University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 1954-2016 University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 1989 The shifting weather: affinity, diversity, and the place of the author in six novels of the Depression era Audrey May Heycox University of Wollongong Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses University of Wollongong Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorise you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. You are reminded of the following: This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this work may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the permission of the author. 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For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] THE SHIFTING WEATHER Affinity, Diversity, and the Place of the Author in Six Novels of the Depression Era. UNIVERSITY OP WOLLONGONG LIBRARY A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree MASTER OF ARTS (Honours) from THE UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG by Audrey May Heycox B.A.(Hons) Department of English 1989 CONTENTS Page Acknowledgments i i i Preci s iV Editions Used v Introducti on 1 Chapter One 'Ideological Challenge': Places three novels in the context of the Australian democratic tradition, and reveals that, for two of these authors, socialism represents an ideal rather than a political position. Chapter Two 'Artistic Challenge': 81 Finds elements of modernism in the work of three Australian writers. Chapter Three 'Existential Challenge': 143 The existential focus of this thesis now rests on the subjective experience of certain characters in novels by M.Barnard Eldershaw and Kylie Tennant. Conclusi on 182 Bibli ography 187 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks go to my supervisors, William McGaw and James Wieland; to Bill for his input in the early stages of this work, and Jim for his close involvement with the final draft. To English Department staff members, Dorothy Jones, Ray Southall, Rod McConchie and Paul Sharrad for taking the time to discuss matters pertaining to this thesis; to my Post Graduate colleagues, Gwen and Michael for their moral support. And, finally, to my long-suffering husband, Clyde. With a feeling of profound gratitude to my country for giving me this opportunity to learn, I submit this dissertation in the belief that there is room in the academic world for the writing of a lateral thinker who finds it impossible to take a narrow focus on life, or on the art which portrays it. ^.M.H. 1 V PRECIS Tn an analysis of six novels this dissertation looks at the way four authors reacted creatively to the challenge presented by the Great Depression and World War II. The features that these works have in common are numerous and significant from a literary viewpoint, and reflect their common genesis. Regardless of their affinities, however, we can appreciate that diversity of style and presentation which is to be expected from individual authors as a result of their personal and unique points of view. Furthermore, when we penetrate their surface preoccupation with social matters, and when we read these works from a perspective of world literature, as well as Australian literature, we find qualities of literariness and language that have largely gone unrecognised by critics of these novels. At least three of the authors studied reveal a modernist sensibility which breaks with the traditional chronological forms of the novel, and questions the function of the artist in a troubled world. Another parallel feature to be found in the novels of this time is a moral and philosophical stance on matters of social justice from the broad perspective of international affairs, while they continue to carry the democratic banner -of earlier Australian writers. The discussion focuses on the way the authors resolve the artistic problems raised by their socially critical stance by using the existential consciousness of their characters to portray coevally the problems of human existence and those of contemporary society. THE NOVELS Page numbers used in this thesis are from the following edi t i ons. Eleanor Dark, The Little Company. London, The Virago Press, 1985. Waterway. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, Sirius Edition, 1979. M. Barnard Eldershaw, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, London, The Virago Press, 1983. J.M. Harcourt, Upsurge. Nedlands, University of Western Australia Press, Facsimile Edition, 1986. Kylie Tennant, The Battlers. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, A&R Classics, 1976. Ride on Stranger. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, Sirius Edition, 1980. (With occasional reference to these other Tennant novels) Foveaux. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, Sirius Edition, 1981. Tell Morning This. Sydney, A and R Sirius Edition, 1981. Tiburón. Sydney, A and R Sirius Edition, 1981. INTRODUCTION Or seven stubborn words drawn close together As a hewn charm against the shifting weather. (Chris Wallace-Crabbe, 'A Wintry Manifesto'). If Australian writers of the thirties and forties did not fully exploit the Great Depression as subject matter, as has been the opinion of several literary historians,^ it is because they saw the slump as symptomatic of a wider disorder in the Western world. However, it can be seen in the considerable amount of fiction that was produced that the unrest of the period was sufficient catalyst to unleash a surge of creativity. The Great Depression, its final years aggravated by the imminence of World War II, and the war itself with its blitz of the world's great cities, culminating in the destruction of Hiroshima, presented writers with a special impetus which cannot be contained in the notion of subject matter. Much of the fiction that was produced here in the thirties and forties was generated in a mood of disquietude caused by the anxieties of the age and a compulsion to confront them and explore them artistically. The mass unemployment and the following war, with its widespread disruption of life See Ian Reid, Fiction and the Great Depression: Australia and New Zealand 1930-1950. Melbourne, Edward Arnold, 1979. Reid cites Fred Alexander (Australia Since Federation. p.128); Geoffrey Serle (From Deserts the Prophets Come, p.1232); Stephen Murray-Smith, and Ian Turner (in Geoffrey Dutton, ed.. The Literature of Australia. 1964 edition), as being amonst those who say that the Depression made no noticeable impact on Australian writers. Reid repudiates these statements by demonstrating the catalytic effect of the phenomenon on writers, both here and in New Zealand. 3 0009 02898 2648 and property, were seen by many writers as evidence of grave flaws in the Western capitalist system, and the large number of novels that were produced reflects their concern with the problems of society and its individual members, and for the ultimate destiny of humanity as a whole. This thesis examines six novels of the period 1930- 1947 in which the moral dilemmas of capitalism and the artistic problems which a society in a state of crisis presents to the creative writer are held in tension. The novels to be discussed are Eleanor Dark's Waterway (1938), and The Little Company C1945); Kylie Tennant's The Battlers (1941), and Ride on Stranger (1943); M. Barnard Eldershaw's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1947); and J.M.Harcourt's Upsurge (1934). Although my title specifies the Depression era, as Ian Reid reveals, depressed and depressing conditions applied in Australia at least up to 1950.^ Furthermore, the advent of World War II was crucial to the creative impetus of at least two of these novels, and links between the Depression and the war which followed are well established in all but Upsurge. the earliest of the six. I want to analyse the novels, both as fiction, and in the context of their authors' ideological and humanist convictions which led them to put contemporary events on a philosophical rather than a political plane. They reveal that the preachings of Christ and Karl Marx were basically of the same thrust. Both expounded ideals which, because of the nature of Man, are Utopian more than 1. Reid, Fiction and theGreat Depression. Introduction. they are practical.^ My choice of texts was influenced by the fact that these novels, separately and collectively, capture the tenor of an era, one which saw Australian writers become aware of the social upheavals in countries geographically remote from Australia. They are of further interest because they reflect artistic developments in the modern novel. In accord with David Carter, I recognise a tension in these novels between the creative imagination and a socially critical imperative. As Carter says: 'This ambivalent status is characteristic of documentary and socially critical fiction, which both claims and disclaims art in order to establish its own truth.