'Paradoxically, Australian nationalist accounts have tended to slight the earliest Australian literature by white settlers from the nineteenth century. This chapter surveys the literary history of this period, examining writers such as Oliné Keese, Ada Cambridge, Henry Kingsley, Rosa Praed, and Catherine Helen Spence. Drawing connections between these writers and the transnational Anglophone literary world centering on Great Britain and the United States, this chapter takes a comparative perspective that at once acknowledges the peripheral standing of these Australian texts and argues for their relevance to the history of the novel in English.' (Publication abstract)
Thomson examines Spence's portrayal of women, marriage and society in her novels, noting the degree to which she criticizes the nineteenth-century status quo and suggests reforms which would liberate women, married or unmarried.
Thomson examines Spence's portrayal of women, marriage and society in her novels, noting the degree to which she criticizes the nineteenth-century status quo and suggests reforms which would liberate women, married or unmarried.
