Cirrus@Austlit

'DRAWING Sybylla is a magical spell, casting us back to view the struggles of Australian women writers and their demands to be heard. The novel comprises two components, the women’s stories and the interspersed “Between the Chapters…” which follow the narrator, an author herself, and her journey in learning these women’s stories. In the beginning of the novel our narrator, at a conference, is listening to Sybil Jones talk about Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and begins to sketch the speaker before her. As if magic is at play, our narrator travels through her drawing of Sybil into an alternative universe and is invited to learn of the struggles that women have faced when writing in Australia’s past. The woman guiding the narrator in this magical realm, the flâneuse as Kelada terms it, our narrator calls Sybylla.' 

 (Introduction)