25 Australian Short Stories by Writers of European Descent

Ms. Urmi Sengupta

In this chapter we shall discuss:

1. A General Introduction on the short stories written by Australian writers of European Descent
2. Biographies of six Australian writers of European Descent
3. Summaries of the six short stories: ’An Up-Country Township’, ‘The Crime of Convict Cunliffe’, ‘The Drover’s Wife’, ’The Guest of Redshields’, ‘On Our Safari’, ‘The Man of Slow Feeling ’

The genre of short story has played a pivotal role in shaping and defining the national and cultural identity i.e. the “Australian-ness” of the Euro-Australian settlers since the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Much of this has to do with what Kerryn Goldsworthy calls in his Intoduction to the anthology titled Australian Short Stories “the three roughly identifiable short story ‘booms’ in Australia”. The first of them came with the publication of the Bulletin magazine in the 1880s-90ss and the early 1900s which induced descriptive sketches of early urban and rural settlements penned by writers like Marcus Clarke to give way to more structured stories with a proper plot. William Astley’s stories were based on the “convict period”, a fundamental aspect of early Euro-Australian settlement. Henry Lawson and Barbara Baynton were the other two notable writers of this period and their stories mainly focused on hardship faced by the early settlers in the Australian bush. The second period of short story “boom” came a few decades after the federation of the Australian colonies (in 1901), in the 1940s – when with the end of World War II and the beginning of the publication of the anthology series Coast to Coast , emerged social realist writers like John Morrison, Gavin Casey and Dal Stivens who consciously moved away from the Lawsonian “bush-realism”. Australian identity began to be defined in relation to and generally in contrast to non-Australian characters or settings by writers like Thelma Forshaw, Elizabeth Jolley and Hal Porter. Writers like Frank Dalby Davison, Alan Marshall started forging a new “Australian-ness” by focusing on personal dilemmas, social problems and urban existence of individuals. The 1970s that was marked by the governments support for the arts and the lifting of censorship regulations on one hand and the beginning of the publication of the short story magazine Tabloid Story has induced a new generation of writers like Frank Moorhouse, Michael Wilding, Peter Carey and Murray Bail to move away from the “social realist” stories of the 1940s-50s and experiment with the themes of fantasy, sexuality and surrealism in their works. They have also introduced innovations within the structure of the short story.

1.      Marcus Clarke (1846-1881)

About the writer: Marcus Clarke was born in London of English parents in 1846 and emigrated to Australia and the age of seventeen. He worked as a journalist and also published several short stories and novels. He is best known for the Classic ‘convict novel’For the Term of his Natural Life. One of the earliest among the Australian writers of European descent, he mastered the art of writing a sketch, a form of short story which was later enriched further by Henry Lawson.

‘An Up-Country Township’: A sketch is a sub-genre of short story that was invented in the 16th Century in England, as a result of increasing public interest in realistic depictions of “exotic” locales. An urge to appreciate the natural beauty of the new country and to uphold the endeavours of the early European settlers to turn it into their ‘home’, resulted in an extensive composition and publication of sketches in mid-late 19th century Australia. ‘An Up-Country Township’ describes Bullocktown, a township located in the bank of The Pollywog Creek or The Great Glimmera. Like a typical Sketch it has no discernable plot. Though the first person narrator claims to an “impartial observer”, enough indications are there to suggest that he is one of its residents too. Therefore, his personal opinions and experiences often seem to colour his ‘impartial” descriptions. In fact, the sketch is replete with suggestiveness, the narrator hinting at much more than what he says. Not only does he describe the church, the three public houses, the school-house and the post office of the township, he also goes on to sprinkle the sketch with local myths and (funny) anecdotes on some of its prominent residents. He admits to some of these anecdotes being mere rumours; but he himself is a part of some of them which authenticates their truth claim, as happens in the case of the story about Mr. Longbow’s friendship with the Duke of Wellington. The light informal often conversational tone of the narrator is meant to engage the reader’s interest and facilitate his understanding about Bullocktown and its people.

2.  William Astley (1855-1911)

About the writer: William Astley , who wrote under the pseudonym Price Warung was a journalist and one of the most famous early short story writer of Australia. Born in Liverpool, London he migrated to Australia with his family at the age of four and hereafter resided in Richmond near Melbourne. He became the editor of the Richmond Herald at a very young age and was associated with many other prestigious journals of Australia. During the 1880s and 1890s Astley did some free-lance work for The Bulletin in which numerous series of his stories of the convict days –Tales of the Convict System (1892); Tales of the Early Days (1894), Tales of the Old Regime (1897), Tales of the Isle of Death (1898), and Half-Crown Bob and Tales of the Riverine (1898) – were published. His stories reveal a sound knowledge of the early history of Australia and a love for humanity.

‘The Crime of Convict Cunliffe’: “The Crime of Convict Cunliffe” deals with one of the most pertinent themes of 19th century Australian Literature- that of the struggle for survival of the nearly 162,000 convicts who were transported to the various Australian penal colonies by the British government between 1788 and 1868, in the face of the inhuman torture inflicted upon them by the government officials and the jail authorities. The protagonist of the story Convict Cunliffe is punished severely for a crime of not displaying a meek subordinate attitude towards his tormentors, the supervisors of the tramway ‘Team’ in Norfolk Island tin which he works as a convict labourer . Norfolk Island, which is a small island in the Pacific Ocean located between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia was colonized by Great Britain as part of its settlement of Australia in 1788. The island served as a convict penal settlement until May 1855. Ashtley’s treatment of such a sensitive issue is stark as is apparent from his tendency to shock the reader into some deep realizations about one of the darkest chapters in history of Australia. The juxtaposition of the natural beauty of the island with that of the brutal image of a man ‘spread- eagled’ to a punishment post left to starve and suffer the extreme weather conditions from noon of one day to that of another creates a jarring effect in order to highlight the bestial existence of the convicts. The same purpose is served by a tone of irony that permeates the entire text – where being flogged is a part of the many “advantages” conferred upon the convicts that deserve their “appreciation” and the almost fatal punishment meted out to Convict Cunliffe is described as him being “honoured by a special treatment”. The story delves deep into the machinations of the so called “considerate System” headed by the Civil Commandant of the Norfolk Island Mr. Scragge for whom the maltratment of the convicts in the name of efficient administration of the island is nothing but an “experiment”. It is Cuncliffe’s refusal to succumb to this systemic dehumanization and also his inability to appreciate the merit of such brutal disciplinary actions which is identified as his “crime”. Not only does the author attack the administrative authorities of the Australian penal colony, he also highlights the double standards of the government of Great Britain which neglects its responsibilities towards the well being of men like Cunliffe who belong to the lowest strata of the society, yet never hesitates to exercise its right of inflicting punishment on them. Convict Culcliffe was not born a “convict”, his social conditions have turned him into one. The story is a fictional take on the pathos of the convicts that induced a real historical figure, the Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Willson (1794-1866) to advocate the cause of the convicts. The Bishop who was shocked to see the plight of the convicts during his brief stay in Norfolk Island (1844-46) returned to England to recommend that the penal settlement in the island should be abandoned immediately. This story posits Cunliffe’s plea for help as the factor that set the ball rolling for this historical moment, thereby endowing the entire tale with a historical as well as national significance.

3.  Henry Lawson (1867-1922)

About the writer: Australian poet and writer Henry Lawson was born and raised in in a town on the Grenfell goldfields in New South Whales. He lost his hearing due to an ear infection at the age of fourteen. One of the most important members of the “Bulletin school”, he is often hailed as Australia’s “greatest short story writer”. An inland trekking trip into the drought affected areas of New South Wales that he undertook in 1892 made him aware of the harsh realities of the Australian outback, which become the theme of his poetry and short stories. His most successful prose collection While the Billy Boils (1896) is credited to have reinvented Australian realism. Lawson was a firm believer in the merits of the sketch story. His “On the Edge of a Plain” is considered to be the most accomplished examples of the sketch.

‘The Drover’s Wife”: “The Drover’s Wife” which was published in 1901 as a part of the collection of stories titled The Country I Come From is regarded as one of the finest short stories of Lawson. In the decade preceding the federation of the Australian colonies, Lawson was instrumental in constructing an Australian identity based on what Bruce Bennett calls (in ‘Short Fiction and the Canon: Australia and Canada’) a “bush-centred masculinist ethos”. This story is an exception in the sense that it moves away from the usual themes of ‘mateship’ and the notoriety of the bush-hangers and concerns itself with the female experience of the Australian bush. It portray the struggle for survival of a bush-woman living in a shanty among stunted trees nineteen miles away from civilization. We encounter a vivid description of the night long vigil of a loving mother in order to save her dear ones from a poisonous snake. With her drover husband away from home for over six months it is she who has to take up the traditionally “masculine” role of providing for and protecting her four children. With a nerve of steel, an astute presence of mind and the assistance of the dog Alligator she fights all adversities – from natural calamities like bush-fire and flood to pleura pneumonia, pangs of childbirth and even the loss of a child. She continuously improvises on her strategy of combat in accordance with the need of the moment, at times being directly confrontational (as happens in the case of the mad bull and the unscrupulous bushmen) and resorting to cunning tricks (as happens with the carrion birds posing a threat to her chicken) at other. A glimpse into her past- her tender dreams as a young bride and her life of luxury in the town- and also into her few moments of vulnerability is a deliberate act of digression meant to reinforce her iron will in the face all the “horrors” of bush-life. The hardships almost emasculate her depriving her off the typical “womanly” qualities; yet she enjoys this life taking every challenge in her stride and making the most of every opportunity that comes her way. Like many of his other works, this story is an ideal example of how Lawson strove to counter the romantic idyllic vision of the Australian as bush reflected in the works of his contemporary poet Banjo Paterson- a tendency which gave rise to the famous “Bulletin debate”. It also embodies some his typical narrative strategies including the use of local dialects, the tendency to move back and forth in time and the gradual culmination of the story into a dramatic climax.

4.   Christina Stead (1902-1983)

About the writer: Australian Novelist and Short story writer Christina Stead was born in the Sydney suburb of Rockdale, New South Wales. Though she had lived abroad for many years, her literary works are essentially Australian in content. Although contemporary with social realists, she was never one of them, she was a writer much ahead of her times. Her novel The Man Who Loved Children is considered to by many as her masterpiece. The collections of her short stories include The Salzburg Tales (1934), The Puzzleheaded Girl: Four Novellas (1965) (A Christina Stead Reader (1978) and Ocean of Story: The Uncollected Stories of Christina Stead, edited by R. G. Geering (1985).

‘Guest of the Redshields’: ‘Guest of the Redshields’ is one of the many stories that constitute Stead’s first literary work The Salzburg Tales (1934) , which is constructed along the lines of Decameron – a  large number of tales told by different characters are loosely held together by an overarching narrative continuity. Her deliberate experimentation with the genre of short story paved the way for Frank Moorhouse’s collections of semi-detached stories like The Americans, Baby (where many characters, themes and settings reappear from story to story) in the 1970s.

Though Stead is not a ‘social realist’ writer, she has her own unique ways of addressing the social concerns of contemporary Australia. In the story ‘Guest of the Redshields’ , she strives to highlight the mental and physical deprivation that befell Australia during the years of Depression through the use of elements of fantasy and her deeply psychological characterizations. The Castle of Redshields where the protagonist is invited for a party is a utopia that spells ultimate luxury right from its beautiful (natural) ambience, elegant furnishings and efficient servants to the unlimited variety of delicious food available therein. It is representative of an economic prosperity that the protagonist of the story, a poet deep in debt who represents the common man in the clutches of the Depression, can only dream of! The juxtaposition of his sparsely furnished studio apartment with the extravagant décor of the castle of Redshields is a deliberate strategy of the author to emphasize the difference in the economic stature of the guest and the host of Redshields. Thus the invitation to the castle symbolizes the desire for the luxurious lifestyle that lurked within the hearts of the thousands of impoverished souls of contemporary Australia. But Stead elevates the story to another level by highlighting not only the pros but also the cons of such a lifestyle. An extremely tedious process of choosing food (from the rich platter available) that the protagonist has to suffer leads to a deep philosophical realization about the folly of an excess of luxury. There exists a very thin line between pleasure and pain- too much pleasure may become a source of extreme pain. The feeling of awe and gratification of the protagonist gives way to that of suffocation and despair as he chooses starvation over an extravagant treat of mouthwatering goodies. His grotesque dream about Gargantua, the giant with a deplorable lifestyle and food habits who is one of the iconic characters of European literature created by the French writer Rabelais in his classic The Life of Gargantua and Pentagruel , is emblematic of the gut retching disgust his night of luxury evokes in him. Thus Stead delves deep into the human psychology to highlight the merits of a simple genteel life over the complications that accompany economic opulence.

5.   Thelma Forshaw (1923-1995)

About the writer: Australian journalist and short story writer Thelma Forshaw was born in Glebe Point, a suburb in Sydney. During World War II Forshaw enlisted in the WAAAF from were she was honourably discharged as an aircraftwoman. She worked as a secretary and an advertising writer before she started working as a freelance writer and book reviewer for journals like The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, The Bulletin , Meanjin, Nation, and Quadrant. In 1967 she wrote a collection of autobiographical short stories An Affair of Clowns, which is considered to be her greatest literary achievement.

‘On Our Safari’: Thelma Forshaw belonged to the group of short story writers who tackled the increasingly difficult task of defining a national culture and identity in the post World War II Australia by comparing and contrasting the same with a culture or identity alien to it i.e. instead of defining “what we are” they would rather assert “what we are not”. An influx of European immigrants in Australia during the war year created the perfect ambience foe this kind of juxtaposition. ‘On Our Safari’ is one such story which portrays how the arrival of a family of German immigrants in a poultry-farming Australian suburb forged among its residents, specially a “hospitable” couple next door, a renewed awareness of what “being Australian” might or might not mean. Through the discriminatory attitude of the laconic first- person narrator towards the newcomers (he refers to the family as “reffos” which is a slang for refugees) and the skeptical curiosity (at times bordering on a tendency to ridicule) with which he as his wife look at the way they dress, talk, walk, decorate their home and even go about their business of poultry farming, Forshaw strives to direct some light but double handed irony at her fellow Australians. For Fred and Nell the enthusiastic matron Frau Jones and her “weird” children are nothing but a source of entertainment. This smug sense of superiority over people hailing from a culture different from that of their own, forms the crux of their sense of identity as Australians, until this very difference ensures a greater success in poultry farming for the family from Vienna than their Australian neighbours. Forshaw thus forges an Australian identity vis-à-vis its points of departure from the representatives of a non-Australian alien culture. The story also addresses a dilemma that forms an integral part of the existence of the Australian Diaspora. Forced to leave Vienna due to political turmoil, the family in torn between Frau Jones’ nostalgia for her homeland and the desire of her children to be assimilated into the mainstream Australian society.

6.  Michel Wilding (b.1942-)

About the writer: Michael Wilding was born in Worcestor in 1942. He came to Australia after graduating from Oxford. Widely known as a reviewer, critic, publisher and a colourful academic figure, he was a Professor of English and Australian Literature in the University of Syndey. Along with novels and plays he has published several collections of short stories, some of the most famous of them being Aspects of the Dying Process(1972) and The Man of Slow Feeling: Selected Short Stories(1985). He belonged to the generation of writers (others being Frank Moorhouse, Peter Carey and Murray Bail) who began to experiment with the theme and thre genre of the short story in 1970s marking a departure from the predominantly well structured realist stories being written in mid-20th century Australia.

‘The Man of Slow Feeling’: ‘The Man of Slow Feeling’ (The Man of Slow Feeling: Selected Short Stories, 1985) is one of the many stories of Wilding in which he has explored the scope of a surrealistic approach towards life. The removal of censorship regulations in the 1970s Australia has allowed him to openly explore the theme of sexuality (which had been a taboo till then) as well. The protagonist of the story, who has survived an almost fatal accident, thinks that he has lost his ability to feel the sensations that are supposed to arise out of his daily experiences, till he realizes that sensations are not denied to him but have been delayed by precisely three hours. Though the phenomenon has been explained using scientific terms – the accident has “dulled and slowed its (sensations) passage along his nerves”- this fantastic affliction has a symbolic significance of highlighting the importance of time in human life. The absence of sensations renders his experiences meaningless. Later these come back to haunt him in the most inappropriate moments – he feels one the private and intimate sensations, that of the ecstasy of sexual intercourse, in a public place, a village shop; the pungent smell of dung touched hour before spoils his tea and the nausea he was supposed to feel thereafter, in turn destroys his pleasure of lovemaking. Thus his past sensations continuously cast a shadow over his present experiences. A complete realization of the situation increases his agony and anxiety even more –his own voice recorded in a tape recorder as a reminder of his past experience begins to control his life till he is driven to commit suicide. The story ends with a final irony that the man who had lived in pain died without feeling the pain of death, which would not have come to him before three hours. The story thus also highlights the importance of the coordination of any tangible experience with its resultant sensation.

To sum up

The changing contours of short story writing in Australia by the writers of European descent by contextualizing the six short stories of the module within their respective social political and cultural backdrop vis-a-vis Australia. We have also discussed the important role played by the genre in shaping and defining the national and cultural identity and forging a sense of what “being Australian” is all about.We have also analysed the structural innovation of some of the stories.

References

• Bennett, Bruce. “The Short Fiction and the Canon: Australia and Canada”, Antipodes 7.2 (December, 1993): 109-112, 114. JSTOR. Web. 24 May 2015.
• Clancy, Laurie. “The Short Story is Alive and Well”. Australian Book Review (November 1980): 3-5. Print.
• Clark, Manning. In Search of Henry Lawson. Melbourne: Macmillan, 1978. Print. Forshaw, Thelma. “Authorial Statement”. Australian Literary Studies 10 (1981): 199-201
• Goldsworthy, Kerryn ed. Australian Short Stories. Victoria: J.M. Dent Pty Limited, 1983. Print.
• Harrison-Ford, Carl. “The Short Stories of Wilding and Moorhouse”. Southerly 33.2 (1973): 167-78. Print.
• Hergenhan, Laurie ed. The Australian Short Story: An Anthology from the 1890s to the 1980s. Queensland, Australia: University of Queensland Press, 1986. Print.
• Hickey, Bernard. Lines of Implication: Australian Short Fiction from Lawson to Palmer. Venice: Cafoscarini, 1984. Print.
• Wetherell, Rodney. “Interview with Christina Stead”. Australian Literary Studies 9 (1980): 431-48. Print.
• Webby, Elizabeth ed. The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Print.