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A Study of Adolescence in the Australian Novel, Autobiography and Short Story

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A Study of Adolescence in the Australian Novel, Autobiography and Short Story 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.
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