Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Charmian Clift, Brenda Chamberlain, and the Dichotomous Freedom of Hydra
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This essay draws a comparison between two published memoirs of participants, both of them women writers, in the Hydra expatriate community of the 1950s and ’60s: Australian Charmian Clift’s Peel Me a Lotus, and Welsh artist and writer Brenda Chamberlain’s A Rope of Vines. As memoirs of female experience on Hydra the two texts have elements in common, but the contrasts are also stark. Whereas Clift focused on family life, the bucolic harbourside agora and the boisterous life of the taverns and kafenia, Chamberlain represented herself as being alone and declared, ‘the port and the people on it do not interest me.’ For Chamberlain, the dockside was a place of ‘unreal glamour’ that deadened her creative spirit as surely as it deflected Hydra’s international visitors from understanding the true nature of the island they superficially embraced.

'This essay discusses both Clift’s and Chamberlain’s responses to Hydra, examining how despite the differences in their memoirs, both writers can be seen to be working at a resolution of the conflicting aspects of Hydra the town and Hydra the island, as each woman struggles in her own way to realise the promise of ‘freedom.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon JASAL Literary Expatriation vol. 19 no. 1 2019 18003452 2019 periodical issue 'Literary expatriation as a practice, but also topic of curiosity, discussion and scholarly enquiry, is deeply entrenched in Australian cultural life. For well understood historical and geographic reasons, the need for travel is embedded in Australians, and for generations of creative individuals it has been the norm to turn travel from their homeland into long term absence.' (Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell, 'Introduction') 2019
Last amended 11 Nov 2019 10:07:43
https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/14110/12621 Charmian Clift, Brenda Chamberlain, and the Dichotomous Freedom of Hydrasmall AustLit logo JASAL
Subjects:
  • Hydra, Greek islands,
    c
    Greece,
    c
    Western Europe, Europe,
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