curious and unsatisfying way.

I have spent some time on this work because I feel its special viewpoint and what Kramer calls, in the article referred to previously,

Boyd's "highly original method of depicting characters" (p.33}, warrant close attention, as many critical essays on this author have attested. -283-

I think, also, that A Difficult Young Man stands as an interesting comparison to other works in this survey that have undertaken a similar task, with more success, in my opinion, than Boyd has been able to achieve.

In sunnning up this attempt at a critical assessment of the novel and autobiography of adolescence in Australia over the last fifty years and at an evaluation of the stylistic devices and technical exper­ iments which they have incorporated, we are reminded of Kiell's words at the beginning of this chapter. To reconstruct the period of adolescence is, indeed, "a precarious process" and "to recover the atmosphere in which the adolescent lives" a task open to failure. It is heartening, therefore, to find in this study that there is so much positive material, so much rich evocation of this stage of life, such evidence of fertile and lively imaginations at work. It is impossible, of course, not to be impressed by those books which, in a survey of this kind, stand out as landmarks along the way. Nevertheless, I would hope that we have been made aware not only of the masterpieces but also of the less competent and sometimes lesser known works which, limited though their contribut­ ions may be, have yet gratified us with moments of personal and revealing insights into the themes of adolescence. For it is many of these works which have provided, as Heseltine has written with reference to the wider field of Australian literature in general, "a matrix of fictional expertise in which the masterpiece may be more easily nourished". 52 -284-

II. The short story

Although it is not possible to assess, with the same degree of

detail, the place of the short story in the literature of adolescence in

Australia, it is important that some mention be made of its valuable

contribution in this field. As we have already noted in some of the

illustrations used previously, the theme of transition from childhood

to adolescence or adolescence to adulthood,explored through one revealing

and sometimes painful experience or moment of awareness,is especially

apparent in the short story and particularly appropriate to its technique.

One has only to look at the collections of short stories, either by

individual writers or as selections from the best short stories over the past fifty years, to see how many of them deal with the pre-adolescent

or adolescent theme. 53 In the Introduction to Short Stories of Australia,

chosen by Beatrice Davis, she writes that "there is no recurring theme

except childhood; a third of the stories deal with childhood". 54 (One

should note that she uses the term, "childhood", broadly here. Most of

the children are pre-adolescent or adolescent.) It is worth repeating at

this point, also, the statement by Heseltine,to which we referred in

Chapter One,when he writes, in his review of "Australian Fiction since

1920", of "the recurring theme in the Australian short story - the

painful awakening of the adolescent mind to adult experience" (p. 200).

The short story has followed a somewhat similar pattern to the

Australian novel over the last fifty years in the sense that it has

largely outgrown the pioneer type of "epic" tale, of mateship and of

struggles with the land, to explore the area of human relationships,

with a heavy stress on the period of adolescence - though we might observe

that the somewhat old-fashioned, humorous anecdote, made popular by

writers such as Casey and Stivens still survives. It is notable, too, -285-

that some of the best novelists in our survey have also produced some of the best short stories. With a few authors, their stories about adolescence are of a quality immensely superior to their longer work covering the same subject. This last statement would be true, for instance, of Henry Handel Richardson whose excellent stories in The End of a Childhood, already referred to, stand in contrast to her auto­ biography, Myself When Young. It would be true,also,of Frank Dalby

Davison whose novel, The White Thorntree, has none of the insights or spontaneity of feeling that he is capable of producing in a story like

"The Road to Yesterday 11 • 55

Some authors have produced a collection of short stories which, linked by the one protagonist, form a kind of entity, such as Morn of

Youth by R. Close and Father Clears Out by James Hackston, both lively and entertaining accounts of their authors' childhood and adolescence.

They are not structured enough in form to be designated as novels but, while able to stand on their own as short stories (two of Hackston's are included in Best Australian Short Stories, 1971) they also possess a degree of integration and an expanse of characterisation that are close to what we might find in some novels. Norman Lindsay's book, Saturdee, teeters, perhaps. on the tightrope between these two worlds. Though it is usually referred to as a novel, and it has been treated as such in this study, it is interesting to note that a chapter from this book has been included as a short story in the same collection as Hackston's extracts.

Another interesting observation about the short story of

adolescence is that we do not find such a strict correlation between the

sex of the author and the protagonist as we do in the novel. Perhaps

Vance Palmer illustrates this manifestation more than any of the other -286- established writers,with his perceptive and sensitive studies of young girls: Maxie in "The Dingo", Elsie, the aboriginal girl,in "Home"; the adolescents in "Branscombe Sisters", "Young Girls' Fancy" and

"Holiday";and the pre-adolescent girl, on the verge of a new world, in

"The Rainbow Bird". 56 Possibly the very concentration and discipline which the short story demands may have some effect on Palmer's ability to catch and momentarily sustain the feelings of a young girl to a degree not evident in his novels. In speaking of his "remarkable ability" in this way, Heseltine comments that "nothing in his treatment of women in the novels explains or predicts the shimmeringly sensitive girls who are among the genuine triumphs of his shorter fiction". 57

We have seen that the same anomaly does not exist in the creation of

Palmer's male characters. The Passage, in its portraits of Lew and

Hughie, is not qualitatively different from his many stories with a young boy protagonist. In fact, a story like "The Seahawk", from the collection referred to above, would seem to be drawn from his earlier work where Lew has much in common with the young lad, Chris, especially in their bond with the sea. Once more, Palmer shows his dexterity in creating images which are in harmony with his characters and their environment, as when he says of Chris who has come to work as a fisherman with his grandfather:

He had only been at the game since the end of summer, but already it was as if he had known no other. With the ease of a bolt slipping into an oiled socket, he had slipped into the sea's ways. (p.15)

It is the tragic irony of the story that it will be "the sea's ways" which will claim his young and beautiful body while his grandfather and the girl he loves are left to mourn him. -287-

Of the other writers with whom we have been dealing as novelists, Porter, White and Charlwood have produced some good short stories on adolescence. Porter's story, "Francis Silver", 58 is an interesting one because it covers some of the incidents referred to or described in his autobiography but treats them in a much more detached and isolated way. It is a well told story but, in my opinion, has not the personal, arresting quality of The Watcher. This would be true, too,

I think, of "Act I, Sc.I", in the same edition, (pp.51-59), which is told in the first person by a fifteen year old boy. It covers the episode of the death of the boy's mother and contains some descriptions and dialogue identical to that in the death scene of Porter's mother in

The watcher. The poignancy, however, found in the latter is almost entirely missing in the short story. There are some excellent stories in this collection where Porter's sense of humour and his flair for drama are well brought out: such as "Revenge", "Miss Rodda", "Princess

Jasmine Flower" and "Gretel". This last story, (pp. 233-246) , about a young girl who stays a few days in the protagonist's home when he is a young boy and who is "loony", though he does not realise this till much later, contains a vivid, if somewhat lush, description of a twelve-year old on the threshold of "corruption":

At the age of twelve it was too early for nature to start selling me down the river; another year, another spring, another summer, and nature would gash and tangle the strings of my voice, sprinkle hairs on me where there had been none, lubricate my eyes so that they would swivel in the direction of flesh, steam over the clear glass of my mind with the breath of lust, and tempt me to trace on this mist the first letters in the alphabet of profane love. Another spring! - but even then, already, the snake's shadow was in the cup. (p.237)

One of the best, however, is "At Aunt Sophie's", (pp.20-31),

in which a young boy is described as going each year for his holidays to -288-

his aunt's place. The story reveals the boy's realisation that, on this occasion, his aunt is treating him differently. (He is now fourteen.) The dramatic force of his realisation, experienced partly in fear, partly in regret and partly in an excitement of anticipation, is expressed very simply, with a wealth of understatement: "He is no longer a little boy" (p. 31) .

Porter's other volume, The Cats of Venice, 59 also contains some stories, like "First Love", (pp.92-106), and "Flag Race", (pp.63-74), which are precursors in theme and content to his later autobiography.

The "adolescent of sour seventeen" (p.102) in "First Love" is described in a very similar way to the young Porter in The Watcher.

In "The Followers", (pp. 200-209) , we see the change in attitude of the young boys towards the girls they have known previously, occurring with the sudden and strange sense of magic, with the same

"haunting" quality that we have noted as typical of this kind of adol­ escent experience. This is well illustrated in the following passage where the homely Minka is transformed in the eyes of the three thirteen­ year old boys: "Now, the Mink.a Skipper we had known as a craggy school­ girl, was translated into all the imagined patterns of haunting feminity. How could we not follow her, shadow her, haunt her?"

(p.203).

Many of these stories demonstrate what is valid for the art of the short story generally but what has special significance for the story of adolescence; the ability of the author to recall the past and to re­ create it with a sure sense of the adolescent's feelings at that time.

The corranent made by Kramer in the Introduction to Porter's volume of

Selected Stories is true, not merely of him but of the best short story writers in our study: -289-

he has the uncanny knack of capturing, within the wealth of detail, those objects, scenes, events and relationships which contain a solid core of truth ••• His selection of detail is, in a word, far from random. He has a preternaturally sharp eye for the objects and events that evoke the spirit of place and time, and exactly put into per­ spective a moment of experience. (p.XIII)

As with the novel, the short story offers a variety of tech- niques, some in close affiliation with the longer work of adolescence.

The majority of Porter's stories, typical of the most common approach, are written in the first person and from the point of view of adult recall yet with such a strong evocation of youth that we find, in the best of them, the same "double standard" as we noted in the novel and autobiography whereby both the adolescent and the adult are disclosed to the reader. Palmer's moving story, "Mathieson' s Wife", falls into this category, of an event told by the man but seen through the boy's eyes~and full of the excitement which love brings and the pain that follows with disillusionment, at the age of thirteen. Looking.back, the adult comments, with perspicacity: "There are happenings that fill a boy with a confused darkness he doesn't wish to explore. Forget all about it, a voice urges him; soon enough you'll be a man, and then nothing will have power to hurt". 6 O Palmer also uses, in this and many of his other stories, the escape into dreams as another outlet for the adoles­ cent faced with the rigorous demands of the real world - a characteristic which we have seen as typical of the adolescent period.

Palmer's own comment on "Mathieson' s Wife" is a valuable one, in relation to the question of point of view,for the writer dealing with

the topic of adolescence. He describes how he made several unsuccessful

attempts to turn the incidents into a story until, he writes: "suddenly it became clear that the real theme was not the old man but the young -290-

woman he had married, and her relation to the growing boy •.• also that it must be told from the boy's point of view". 61

This style has, indeed, become one of the most popular and

successful for this kind of story. There are several variants of it.

In "That Day at Brown Lakes", by Gavin Casey, the story starts with the

author as an adult addressing, in thought, his boyhood friend as they

sit drinking together: "I wonder if you remember the day we pedalled

out to the Brown Lakes?"62 He then proceeds to tell the story through

his eyes as a young boy, returning at the end to the present again - to

his thoughts about the two grown men who were the adolescents of the

story he has just recalled.

In "The Pilgrimage Year".,6 3 by D. Charlwood, the adult is also

looking back to his youth through the boy's eyes at an incident with

his cousin, Judith, of the same age 1and his grandmother who takes them

to see the place where she was shipwrecked as a young girl. One of the

features of this story is the way the author conveys the boy's awareness

of his inability to understand what his grandmother means by this pilgrim­

age while he is, at the same time, aware that Judith, as a girl, has the

insight which he lacks. (This, as we have seen in our former discussion,

is a familiar phenomenon of adolescence.) His growing realisation,

however, suggests that this experience is, for him, a pilgrimage into

the future as well as into the past.

"Party # 3'~ by Ian Waldron6} is an example of a stream-of­

consciousness style throughout the whole story, told from a first person,

adolescent viewpoint, without benefit of punctuation. It is, fortunately,

a very brief story, with a certain effect of making the reader feel he is

inside the adolescent mind. With a technique of this kind, however, as

we observed in The Chantic Bird, one needs to be rather discriminating -291-

about the kind of mind into which one is projected,and the reading of two and a half pages proves more than enough time to spend inside this part­ icular adolescent.

Some of the more successful third person stories which are, at the same time, wonderfully evocative of adolescence, are those by

Patrick White whose story, "Down at the Dump", we have already discussed.

Gwen Kelly, Margaret Trist and Amy Witting have also used this medium well. There is a very vivid story by Witting called "The Weight of a

Man" where, in drawing the comparison between the teenage schoolboy,

Potter, and the teacher, Jenny, she states at least one of the essential differences between adolescence and maturity which adults often tend to forget. In expressing Jenny's thoughts, she writes:

How unfair it was that she should know what it was like to be seventeen and he to have no idea what it was like to be thirty-two. Only too well she knew what it was like to be seventeen. She was seventeen again herself and tasting disgust, feeling the wretchedness of adolescence giddy in the void of experience. 65

In a story of adult "going back", called1 in fact, "The Return", by Barry Waters, the author recalls a distressing moment of revelation about his father when he re-visits the country town of his growing up period. He makes the comment there, in referring to how his childhood acquaintances had altered:

the important things in their lives seemed to have happened after they became adults, or they didn't care to remember how they had grown up, and there was something embarrass­ ing about confronting adults with reminders of their adolescence, the only thing that they and I had ever fully shared. 66

It is true that there is a great deal the adult does not wish -292-

to remember about his adolescence and he is usually fairly successful in suppressing it. For the protagonist in "The Return", to remember is to relive the moment of pain which is dredged up from the depths of the past. As our illustrations repeatedly show, it is, in the short story, the instant of distress, of painful insight,more than the occasion of joy and exhiliration,which the author captures.

In this brief and necessarily selective survey, we have seen how the short story, like the novel and autobiography of adolescence, often draws deeply on the author's personal experience and, even more than these two forms, utilises the first person technique to stress this personal vision. We have observed how frequently the story is told as one of recall by an adult narrator so that not only his adolescence is presented but his adult viewpoint is inculcated as well. In an approach that is particularly appropriate to its structure and techniques, the short story tends to dwell on a moment of revel­ ation in the adolescent's experience and clothes it with a significance

- often of a poetic intensity - that is a milestone in his voyage to maturity. In the best stories, as Heseltine has said of Palmer, the author has searched to achieve "a style and a tone capable of trans­ forming an incident into an epiphany". 67 And is it not during adoles­ cence, more than at any other period of our life, as Joyce has shown so magnificently, that this kind of transformation occurs?

It is too early yet to perceive clear signs of any swing

away in the short story from the subject matter of adolescence which has marked it so predominantly over the past years. There are,

however, some indications in recent editions of journals such as

Meanjin and SoutherlY,in their publication of contemporary stories1 that

the stress on adolescence and the adolescent point of view may be -293- lessening. In a lengthy review, 68 for example, by Carl Harrison-Ford of two collections by Frank Moorhouse and Michael Wilding,which were published in 1972, this theme is not mentioned either in relation to these particular stories or to the modern Australian short story generally,to which reference is made as well. We might note here that there does not seem to be, in critical comment, the same lack of aware­ ness concerning adolescence as a theme of the short story as there appears to be in relation to other literary forms. It may be assumed, therefore, that there are some signs that the writers in a maturing society and an increasingly independent country are beginning to turn away from an almost obsessional preoccupation with the themes of adolescence to a wider involvement with personal and social relation­ ships. Only the next fifty years can show how correct this assumption may be. Whatever new themes, however, which the new generation of writers may choose, it is clear that the imagination, the poetic vision, the personal intensity and the varied and skilful techniques,which mark so many of the short stories in the area which we have been discussing, should stand them in good stead. -294-

NOTES TO CHAPTER SIX

1. w. York Tindall, Forces in Modern British Literature, 1885-1956 (New York, 1956), p.146. In an Australian context, R.G. Geering refers to The Young Desire It, a first novel, which can be "accounted for as the autobiographical book about growing pains that many novelists begin with". Southerly, XXVI, l (1966), 25-39 (26).

2. See Table at end of Chapter.

3. Witham (op.cit.) suggests that the obvious reason why so many first novels in America are about adolescence is because the author has not lived long enough to experience many dramatic situations. It may not seem unreasonable to propound that, in Australia, with its pioneering days not entirely over, many authors did experience during adolescence a somewhat larger share of external dramatic situations, including droughts, floods and bushfires,which affect people in this country close to the city as well, and which made good, exciting material for their early books. This would be especially true of the literature of the twenties, thirties and forties.

4. The major exceptions are Yaralie, The Aunt's Story and Lindsay's least effective work, The Cousin from Fiji. There are several other novels, notably A Dutiful Daughter and The Tree of Man,. where there seems to be almost equal weight given to male and female major characters. In Soldiers' Women, of the four main female characters, one is an adolescent girl.

5. Though Witham also makes the point that a large number of works in his study are autobiographical, he says, in addition, that over 90% of the best novels about adolescence are centred on boys, with the excess of masculine protagonists greater than the excess of masculine writers. In our study, 50% of the best novels are centred on girls if one treats Barbara in A Dutiful Daughter as being as much in the centre as Damian.

6. H. Heseltine, "The Literary Heritage" in On Native Grounds, ed. C.B. Christesen (Sydney, 1968), pp.3-15 (p.15).

7. D. Stuart, Ilbarana and Yaralie; N. Gare, The Fringe Dwellers; Colin Johnson, Wild Cat Falling. Charlie, too, in The Harp in the South,is a part Aboriginal character. In a novel by K.S. Prichard, Coonardoo (London, 1929), not included in this survey, the author glosses over the adolescence of the Aboriginal girl of that name as well as that of the white boy, Hugh, though their relationship forms the whole basis of the book. One feels that an examination of their adolescence would have been particularly valuable in this area of aboriginal/white relationships.

8. Colin Johnson and Nene Gare. -295-

9. (Sydney, 1963)

10. The exception would be the description of K.S. Prichard's meeting with George Meredith in a scene which does momentarily come to life.

11. (New York, 1946)

12. (Sydney, 1948)

13. (New York, 1952)

14. In "Australian Fiction since 1920", op.cit., p.208.

15. The same idea is expressed in typical style by Peter in Lindsay's book,.Saturdee,when he says: "You can't blame a bloke for having a peculiar parent; plenty of very excellent blokes are afflicted with that sort of thing" (p .124) •

16. (London, 1972)

17. One of these, Fay, is also adolescent but is not presented fully or realistically enough to warrant further consideration here.

18. (Melbourne, 1973). This book should be consulted for an opposite viewpoint to mine.

19. A book by a New Zealand author, L. Bonheur, Hand me down (Sydney, 1971), provides an interesting comparison as the autobiography of a young, illegitimate girl with a severely disturbed childhood and adolescence. To read it is a very moving and totally absorb­ ing experience.

20. (Sydney, 1961)

21. H. Heseltine, "Australian Fiction since 1920" op.cit., p.213.

22. M.E. Kirkpatrick, "The Mental Hygiene of Adolescence in the Anglo­ American Culture", Mental Hygiene, N. Y., XXXVI (1952) , 394-403.

23. "Norman Lindsay's Novels", Southerly, XX, 1 (1959) , 2-9 (5).

24. My Mask (Sydney, 1970) is Lindsay's autobiographical work but it contains very little on his adolescence other than some amusing anecdotes. For reference to his brothers, see "Unpublished Letters: Norman Lindsay to Lionel Lindsay", Southerly, XXX, 4 (1970), 289-300 (especially p.296).

25. (Melbourne, 1971)

26. H. Heseltine, op.cit., suggests, truly enough, that these include "the themes of cosmopolitanism, time and the irrationality of history" (p.215), but the framework in which Boyd sets these themes is at variance, I feel, with his stated intent.

27. For a valuable examination of Harrower's two novels, see R.G. Geering, "Elizabeth Harrower's Novels: A Survey", Southerly, XXX, 2 (1970), 131-147. -296-

28. R.G. Geering makes the same point in his book,Christina Stead, op.cit., p.105, q.v. for an excellent study of Stead's work.

29. F. Kafka, Briefe, 1902-24, ed.M. Brod (Frankfurt, 1966), p.27; Letter to Oscar Pollak, January 27, 1904.

30. R.G. Geering, "Seaforth Mackenzie's Fiction: Another View", Southerly, XXVI, 1 (1966), 25-39 (39).

31. Simon op.cit. refers to the distortion in some novels of adolescence through the tendency to over-emphasize the emotional sensitivity of the protagonist in order to heighten the poignancy or to produce a comic effect (p.122). This tendency seems more characteristic of American novels - it is sometimes evident in Salinger's work, for example, - than of Australian. It is also a noticeable trend in recent American films.

32. Quoted in the Foreword to Wild Cat Falling, p.16.

33. Johnson himself stresses this point and contrasts it with the reversed position in The Catcher in the Rye. Foreword to Wild Cat Falling, p.15. Apart from the "too fallible" narrator of The Chantic Bird, this novel comes closest to the fallible narrator technique exploited by Henry James.

34. Southerly, 2 (1970) op.cit., p.137.

35. Jon Cleary's novel,You Can't See Round Corners,makes some attempt at this kind of presentation but does not really warrant serious consideration here.

36. Hurlock (op.cit.) makes this point (p.434) but she equates this phenomenon primarily with conscience. Though the "still, small voice" of conscience is often apparent in literature, writers such as Koch do not necessarily limit the voice of the other self to this function, just as it is not limited in this way in real life.

37. In "Australian Fiction since 1920", op.cit., p.213.

38. Douvan, op.cit., makes this point, p.14.

39. For Lindsay's correspondence with Lionel concerning these, see Southerly, XXX, 4 (1970), 289-300.

40. This scene is discussed on p.85 (of this thesis). (Her point is, of course, well taken if not well timed. Twelve years later, we can see the remark by "a top American swimming coach", Peter Daland, that "sport got children through the difficult years of adolescence". He adds: "Sport and the need to stay in training kept them away from drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and sex".) Sydney Morning Herald, August 30, 1974.

41. R. G. Geering, "Seaforth Mackenzie' s Fiction: Another View", Southerly, XXVI, 1 (1966), 25-39. My analysis of this novel owes much to this article which should be read for a detailed study of Mackenzie's work. -297-

42. Ibid, p.25. In the dedication to his book, Mackenzie refers to it as being "broadly true" •

43. We might note that this point of view was found to be the one most commonly used in portraying the theme of adolescence in P. Sullivan's work, Study of the adolescent as metaphor in four 18th century French novels.

44. See p.126 (of this thesis).

45. C. Hadgraft also uses this phrase about Johnston in Australian Literature, a critical account to 1955 (London, 1960), p.175.

46. Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, Vol.l, Part 1. The personal intensity of such remembrances is stressed in Porter's reply to a query as to whether he read his own books: "'One does not drink one's own blood'". Hal Porter, "Answers to the Funny, Kind Man", Southerly, XXIX, 1 (1969), 3-14 (4).

47. H. Heseltine, "Australian Literature since 1920", op.cit., p.213.

48. In my opinion, this would be true, for example, of Mackenzie, Porter and Johnston.

49. (Melbourne, 1971)

50. L. Kramer, "Martin Boyd", Australian Quarterly, XXXV, 2 (1963), 32-38 (36). This article should be read for an opposing viewpoint on Boyd although it does not contain much detailed reference to A Difficult Young Man.

51. H. Heseltine, op.cit., p.215.

52. Ibid, p.222.

53. To cite just a few: In Vance Palmer's Collection, Sea and Spinifex (Australia, 1934) and Hal Porter's volume, Selected Stories, chosen by L. Kramer (Sydney, 1971), nearly half the stories are about adolescence. In Best Australian Short Stories, ed. by D. Stewart and B. Davis (Hawthorn, 1971), a third of them are. Surveys of Southerly and Coast to Coast collections, reinforce a similar predominance.

54. Short Stories of Australia: The Moderns (Sydney,1967) Introduction, p.IX.

55. In Best Australian Short Stories ed. by D. Stewart and B. Davis, pp.203-227.

56. All these stories are printed in the collection entitled Sea and Spinifex, op.cit.

57. H. Heseltine, Vance Palmer (Queensland, 1970), p.160.

58. Hal Porter, Selected Stories, pp.210-220.

59. (Sydney, 1965) -298-

60. In The Rainbow Bird and Other Stories, selected by Allan Edwards (Sydney, 1957) p.115.

61. In Appendix II, pp.123-4, in The Rainbow Bird and Other Stories, op.cit.

62. In Best Australian Short Stories, op.cit., p.263.

63. Ibid, pp.269-280.

64. Southerly, XXXII, 2 (1972), 101-104.

65. In Short Stories of Australia: The Moderns, op.cit., pp.288-293 (p. 292) •

66. Southerly, XXXIII, 2 (1973), 105-117 (105).

67. Vance Palmer, op.cit., p.146.

68. "The short stories of Wilding and Moorhouse", Southerly, XXXIII, 2 (1973), 167-178. TABLE OF AGE DISTRIBUTION FOR EACH WORKIN SURVEY

(Novels and Autobiographies only are included)

Twenties Thirties Forties Fifties Sixties Seventies Eighties is.Holly Jones (20) +E.Harrower (30) *D.Ireland (41) J.Waten (50) X.Herbert (61) M.Boyd (72) +K.S.Prichard (80) *S.Mackenzie (24) J.Cleary (30) tN.Gare (42) D.Charlwood (50) M.Boyd (62) F.D.Davison (75) tR.Lindsay (83) *C.Koch (26) R.Stow (30) +C.Stead (42) N.Lindsay (51) J.Hetherington (64) +N.Adams (76) +K.Tennant (27) W.Dick (32) J.Cleary (42) P.Cowan (52) *R.McKie (65) +H.H.Richardson (78) *C.Johnson (27) tE.Langley (34) P.White (43) G.Johnston (52) N.Lindsay (66) ic.Rohan (34) +M.Trist (44) H.Porter (52) N.Lindsay (68) +T.Astley (35) I. Southall (44) I.Southall (52) T.Keneally (36) V.Palmer (45) N.Lindsay (54) P.White (36) D.Horne (46) J.Waten (55) +E.Harrower (38) J.Aldridge (48) G.Mcinnes (55) +C.Stead (38) *E. Lowe (49) *J.Couper (56) D.Stuart (49) D.Stuart (58) J.Lindsay (58) J.Couper (59)

Total: 5 Total: 11 Total: 12 Total: 14 Total: 6 Total: 4 Total: 2

Indicates age at which work was published. Total authors in survey = 43 (14 women, 29 men) * Indicates first work (novel or autobiography). Total works in survey = 55 (16 by women, 39 by men) + Indicates female author. Total first works in survey= 13 ( 6 by women, 7 by men)

(These numbers include Ruth Park who is not listed above as her age is unprocurable.) CHAPTER SEVEN

Conclusion -300-

CHAPTER SEVEN

Conclusion

It is in literature that the concrete outlook of a country receives its expression. Accordingly it is to literature that we must look •••• if we are to discover the inward thoughts of a generation.

Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

Looking at English literature of the latter half of the nineteenth century, Coveney comments on the remarkable phenomenon of the society of that time taking, as he expresses it:

the child (with all its potential significance as a symbol of fertility and growth) and (2reating] of it a literary image, not only of frailty, but of life extinguished, of life that is better extinguished, of life, so to say, rejected, negated at its very root. (p.193)

Looking at the last fifty years of literature in Australia, we have found that it is the image of the adolescent which has emerged as a literary phenomenon, symbol of the age through which Australia itself has been passing; an age fraught with difficulties and adjustments, sometimes despair and, recalling Heseltine's phrase, "hopelessness in the face of experience"i but more often vibrating with the vitality, resilience and creativity inherent in the period of adolescence. It is the uniqueness of this relationship between the country and its liter­ ature which we have tried to show in this study while acknowledging, at the same time, that the novel of adolescence is seen by many critics to be a twentieth century phenomenon in England and America also. -301-

Throughout this thesis, we have stressed the special con­ tribution of the works examined to an understanding of adolescence. We have, in addition, indicated that many of them offer an enlightening commentary on social values. Nevertheless, we have observed that the fast changing contemporary values and the repercussions of changes in recent legal innovations and social attitudes are not, as yet, widely represented.

The picture of an Australian adolescent drawn by McGregor in his quite recent book, Profile of Australia (1966), and substantiated elsewhere - "affluent, city bred, educated, mainly middle class, and the product of a changing and restless society" (p.278) - is not, as we have seen, the one that emerges pre-eminently from the Australian novel and autobiography of the last fifty years. Nor has there been much stress given to the changing role of women in our society or to the special adjustments which the migrant adolescent needs to make in a new country. 1

I would propose that the reasons for the seeming discrepancy between the actual and the fictional representation of the adolescent and for the absence of some important social manifestations are closely related to the fact that most of the works in our survey are set in a period of twenty years ago or more and cannot, therefore, pretend to reflect the contemporary scene. This circumstance, again, seems related to two other phenomena in our research: firstly, that the literature of adolescence is often of an autobiographical nature and the author is, therefore, frequently drawing on his own experience, even in the novel and short story; and secondly, that his book of adolescence is rarely a first publication so that it follows that this experience belongs, necessarily, to a period well in the past. We have discussed -302-

how these factors have affected style and point of view, resulting in many first person works and in a frequent approach by the author to his material which involves looking back and remembering. while relating his youth to the man he now is.

In a survey of all novels, autobiographies and short stories selected for this research, we have evaluated their contribution to our subject and examined many of them closely from a standpoint o1 literary criticism. The results of our study have shown a small group of out­ standing works, able to stand on their own in relation to world writing of a similar kind; a group, at the other extreme, of indifferent or uneven books which warrant consideration as part of a survey of this nature but which are lacking in various particulars of style, form or originality; and a large, central collection of works which have made a competent and worthwhile offering to the literature of adolescence.

We have observed, in all three categories, the variation that can be found in literature,with an adolescent protagonist, in the degree to which the author makes a contribution towards the mere depiction of adolescence or towards the creation of a "felt understanding of the quality of adolescent life". 2

We have discussed the relationship of this kind of literature to the sciences of psychology and sociology and have seen, from time to time, how illuminating and penetrating are the insights which emerge from it. Referring to literature in the "popular" field - and I take this to include fiction and autobiography - Gottlieb and Ramsay, in The American

Adolescent, recommend a close look at some of its assumptions since, they say, "these represent the popular image of adolescents among adults".

They continue: "Many of the assumptions are made or tested by authors of more scientific, if less readable, articles on the subject" (pp. 200-201). -303-

We have frequently found how often the novelist has revealed to the reader the essential spirit of adolescence,as he sees it,in ways that do, surely, make his book more "readable". We have discovered how the creative writer has recreated the profundity of feeling, the shifting uncertainties of this period; how he has recalled its springs of hope and winters of despair, its wisdom, its foolishness, its seasons of light and darkness; 3 how he has captured its haunting, nostalgic atmosphere - using the tools that are forged in the fires of poetry and imagination.

In discussing the child in English fiction, R.L. Barnes has argued that novelists such as Hughes and Golding have done a great service "by shedding a powerful light of truth on the real nature of the child and stripping it of some of its most hallowed misconceptions"

(p.178). The first part of this statement would certainly apply to the adolescent as presented in our study (actually Barnes's use of the word

"child" in this connection would include some adolescent characters as well) but I would postulate that the latter argument is not applic­ able to our thesis. 4 On the contrary, the adolescent, as he emerges from the works in this survey, confirms, as we have seen, many of the assumptions made both by parents and psychologists~ though not always within an up-to-date framework. Another important reservation, to which we referred in the first chapter, is that the conflicts and unhappiness which beset so many of the fictional or semi-fictional characters of the novels and autobiographies are not necessarily present to such a degree or in such close concentration in the "average", real-life adolescent.

(This is one reason, I think, why our sympathy tends to lie predomin­ antly with the adolescents themselves in these works rather than with the parents.) One would need, however, to balance this picture by remembering the happiness and satisfactions which many of these characters -304-

also attain, especially in the creative field, and the optimism and resilience with which they go forth "into life". Our findings here would concur with those of R.L. Barnes, when he says that:

The literature of childhood and adolescence in the twentieth century reveals three main types of protagonist ••• the one who suffers the initiation into good-and-evil and survives it, the one who fails to do so and is physically maimed, and the one who rejects the initiation altogether and regresses into a private fantasy world of perpetual adoles­ cence. It is perhaps a cause for optimism that of the three, it is the first that is the most numerous. (p.323)

"When we have passed a certain age",wrote Proust, "the soul of the child that we were, and the souls of the dead from whom we spring, come and bestow upon us in handfuls their treasures and their calamities". 6

Treasures and calamities! The major part of this thesis has been a study of the characteristics of the Australian adolescent as portrayed in the works under review, together with the images which have been used in his portrayal, and we have seen, indeed, that the role of the adolescent is centred around his capacity to deal with the legacy of his past. Throughout his transition from child~ood to early adoles­ cence, in his budding sexuality, in his mental and spiritual growth, through his search for an identity and his changing relationships, especially within the family, and in his first sexual experience - in all of these have we seen the adolescent struggling with the inner reality of himself to emerge to a greater or lesser maturity, depending on his individual circumstances and on his determining past. It is often a difficult journey during which the child must die, for the contact with experience and death disrupts, as New suggests, "the

Blakean harmony of the child's sense of completion" (p.189). The -305- conflict with his family and the need to break the maternal cord are strong. But, as we have pointed out before, adolescence is rarely a negative stage. It is closer, in its essential meaning, to the Romantic idea of the integration of the human personality, of the striving towards an attainment of a Higher Innocence, of continuing growth and maturation, or rebirth leading to eventual emergence as an adult.

The conflict of this period need not, therefore, be disruptive but may be seen as a necessary and common adjunct to the process of

"becoming". In this respect, the generation gap, so widely acclaimed a stumbling block, may serve as a syndrome to be desired, the positive characteristics of which can act as a source of support and encouragement to the adolescent in the resolution of his problems. If seen in its true perspective, the generation gap is merely evidence of the fact that adol­ escents are, in some ways, different from adults. This is a truth, surely, that most of us would want to confirm rather than deny. Indeed, a great deal of the antagonism apparent in the clashes between the adolescents and their parents in our survey has been due to a lack of recognition and respect, on both sides, of this one fact.

The images of spring, the mirror and the voyage have helped to convey many of these concepts and to enhance,through feeling, assoc­ iation and clarification~the representation of the phenomena of adol­ escence. While recognising the universality of these ideas and images, we have seen also their particular adaptation to and specific purpose in

Australian literature. We have found that the literature of adolescence in this study does often possess the richness and uniqueness which spring from "the characteristics of a particular time and locality and the life that is in it". 7 -306-

In summing up the contribution of the novel and autobiography to an understanding of the vital period of adolescence, we can see that it has made more intelligible the role played by parents, especially the mother. One would expect that the sensitive reader would be made more aware of the adolescent's problems in this area.

By seeing the parents portrayed so often through the adolescent's eyes, we are moved to an empathic understanding of the way in which he sees the adult world. Such recognition is not only a first step towards trying to comprehend why the adolescent behaves as he does or, in fact, why parents behave as they do but it is also a pointer to the motivation of human behaviour in general. Just as the literature of adolescence reveals the qualities deemed desirable for maturation in our society, so it prompts us to question those qualities - as many adolescents to-day are doing - and to decide whether there are adjustments which we, as adults, would like to make. This last issue seems to me, as we suggested at the beginning of this thesis, a particularly relevant one.

There is a noticeable trend to-day, in Australia as elsewhere, for young adults or even middle-aged ones to adopt the values of the adolescent rather than, as in the past, the adolescent seeing his maturity in terms of adult goals. It is, at the same time, becoming more fashionable and more "normal" amongst sections of older adolescents within the connnunity to reject society as it is1 or at least to attempt to change it,to meet their own needs. Their efforts in these directions seem to be both more significant and more successful than ever before, reflecting the tend­ ency expressed in Margaret Mead's statement, as quoted on the first page of this thesis, concerning adolescents being more "at home" in to-day's world than their parents. It is difficult to conclude with any validity just how widespread or how transitory these trends are. One recognises, too, their inherent complexities and, at times, contradictions. -307-

It is clear, however, as comments through the mass media and from representatives of the areas of psychology and sociology8 indicate, that their presence is recognised. It seems reasonable to expect that the novel and autobiography of adolescence in the future may explore~ increasingly.,, themes of such relevance and potential conflict •

some of these manifestations, together with the many others we have perceived in the literature under examination, stress the creative aspect of the adolescent symbol. Thompson expresses the same idea when he writes recently (1971) that "the innovative contribution of the adolescent to the cultural mainstream is much more pervasive than suspected" - and adds significantly - "and is largely ignored". He goes on to discuss the adolescent's capacity to trigger growth in adults and concludes: "Since the essence of his being is growth and becoming, the adolescent offers both a challenge and opportunity to grow with and through him". 9 So, in literature, as Melito says: "Themes of adoles- cence are themes of man-becoming" (p. 2).

Such a conclusion accords with what we have found in our study of the adolescent in Australian literature over the last fifty years.

As we noted in the preceding chapter, there are some indications now of a turn away from adolescence to more generalised themes, to those of

"man-become", to the conflicts of the more mature world. New, writing in 1965, of English and Commonwealth novels, makes this point:

What one can expect of forthcoming literature would seem to be an even greater lessening of mature interest in the concept of maturation. With emphasis moving more and more to the position of the adult situation, accepting almost as axiomatic that this can in fact be reached, there would seem to be a concomitantly diminishing need to depict the adolescent under­ going an age of change or thereby to use matur­ ation as a metaphor for the human condition being presently encountered. (p.367) -308-

It is too early yet to see how prevalent this new movement is,

in what specific directions it will flow, or how nearly it is integrated within the growth of Australia itself. We can only agree, again with

New, when, in discussing the attempts of Stow and White to challenge the

Australian identity, he comments:

But though this questioning of the bases upon which that society rests will hopefully not lead to any relinquishment of the character­ istic identity already established, it has already led to Australia being one of the most energetic and perhaps even turbulent areas for the creation of fictional art in recent years. (p.382)

Our final prognosis is that the future of Australian literature

in being closely linked, like the adolescent, with the past, will be

determined by major themes of the past and that one of the most crucial

of these will be, we contend, that of adolescence. In this research, we

have endeavoured to show that it is this theme which will remain as

having made an outstanding contribution to the establishment of a

literary tradition in this country1 that it is this theme which, with

its special relevance to our society, will play a prominent part in any

future historical assessment of Australian literature. Finally, it is the

literature of adolescence, in its inherent capacity to enlarge our sym­

pathies and understanding, which has provided us with the opportunity to

feel more profoundly and more generously, to perceive more fully and

more keenly the implications and the repercussions of the adolescent

experience. 10 -309-

NOTES 'ID CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION

1. An interesting article on the integration of Italian migrants in Australia by Jan McGuinness appears in The National Times, April 22-27, 1974. Reference is made in it to a sociology thesis on this subject produced in 1973 by Elenora Friggi.

2. A phrase used by Nichols, op.cit., p.88, in reference to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

3. Recalling the opening paragraph of Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (London, 1949):

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair... (p.l)

This description of France at the time of the Revolution, a period which might be seen as manifesting many adolescent characteristics, is a further example of the close analogy between the state of a country in certain periods of its development and that of a human being.

4. It is of interest to note that one of the main characteristics to which Barnes is referring here is the child's cruelty. I do not think that the adolescent, with his deepening sensibility, is seen to manifest this characteristic to the same degree.

5. See also, in this connection, R.S. Alm, A Study of the assumptions concerning human experience underlying certain works of fiction written for and about adolescents. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Minnesota, 1954}.

6. La Prisonniere (trans. by C.K. Scott-Moncrieff}. Quoted at the beginning of M. Boyd, The Cardboard Crown (Melbourne, 1971}, p.7.

7. J.M. Synge, Notebook No.42 (1908), in J.M. Synge: Collected Works, II (London, 1966) ed. A. Price, p.350.

8. Sebald and Jarvis, op.cit., would be only two of many who discuss these developments, particularly the changing role of the adol­ escent in to-day's world. See also, Note 2, Chapter One, of this thesis.

9. O.E. Thompson, "Adolescent Personality", in Contemporary Adolescent Readings ed. H.D. Thornburg, op.cit., pp.406-407.

10. This concluding sentence is adapted from a statement by Alm, op.cit., pp.44-45, on all works of art. -310-

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

1) Novels and Autobiographies Selected for Survey

ADAMS, Nancy Family Fresco. Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1966.

ALDRIDGE, J. My Brother Tom. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966.

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BOYD, M. Day of My Delight. Melbourne: Lansdowne, 1965.

CHARLWOOD, D. All the Green Year. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1965.

CLEARY, J. The Sundowners. New York: Scribner, 1952.

CLEARY, J. You Can't See Round Corners. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1948.

COUPER, J.M. Looking For a wave. London: The Bodley Head, 1973.

COUPER, J.M. The Thundering Good Today. London: The Bodley Head, 1970.

COWAN, P. Seed. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1966.

DAVISON, F.D. The White Thorntree. Vol.I. Sydney: Ure Smith, 1970.

DICK, W. Naked Prodigal. Melbourne: Hutchinson, 1969.

GARE, Nene The Fringe Dwellers. London: Heinemann, 1961.

HARROWER, Elizabeth The Long Prospect. London: Cassell, 1958.

HARROWER, Elizabeth The Watch Tower. London: MacMillan, 1966.

HERBERT, X. Soldiers' Women. London: Panther Books, 1972. ITst pub. 196a

HETHERINGTON, J. The Morning was Shining. London: Faber and Faber, 1971.

HORNE, D. The Education of Young Donald. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1967.

IRELAND, D. The Chantic Bird. London: Heinemann, 1968.

JOHNSON I c. Wild Cat Falling. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966. [lst pub. 196~ -311-

JOHNSTON, G. My Brother Jack. London: Fontana Books, 1968. 11st pub. 196{1_

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KOCll, C. The Boys in the Island. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1958.

LANGLEY, Eve The Pea Pickers. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1958. )Ist pub. 194IJ

LINDSAY, J. Life RareLy Tells. London: The Bodley Head, 1958.

LINDSAY, N. Halfway to Anywhere. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1972. l}st pub. 1942]

LINDSAY, N. Redheap. Sydney: Ure Smith, 1966. IIst- pub.193[1- LINDSAY, N. Saturdee. Sydney: The Endeavour Press, 1933.

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McKIE, R. The Mango Tree. Sydney: Collins, 1974.

PALMER, V. The Passage. Melbourne: Robertson & Mullins, 1944. [fst pub. 193:[I

PARK, Ruth The Harp in the South. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1955. (Ist pub. 194fil

PORTER, H. The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony. London: Faber and Faber, 1966. ffit pub. 1963 I

PRICHARD, Katharine S. Child of the Hurricane. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1963.

RIClIARDSON, Henry Handel Myself When Young. London: Heinemann, 1948.

ROHAN, Criena The Delinquents. London: Gollancz, 1962. -312-

SOUTHALL, I. Ash Road. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1965.

SOUTHALL, I. Matt and Jo. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1973.

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STEAD, Christina The Man Who Loved Children. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970. [!st pub. 194~

STOW, R. The Merry-go-round in the Sea. London: Macdonald, 1965.

STUART, D. Ilbarana. Melbourne: Georgian House, 1971.

STUART, D. Yaralie. Melbourne: Georgian House, 1962.

TENNANT, Kylie Foveaux. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1968. l}st pub. 193[1

TRIST, Margaret Morning in Queensland. London: W.H. Allen, 1958.

WATEN, J. Season of Youth. Melbourne: Cheshire, 1966.

WATEN, J. Time of Conflict. Sydney: Australasian Book Society, 1961.

WHITE, P. The Aunt's Story. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. [!st pub. 194~

WHITE, P. The Tree of Man. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. [fst pub. 195~ -313-

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2) Short Stories Selected for Survey

ASTLEY, Thea Selected by. Coast to Coast: 1969-1970. Sydney; Angus & Robertson, 1970.

BAIL, M. "Albie". In Coast to Coast: 1969-1970. Selected by Astley, Thea. (Sydney, 1970), pp.1-7.

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FORSHAW, Thelma "The Wowser". In Best Australian Sho.:rt Stories. Ed. Stewart, D. and B. Davis. (Hawthorn, 1971), pp.259-303.

HACKS TON , J. Father Clears Out. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1966.

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KELLY, Gwen "Mini-Skirts". In Coast to Coast: 1969-1970. Selected by Astley, Thea. (Sydney, 1970), pp.114-119. -314-

LEE, Alwyn "The Corvidae". In Best Australian Short Stories. Ed. Stewart, D. and B. Davis. (Hawthorn, 1971), pp.318-330.

PALMER, V. Sea and Spinifex. Australia: The Shakespeare Head Press, 1934.

PALMER, V. The Rainbow Bird and Other Stories. Selected by Edwards, A. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1957.

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PORTER, H. The Cats of Venice. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1965.

RI 0:IARDSON, Henry Handel The End of a Childhood and Other Stories. London: Heinemann, 1934.

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ANJOU, R. "Francine" in Western Humanities Review, Autumn, 1968.

ASTLEY, Thea Girl with a Monkey. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1958.

AUSTEN, Jane Northanger Abbey. London: Chatto & Windus, 1966. Jlst pub. 101fil

BONHEUR, Leigh Hand Me Down; the autobiography of an illegitimate child. Sydney: Ure Smith, 1971.

BINGHAM, Charlotte Coronet Among the weeds. London: Heinemann, 1963.

BOYD, M. The Cardboard Crown. Melbourne: Lansdowne, 1971. I}.st pub. 195~

BOYD, M. When Blackbirds Sing. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1962.

BUTLER, S. The Way of All Flesh. New York: Windsor, 1935. l}.st pub. 190~

CARY, J. Charley is my Darling. London: Michael Joseph, 1961. _ITst pub. 1940]

CLARKE, M. For the Term of his Natural Life. Melbourne: Hallcraft, 1963. [Ist pub. 1870-7~

DE BEAUVOIR, Simone Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. [}st pub. 195§:}

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DICKENS, C. David Copperfield. London: Macmillan, 1954. Q.st pub. 185ii]

DUMAS I A. The Road to Monte Carlo. Ed. Eckert, J. New York: Charles Scribner, 1956. -316-

ELIOT, George The Mill on the Floss. New York: The New American Library, 1965. _[fst pub. 1860]

FARRELL, J.T. Studs Lonigan (a trilogy). New York: The Modern Library, 1938. ITst pub. 193Ij

FRANK, Anne The Diary of a Young Girl. New York: Doubleday, 1952.

FRANKLIN, Miles My Brilliant Career. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1966. ITst pub. 190IJ

FURPHY, J. Such is Life. Hawthorn: Lloyd O'Neil, 1970. fist pub. 190I1

GARNER, A. Red Shift. London: Collins, 1973.

GOLDING, W. Lord of the Flies. London: Faber & Faber, 1954.

GOSSE, E. Father and Son. Hannondsworth: Penguin, 1970. [1st pub. 190fj

HUGHES, R. A High Wind in Jamaica. London: Chatto & Windus, 1929.

JAMES, Henry Hawthorne. London: Macmillan, 1967. [fst pub .187[!

JAMES, Henry The Awkward A~. London: The Bodley Head, 1967. ITst pub. 109~

JAMES, Henry What Maisie Knew. London: O.U.P., 1966. list pub. 189ij

JOYCE, J. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. I}.st pub. 19ifj

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MARTIN, D. Where a Man Belongs. Melbourne: Cassell, 1969.

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MCCULLERS, Carson The Member of the Wedding. London: Cresset Press, 1958.

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PRIMARY SOURCES

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CLARK, Robert "To my son on his sixteenth birthday". In On Native Grounds. Ed. Christesen, C.B. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1968, p.439.

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GIBRAN, Kahili (d.1930) "You may give them your love but not your thoughts". Quoted without reference in Childhood and Adolescence, Hadfield, J.A. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970, p.281. ITst pub. 196~

HOOPER, Ellen S. (d.1841) "Life a Duty". In The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. London: World Books, 1969, p.107.

LAWSON, Henry "Shearers". Henry Lawson. Collected Verse. Ed. Roderick, c. Vol.II. 1901-1909. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1968.

LEVERINGTON, Fiona (b.1958) "Ropes". In The Australian, April 9, 1972.

MATHERS, E. Powys "A Street Song of Annam". Quoted without reference in The Mind Alive, Overstreet, H. and B. London: Peter Davies, 1956, p.36.

McAULEY, James "Envoi". James McAuley. Selection and Intro­ duction by the author. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1963.

NEILSON, John Shaw "The Child We Lost". In Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson. Ed. Croll, R.H. Melbourne: Lothian, 1934.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Title Page: Festival at Nimbin, May, 19730 Photo by RoGo Watson

Frontispiece: Head of a Girl, circa 1950, Drawing by Justin O'Brien. In Outlines of Australian Art: The Joseph Brown Collection (Melbourne, 1973), p. 92. Daniel Thornaso

Page 45 Two Drawings by Norman Lindsay. In Saturdee (Sydney, 1961), pp. 136, 1500

Page 46 1) Drawing by Norman Lindsayo In Saturdee, Po 670 2) Photo of an Aboriginal excluded from camp during the period of initiation, Central Australiao In The Australian Aborigines (Sydney, 1964), Po 171. A.P. Elkin.

Between pp. 50 - 51 "Girls are sillier at first but boys keep it up longer"o Drawing by Norman Lindsayo In Halfway to Anywhere (London, 1947), p. 11

Between pp. 59 - 60 "Bill and Waldo laughed loudly, in carefree rejection of Ma, the home and the earth generally"o Drawings by Norman Lindsay. In Halfway to Anywhere, PPo68, 190.

Between pp. 78 - 79 "A man's got to have his affairs of the heart"o Drawing by Norman Lindsay. In Halfway to Anywhere, p. 98,

Page 187 "For a bloke must have a friend". Drawing by Norman Lindsay. In Halfway to Anywhere, Po 46

Between pp. 183-184 "By my hope and faith, I conjure ye, Throw not away the hero in your soul.," Photos from "Surfing World," XX, 2 (1974), 20, 310

Page 213 The image of the voyage. Photo by Ro G. Watson.,