y separately published work icon Venus Half-Caste single work   novel   crime  
Issue Details: First known date: 1963... 1963 Venus Half-Caste
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Works about this Work

The Passing of the Half-Castes : Gavin Casey, Leonard Mann and the Postwar ‘Half-Caste’ Novel Rich Pascal , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 13 no. 3 2013; 'The two decades following the end of the Second World War marked a historically significant shift in mainstream Australians’ attitudes toward what had previously been thought of as the ‘Aboriginal problem,’ culminating in the famous referendum of 1967 that for the first time endorsed federal empowerment over Aboriginal affairs. Not coincidentally, it was in that period that an unprecedented number of narratives appeared that focused upon Indigenous Australians, especially the so-called ‘half-castes.’ Most of the texts that registered that shift, and perhaps helped to accelerate it, have since been ignored or regarded dismissively by literary scholars and cultural commentators. Among them were some remarkably observant and well crafted novels that are, as such, worthy of reclamation from obscurity; several repay close analytical readings. Of greater interest still, perhaps, is their collective importance as a genre that signified the change that was occurring in the social milieu that produced them. This discussion focuses upon two of the most interesting of the postwar “half-caste” novels: Gavin Casey’s Snowball (1958) and Leonard Mann’s Venus Half-Caste (1963). It argues that both of these now largely forgotten works, in aspiring to present the postwar social world to mainstream readers as though through Aboriginal eyes, were not only rewardingly complex works of fiction, but of considerable cultural significance in a time when Australia was revisiting longstanding assumptions about the position of its most oppressed minority. Ultimately, it further suggests, these and other narratives focusing on mixed-descent Australians may well have contributed to the demise of the very notion of the now antiquated and distinctively offensive term ‘half-caste’—as well as to the major shift in mainstream opinion registered in the 1967 federal referendum by a vote that overwhelmingly endorsed the incorporation of Indigenous people within the national community.' (Publication abstract)
y separately published work icon Dreams and Nightmares of a White Australia : Representing Aboriginal Assimilation in the Mid-Twentieth Century Catriona Elder , Berne : Peter Lang , 2009 Z1613487 2009 multi chapter work criticism
y separately published work icon Dreams and Nightmares of a 'White Australia' : The Discourse of Assimilation in Selected Works of Fiction from the 1950s and 1960s Catriona Elder , Canberra : 1999 Z1301412 1999 single work thesis This thesis is an analysis of the production of assimilation discourse, in terms of Aboriginal people's and white people's social relations, in a small selection of popular fiction texts from the 1950s and 1960s. I situate these novels in the broader context of assimilation by also undertaking a reading of three official texts from a slightly earlier period. These texts together produce the ambivalent white Australian story of assimilation. They illuminate some of the key sites of anxiety in assimilation discourses: inter-racial sexual relationships, the white family, and children and young adults of mixed heritage and land ownership. The crux of my argument is that in the 1950s and early 1960s the dominant cultural imagining of Australia was as a white nation. In white discourses of assimilation to fulfil the dream of whiteness, the Aboriginal people - the not-white - had to be included in or eliminated from this imagined white community. Fictional stories of assimilation were a key site for the representation of this process, that is, they produced discourses of 'assimilation colonization'. The focus for this process were Aboriginal people of mixed ancestry, who came to be represented as 'the half-caste' in assimilation discourse. The novels I analyse work as 'conduct books'. They aim to shape white reactions to the inclusion of Aboriginal people, in particular the half-caste, into 'white Australia'. This inclusion, assimilation, was an ambivalent project - both pleasurable and unsettling - pleasurable because it worked to legitimate white colonization (Aboriginal presence as erased) and unsettling because it challenged the idea of a pure 'white Australia'. (Author abstract from Australian Digital Thesis Program)
Two Novels Judah Waten , 1964-1954 single work review
— Appears in: The Realist , June no. 15 1964; (p. 32-33)
— Review of Venus Half-Caste Leonard Mann , 1963 single work novel ; Down by the Dockside Criena Rohan , 1963 single work novel
Untitled Evan Jones , 1964 single work review
— Appears in: Nation , 25 January 1964; (p. 23)
— Review of Venus Half-Caste Leonard Mann , 1963 single work novel
Immoderate Lives: Four New Novels Harry Payne Heseltine , 1963 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin Quarterly , December vol. 22 no. 4 1963; (p. 422-426)
— Review of Venus Half-Caste Leonard Mann , 1963 single work novel ; Tourmaline Randolph Stow , 1963 single work novel
Sobriety Hope Hewitt , 1963 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 19 October vol. 85 no. 4366 1963; (p. 42-43)
— Review of Venus Half-Caste Leonard Mann , 1963 single work novel
Untitled Rodney Hall , 1963 single work review
— Appears in: Makar , 15 September no. 17 1963; (p. 36-37)
— Review of Venus Half-Caste Leonard Mann , 1963 single work novel
Untitled Clement Semmler , 1963 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October vol. 2 no. 12 1963; (p. 195)
— Review of Venus Half-Caste Leonard Mann , 1963 single work novel
Untitled Evan Jones , 1964 single work review
— Appears in: Nation , 25 January 1964; (p. 23)
— Review of Venus Half-Caste Leonard Mann , 1963 single work novel
y separately published work icon Dreams and Nightmares of a 'White Australia' : The Discourse of Assimilation in Selected Works of Fiction from the 1950s and 1960s Catriona Elder , Canberra : 1999 Z1301412 1999 single work thesis This thesis is an analysis of the production of assimilation discourse, in terms of Aboriginal people's and white people's social relations, in a small selection of popular fiction texts from the 1950s and 1960s. I situate these novels in the broader context of assimilation by also undertaking a reading of three official texts from a slightly earlier period. These texts together produce the ambivalent white Australian story of assimilation. They illuminate some of the key sites of anxiety in assimilation discourses: inter-racial sexual relationships, the white family, and children and young adults of mixed heritage and land ownership. The crux of my argument is that in the 1950s and early 1960s the dominant cultural imagining of Australia was as a white nation. In white discourses of assimilation to fulfil the dream of whiteness, the Aboriginal people - the not-white - had to be included in or eliminated from this imagined white community. Fictional stories of assimilation were a key site for the representation of this process, that is, they produced discourses of 'assimilation colonization'. The focus for this process were Aboriginal people of mixed ancestry, who came to be represented as 'the half-caste' in assimilation discourse. The novels I analyse work as 'conduct books'. They aim to shape white reactions to the inclusion of Aboriginal people, in particular the half-caste, into 'white Australia'. This inclusion, assimilation, was an ambivalent project - both pleasurable and unsettling - pleasurable because it worked to legitimate white colonization (Aboriginal presence as erased) and unsettling because it challenged the idea of a pure 'white Australia'. (Author abstract from Australian Digital Thesis Program)
y separately published work icon Dreams and Nightmares of a White Australia : Representing Aboriginal Assimilation in the Mid-Twentieth Century Catriona Elder , Berne : Peter Lang , 2009 Z1613487 2009 multi chapter work criticism
The Passing of the Half-Castes : Gavin Casey, Leonard Mann and the Postwar ‘Half-Caste’ Novel Rich Pascal , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 13 no. 3 2013; 'The two decades following the end of the Second World War marked a historically significant shift in mainstream Australians’ attitudes toward what had previously been thought of as the ‘Aboriginal problem,’ culminating in the famous referendum of 1967 that for the first time endorsed federal empowerment over Aboriginal affairs. Not coincidentally, it was in that period that an unprecedented number of narratives appeared that focused upon Indigenous Australians, especially the so-called ‘half-castes.’ Most of the texts that registered that shift, and perhaps helped to accelerate it, have since been ignored or regarded dismissively by literary scholars and cultural commentators. Among them were some remarkably observant and well crafted novels that are, as such, worthy of reclamation from obscurity; several repay close analytical readings. Of greater interest still, perhaps, is their collective importance as a genre that signified the change that was occurring in the social milieu that produced them. This discussion focuses upon two of the most interesting of the postwar “half-caste” novels: Gavin Casey’s Snowball (1958) and Leonard Mann’s Venus Half-Caste (1963). It argues that both of these now largely forgotten works, in aspiring to present the postwar social world to mainstream readers as though through Aboriginal eyes, were not only rewardingly complex works of fiction, but of considerable cultural significance in a time when Australia was revisiting longstanding assumptions about the position of its most oppressed minority. Ultimately, it further suggests, these and other narratives focusing on mixed-descent Australians may well have contributed to the demise of the very notion of the now antiquated and distinctively offensive term ‘half-caste’—as well as to the major shift in mainstream opinion registered in the 1967 federal referendum by a vote that overwhelmingly endorsed the incorporation of Indigenous people within the national community.' (Publication abstract)
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Last amended 18 Oct 2013 16:11:19
Subjects:
  • Bush,
  • Melbourne, Victoria,
  • Urban,
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