Misogyny?? In AUSTRALIAN literature?? It's more likely than you think.

We're all consumers of media.

So, surely, we can all agree that the perspectives of the media platform greatly impacts consumer perspectives.

Think Fox News vs ABC vs Twitter. 

This is true even in 19th-century Australia.

In the years leading up to federation, nationalistic sentiment flooded the papers and their readers, none more than from The Bulletin. 

"Australia for the Australians" - The Bulletin's motto.

(The Bulletin was a weekly newspaper, with a reach of 800,000 papers published at its peak. It's been called 'the bushman's bible', focusing on publishing stories promoting an Australian identity. The Bulletin was home to many now-famous authors - Banjo Patterson, Henry Lawson, Barbara Baynton)

So, as a literary influence on perceptions of their culture and in constructing an Australian identity, The Bulletin must be considered highly significant. 

Let’s see what Bulletin editor A.G. Stephens wrote about Australia’s literary potential in 1901:

"Every man who roams the Australian wilderness is a potential knight of Romance; every man who grapples with the Australian desert for a livelihood might sing a Homeric chant of history, or listen, baffled and beaten, to an Aeschylean dirge of defeat. The marvels of the adventurous are our daily common-places."

…Isn’t there something, or someones, missing from this ideal Australia?

Much can be said about the racism of colonial Australia, but it's equally important to acknowledge the misogyny of publishing platforms at the time.

If we read one of their most famous stories, The Drover's Wife (1892), through a feminist lens, we can reveal its callous oppression of femininity.  

Wait.

But why bother looking at old stories through a different perspective?

Because, as a modern audience, we aren't bound by the ideological perspectives of 19th-century Australia. 

In fact, we should instead employ the perspectives that exist in our context to re-examine how past stories appear to us today. 

If we want to look to them as the root of our identity, we must address that their ideals of Australia are very different from ours. 

The Drover’s Wife

As a celebration of persistence against the dangers of the Australian bush, The Drover’s Wife (1892) excels.

 

As a work of feminism?

It fails.

A mainstream reading may examine the ‘revolutionary’ subversion of traditional gender roles in Lawson’s short story, which places the feminine protagonist at the front of heroic struggles to protect her young family.

In fact, The Drover’s Wife has been adapted several times, most famously into a film by Leah Purcell: The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson, which is widely considered a feminist re-imagining.

 
So, surely, the original story is a feminist inspiration?

However, through a feminist lens, the titular character’s subservience to patriarchal structures is romanticised, and femininity is portrayed as unsuitable for their chauvinist ideals of 'being Australian'.

Maintenance of traditional power dynamics

Firstly, male economic control and autonomy at the expense of female entrapment is dismissed, maintaining and romanticising the traditional power dynamic between genders as ‘Australian’.

“He may forget sometimes that he is married; but if he has a good cheque when he comes back he will give most of it to her.”

Note how the syntax is arranged so that ‘a good cheque’ is conveyed as a reasonable explanation for his implied infidelity, and how her tone is matter-of-fact throughout the whole passage, highlighting the normality of infidelity.

Since it is narratively impossible for her to know of his behaviour, this suggests that she instead draws her conclusion based on existing societal expectations. 

Furthermore, the narrative juxtaposition between the wife’s stationary role in the house, and her husband’s physical, sexual and financial freedom, is perfectly in line with traditional gender dynamics. 

And this is the story that is 'subverting traditional gender roles'?

It calls to mind the Victorian-era Doctrine of Separate Spheres.

Or, how Simone de Beauvoir, a feminist theorist, writes that:

“...the domestic slavery she is bound to: her social oppression is the consequence of her economic oppression”

With the aid of this perspective, we can conclude that the wife's economic oppression and her confinement to the household all uphold traditional gender dynamics within a patriarchal structure.

But this passage is prefaced by:

“Her husband is an Australian, and so is she.”

The Bulletin may have idolised patriarchal-conforming women, but at least now, if we're looking back on this text, we can recognise that this is not the Australian identity we want. 

 The subjugation of femininity

“As a girl she built the usual castles in the air; but all her girlish hopes and aspirations have long been dead.”

Here, Lawson attaches femininity to undesirable traits and employs the repetition of ' girl’ and ‘girlish’, as well as past tense, to reinforce her long-abandoned femininity. 

The idiom "castles in the air" has a naive denotation, and when paired with the description of "usual", most young girl's hopes are therefore portrayed as naive. 

This positions audiences to not only view femininity as weak, but in contrast, to view her current resourcefulness and persistence as a bushwoman’s achievement, not a woman’s achievement.

This portrayal is reinforced by:

“...this bushwoman is used to the loneliness of it.”

 
The protagonist is never named, only referred to as 'The Drover's Wife.' 

Her identity is subservient to her husband, and even the bush before her own femininity. 

And apparently, The Bulletin values this, as it contributes to their misogynistic view of an Australian national identity.

 
The Drover’s Wife doesn't empower a woman, it empowers a bushwoman.

De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex discusses how a woman's character is often a result of their situation, and women unknowingly reinforce their own dependency by being pressured by their circumstances into accepting their roles as wives or mothers.

Can you see the parallels to The Drover’s Wife?

The circumstances are more dangerous, but the forced acceptance into a role remains the same, as a wife or a bushwoman.

Through this lens, the Drover’s wife romanticises a female character who has been pressured into viewing her femininity as weak and resigning to the roles pushed onto her - and therefore encourages the subjugation of femininity.

Yay 19th-century Australia, folks.

Lack of critique of chauvinist attitudes

In Lawson's story, the woman recounts a swagman trying to rape her. Although Lawson describes that this is far from a one-time occurrence, the main account sweeps male accountability under the rug. 

"Gallows-faced” encourages us to dismiss this man’s behaviour as he is a criminal, about to die and desperate. Hypocritically, this sweeps previous descriptions of multiple men "scaring the life out of her" under the rug, encouraging readers to blame predatory behaviour on a man’s circumstances, rather than a wider societal issue.

If we look at another Australian text written by a woman, we can understand that from a woman's perspective, men posed the greatest risk to them.

Spoilers for The Chosen Vessel (1896) ahead.

Narratively, Barbara Baynton centres her story around the encounter between a rapist and a lone woman, which already differs from Lawson's story.

Furthermore, in the original story, Baynton blames not only the predatory "tramp", but also the woman's husband, who "taunted and sneered" at the possibility of her being taken advantage of, and the self-absorbed Hennessey, whose "superstitious awe of his race and religion" made him objectifying her into a vision of the Virgin Mary and Child during her most desperate moment.

If societal expectations didn’t bind women to look after the house alone, they wouldn't encounter these difficulties. 

And if men were criticised for taking advantage of women, they wouldn't need to fear being alone.

A shot from a short film adaptation of 
 The Chosen Vessel

Note that The Bulletin censored Hennessey's role in the murder, silencing Baynton's wider critique of patriarchal attitudes.

Two stories from The Bulletin - one is idolised, the other censored, to uphold the patriarchy and to avoid criticism.

What does this mean for us?

Firstly, I hope we can acknowledge that The Drover's Wife was a product of attitudes in their time.

Whether you believe their depiction of Australian women is what we should idealise now - well, that's up to you. 

It's easy to accept the portrayals of groups that the media feeds us. 

But by also showing how through a different lens, even a classic can be revealed to be misogynist, I hope you've all understood the dangers of just accepting the mainstream readings.

Next time you're on litcharts, try first using your own perspective to see how a story appears to you.

(Word Count: 1315, excluding extracts from theorists/Stephens, and picture captions)