'On Billabong station Jim, now assistant to his father, breaks in a promising young colt, and with Norah and Wally, helps with the intricacies of hauling a large bullock from the depths of a mud hole. World War I is underway. Jim and Wally want to enlist. Mr. Linton needs to travel to London on family business so they all set sail on the Perseus, a huge ocean liner carrying produce to Europe, to involve themselves in the war effort. On board they observe black-out restrictions to avoid being detected at night by enemy destroyers and deal physically with a German spy. They have an all too interesting time during their stopover in Durban, South Africa. Then their ship is captured by an enemy warship and almost sunk before a dramatic rescue takes place, allowing them to eventually reach London safely where the boys enlist in the British Army. ' (Publication summary)
From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children's Literature, 1840-1940
Toronto
:
University of Toronto Press
,
2018
15039944
2018
multi chapter work
criticism
'Through a comparison of Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand texts published between 1840 and 1940, From Colonial to Modern develops a new history of colonial girlhoods revealing how girlhood in each of these emerging nations reflects a unique political, social, and cultural context.
'Print culture was central to the definition, and redefinition, of colonial girlhood during this period of rapid change. Models of girlhood are shared between settler colonies and contain many similar attitudes towards family, the natural world, education, employment, modernity, and race, yet, as the authors argue, these texts also reveal different attitudes that emerged out of distinct colonial experiences. Unlike the imperial model representing the British ideal, the transnational girl is an adaptation of British imperial femininity and holds, for example, a unique perception of Indigenous culture and imperialism. Drawing on fiction, girls’ magazines, and school magazine, the authors shine a light on neglected corners of the literary histories of these three nations and strengthen our knowledge of femininity in white settler colonies.' (Publication summary)
'This chapter explores some of the ways in which the literary arts of poetry and novels, especially those for children and young people, and the visual arts of paintings and posters, often depicting children, were used in Australia during the First World War to show and tell not only the idea of war to those at home, but the idea of home for those at war. It is part of wartime rhetoric to set personal identity and home place as core (as something worth fighting for), but simultaneously to indent that core with qualities and places beyond the personal and the personally experienced: thus not just my home, my
family, my community, but our family, our community, our nation. This concept of home becomes imbued with symbols that both represent and unite and that establish a semiotics of home that includes both abstractions – a deep inner sense of shared cause alongside like-minded companions, and the materiality of physical space. This physical space expands into the metaphysical, into not just images of home and place and landscape, but potent metonymous and synechdocal imageries of home and place and landscapes.'
Source: introduction.
War, Women and the Bush : The Novels of Mary Grant Bruce and Ethel Turner
St Lucia
:
AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource
,
2009
Z962022
1978
single work
criticism
Comments on the portrayal of women, men and the bush in the novels of Mary Grant Bruce and Ethel Turner which were set during World War I. Walker draws particular attention to the disadvantages of being a woman and the qualities a woman should possess as portrayed in these novels. In their general behaviour, the characters of both sexes in the novels are permitted to be 'mildly unconventional' provided they still abide by the major social conventions of 'loyalty, decency [and] fair play'. Walker also points out the manner in which the bush is clearly depicted as a superior living environment, 'enhancing good health and wholesome attitudes to authority' and negating the 'socially harmful behaviour' engendered by life in the city.
From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children's Literature, 1840-1940
Toronto
:
University of Toronto Press
,
2018
15039944
2018
multi chapter work
criticism
'Through a comparison of Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand texts published between 1840 and 1940, From Colonial to Modern develops a new history of colonial girlhoods revealing how girlhood in each of these emerging nations reflects a unique political, social, and cultural context.
'Print culture was central to the definition, and redefinition, of colonial girlhood during this period of rapid change. Models of girlhood are shared between settler colonies and contain many similar attitudes towards family, the natural world, education, employment, modernity, and race, yet, as the authors argue, these texts also reveal different attitudes that emerged out of distinct colonial experiences. Unlike the imperial model representing the British ideal, the transnational girl is an adaptation of British imperial femininity and holds, for example, a unique perception of Indigenous culture and imperialism. Drawing on fiction, girls’ magazines, and school magazine, the authors shine a light on neglected corners of the literary histories of these three nations and strengthen our knowledge of femininity in white settler colonies.' (Publication summary)
