Honours Seminar A: Australian Women Writers (ENGL6020)
Semester 2 / 2008

Texts

y separately published work icon Wolf Notes Judith Beveridge , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2003 Z1099576 2003 selected work poetry (taught in 3 units)
y separately published work icon Tirra Lirra by the River Jessica Anderson , South Melbourne : Macmillan , 1978 Z300858 1978 single work novel (taught in 19 units)

'Liza used to say that she saw her past life as a string of roughly-graded balls, and so did Hilda have a linear conception of hers, thinking of it as a track with detours. But for some years now I have likened mine to a globe suspended in my head, and ever since the shocking realisation that waste is irretrievalbe, I have been careful not to let this globe spin to expose the nether side on which my marriage has left its multitude of images.

'Nora Porteous has spent most of her life waiting to escape. Fleeing from her small-town family and then from her stifling marriage to a mean-spirited husband, Nora arrives finally in London where she creates a new life for herself as a successful dressmaker.

'Now in her seventies, Nora returns to Queensland to settle into her childhood home.

'But Nora has been away a long time, and the people and events of her past are not at all like she remembered them. And while some things never change, Nora is about to discover just how selective her 'globe of memory' has been.

'Tirra Lirra by the River is a moving account of one woman's remarkable life, a beautifully written novel which displays the lyrical brevity of Jessica Anderson's award-winning style.' (Publication summary)

Snake Beverley Farmer , 1982 single work short story (taught in 1 units)
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 41 no. 1 1982; (p. 97-106) Milk : Stories 1983; (p. 99-111) Place of Birth 1990; (p. 156-168) Australian Love Stories 1996; (p. 231-242) Collected Stories 1996; (p. 159-170) Meanjin , Summer vol. 69 no. 4 2010; (p. 236-245)
y separately published work icon Sixty Lights Gail Jones , London : Harvill Press , 2004 Z1136231 2004 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 15 units)

'Sixty Lights is the captivating chronicle of Lucy Strange, an independent girl growing up in the Victorian world. From her childhood in Australia through to her adolescence in England and Bombay and finally to London, Lucy is fascinated by light and by the new photographic technology. Her perception of the world is passionate and moving, revealed in a series of frozen images captured in the camera of her mind's eye showing her feelings about love, life and loss. In this confident, finely woven and intricate novel Jones has created an unforgettable character in Lucy; visionary, gifted and exuberant, she touches the lives of all who know her.' (Publication summary)

Singing the Revolution Blues for Alice Melissa Lucashenko , 1998 single work short story (taught in 1 units)
— Appears in: Hecate , vol. 24 no. 2 1998; (p. 155-158) Hidden Desires 2006; (p. 170-174) Hibiscus and Ti-Tree : Women in Queensland 2009; (p. 272-274)
The narrator describes the inequities and abuse endured by a young Aboriginal woman in a world where whiteness and maleness predominate.
The Persimmon Tree Marjorie Barnard , 1942 single work short story (taught in 1 units)
— Appears in: The Home , 1 July vol. 23 no. 7 1942; (p. 24-25) The Persimmon Tree and Other Stories 1943; (p. 21-25) Coast to Coast : Australian Stories 1942 1943; (p. 1-5) A Century of Australian Short Stories 1963; (p. 184-187) Short Stories of Australia : The Moderns 1967; (p. 33-36) Best Australian Short Stories 1971; (p. 253-256)

— Appears in: Frauen in Australien : Erzahlungen 1992; (p. 41-45)

— Appears in: Australian Short Stories 2005; (p. 39-47)
y separately published work icon The Pea Pickers Eve Langley , Sydney London : Angus and Robertson , 1942 Z454411 1942 single work novel (taught in 1 units)

'In The Pea Pickers, a novel based on Eve Langley's own experiences, Steve and Blue are two girls who, dressed as men, are taken on as itinerant workers for the farmers of Gippsland. They pack apples and pick peas. But their disguise is partial - and their quest is for love. For Blue the novel ends in marriage; but not for Steve. For her, desire is never straightforward, and love - for men, for women, for country - leaves her confused, but independent. ' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon My Place Sally Morgan , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1987 Z384564 1987 single work autobiography (taught in 30 units)

'In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family, turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.' Source: Publisher's blurb.

y separately published work icon My Brilliant Career [and] My Career Goes Bung Miles Franklin , North Ryde : Angus and Robertson , 1990 Z407359 1990 selected work novel (taught in 7 units)
y separately published work icon Miss Peabody's Inheritance Elizabeth Jolley , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1983 Z796757 1983 single work novel (taught in 4 units)

'In this potent tale of love and loneliness, Elizabeth Jolley has woven two parallel stories into a dazzlingly original novel. Arabella Thorne is a brilliant, witty and accomplished woman. The exotic tale of this flamboyant eccentric and her European travels – with jealous secretary and shy schoolgirl protégée – is the inheritance that transforms the uneventful suburban life of Miss Peabody.' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon The Getting of Wisdom Henry Handel Richardson , London : Heinemann , 1910 Z901329 1910 single work novel (taught in 25 units)

'A coming-of-age story of a spontaneous heroine who finds herself ensconced in the rigidity of a turn-of-the-century boarding school. The clever and highly imaginative Laura has difficulty fitting in with her wealthy classmates and begins to compromise her ideals in her search for popularity and acceptance.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon For Love Alone Christina Stead , New York (City) : Harcourt Brace , 1944 Z796198 1944 single work novel (taught in 5 units)

'Superbly evoking life in Sydney and London in the 1930s, For Love Alone is the story of the intelligent and determined Teresa Hawkins, who believes in passionate love and yearns to experience it. She focuses her energy on Jonathan Crow, an unlikeable and arrogant man whom she follows to London after four long years of working in a factory and living at home with her loveless family. Reunited with Crow in London, she begins to realise that perhaps he is not as worthy of her affections as originally thought and abandons her idealised vision of love for something quite different.' (From Melbourne University Publishing's website, new ed., 2011)

y separately published work icon Drylands : A Book for the World's Last Reader Thea Astley , Ringwood : Penguin Viking , 1999 Z384386 1999 single work novel (taught in 3 units)

'In the dying town of Drylands, Janet Deakin sells papers to lonely locals. At night, in her flat above the newsagency, she attempts to write a novel for a world in which no one reads—‘full of people, she envisaged, glaring at a screen that glared glassily back.’ Drylands is the story of the townsfolk’s harsh, violent lives. Trenchant and brilliant, Thea Astley’s final novel is a dark portrait of outback Australia in decline.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Text ed.)

y separately published work icon Collected Poems 1942-1985 Judith Wright , Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1994 Z501989 1994 selected work poetry war literature satire (taught in 8 units)

Description

The course reads writing by Australian women of the twentieth century, primarily novels but also some poetry and short stories. The focus of the course is on how these writers, and their texts, engage with the modern world, and with what the modern world, and the modern, means for Australian women and their writing. The relationship, a complex and paradoxical one, leads to unpredictability and invention in Australian womens writing, both of literary topic and literary method and style.

Other Details

Current Campus: St Lucia
Levels: Undergraduate - Honours
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