Distinctively Visual
The ‘Drover’s Wife’ by Henry Lawson
•In ‘The Drover’s Wife’, Lawson acknowledges the hardships of Australian women living in the bush
•‘The Drover’s Wife’ is a short story with a simple plot that emphasises on the character and her experiences
•Narration is in third person, and is mostly written in present tense
•The story is set in the Australian Bush and is described as unrelenting, monotonous, isolated, harsh, bleak and uninviting
•The story uses vernacular colloquialisms, for example, “Tommy’s skinnin’ me alive if his club.” and “d’yer”, and sometimes more vulgar terms like “Shet up you little —-!” and “I’d like to screw their blank necks!” to create authenticity.
•Flashbacks- In her husband’s absence “she fought a bushfire”, “a flood”, “the pleura-pneumonia” and “a mad bullock”. She has also needed to protect herself and the family from the odd “villainous-looking sundowner”, “gallows-faced swagman” and black bellied snake. She also finds the time to shoo the “crows and eagles” from her chickens.
•Metaphor of the dam: The dam breaking: “her heart (is) nearly broken too, for she (thinks) how her husband would feel when he (comes) home and (sees) the result of years of labour swept away. She cries then”- Shows her failures and that she can’t do everything.
•Pathetic fallacy: The weather and the surrounding landscape reflect the mood and the appearance of the persona. The description of the bush reflects the harshness and stress it has towards the character
•Biblical Allusion: References to the bible may be seen in the use of the snake/serpent as a symbol of evil. It is seen as the source of destruction.
•Onomatopoeia: “Bung! The crows leave..” “crash” “Thud, thud”
•In ‘The Drover’s Wife’, Lawson confronts his readers with the harsh realities of life in the Australian outback, whilst forcing them to reconsider the role of women
•The coarse language that the children use reflects the harshness of the environment they are growing up in
•Symbolism: the ‘Young Ladies Journal’ operates as a symbol of the drover’s wife’s “girlish hopes and aspirations”. However, along with her youth, these dreams have also died and been replaced with the reality of living in the bush. Now she can only vicariously through the magazine- finding “excitement and recreation… in the fashion plates.”
•The flashbacks establish the resilience and stoicism of the drover’s wife; conveying that the present situation with the snake is simply another of life’s difficulties that she must endure and ultimately overcome.
•The “worn-out breast” symbolises how much she has given and how tired she is, whilst the act of kissing her son shows that despite all the hardship, she still has a “womanly” side- life in the bush has not hardened her completely.
“In a Dry Season” by Henry Lawson
•The narrator of this story is on a train to Bourke and describes the people and places he sees along the way. The reader comes to develop a mental picture of the landscape both inside and outside the carriage as the narrator describes the sights outside and tells us about the people and the stories they tell inside the train
•Lawson conveys a feeling of monotony as the reader comes to understand that these towns are al very similar. A sense of desolation and despair about life in the bush is developed. “Draw a wire fence… Then you’ll have the bush all along the New South Wales western line from Bathurst on”
•Lawson describes the bush setting in a highly visual way. It is a harsh, inhospitable environment where nothing comes easy; people are always ‘trying’ to do things.
•Narration: First person, homodiegetic narration. A travelogue depicting a short outback train trip to Bourke. The narrator serves as our tour guide, outlining what we see along the way
•Imagery
-Animal imagery
-Monotony and sameness of the scenery
-Description of the people
•Vernacular language: “Yer want to go out back, young man, if yer want to see the country. Yer wanter get away from the line.” “I don’t wanter; I’ve been there.”
•Irony: The persona describes the setting and the people in a way that allows us to view them- this in term makes us wonder what else is there and make conclusions about the environment as being uninspiring
•Lawson concentrates on the harsh reality of outback existence. Both the environment and the people who inhabit it are rugged and hardened by the elements.
•The harshness if the bush reduces its characters to stereotypes
“The Loaded Dog” by Henry Lawson
•Three men are mining at a nearby claim and camping in the bush. After deciding that they’d like to go fishing, they invent a way to fish using their mining skills, and decide to blow up the fish in the waterhole. They set about creating a cartridge, but before they can test their fishing prowess, the retriever steals the lit cartridge, chasing the men with it, before finally blowing up the mongrel dog in town
•Form: Third person, omniscient narration. Linear structure. Uses a mix of short sentences and long descriptive paragraphs
•Dave Regan: motivated by ‘fun’ and when left to his own devices seems o be able to create a whole lot of mayhem
•Andy Page: Dave’s partner in crime
•Jim Bently: Different to the other men, he wasn’t interested in their ‘damned silliness’
•Tommy: The retriever dog, described as being a black, overgrown pup “who was always slobbering”
•Juxtaposition: Of an “overgrown pup” with a “vicious mongrel” helps us to relate to the shift in tone
•Alliteration: in the “foolish, four-footed mate” reminds us of his close bond
•Simile: of “tail like a stock whip”, “Jim swung to a sapling and went up it like a native bear”
•Contrasting adjectives: separate the characterisation of these dogs: big, black and young with vicious, thieving canine
•Emotive language: makes us feel dislike for the “yellow” dog; “sneaking” and “fighting”
•Imagery: “elaborate” instructions to explain the process of mining and cartridge construction through verbs including “bound”, “pasted” and “sewed”
•Sentence structure: shifting between long descriptive paragraphs and short sentences like “Dave got an idea” grabs the attention of the reader. You immediately feel as though you have to focus, to lean in closer. links to the oral traditions of the bush stories are emphasised
•Repetition: “Run, Andy! Run!” increases panic and heightens tension for the reader
•Australian Idiom: Language that would have been used at the time, “Don’t roller us!”, adds realism
•Direct Speech: The reader feels as though they are witness to the story. “Why not blow up the fish in the big waterhole with a cartridge?” he said. “I’ll try it.”
“The Bush Undertaker” by Henry Lawson
•The dialogue uses vernacular language of the bush to make the story more realistic. The dialogue uses shortened words like “em”, “‘an” and “a-campin’” to make the character and the speech more realistic. To further create authenticity and a realistic representation of bush language, Lawson uses words that are common to the bush, but uncommon to those living in the city.
•“The Bush Undertaker” continues to engage us in the aesthetics of landscape and the isolation of the bush and its ramifications on individuals.
•The vernacular is challenging in this text. The language itself reminds us that years away from human company and polite conversation creates a deviation from the expectations of language.
•The imagery of the bush has a sense of realism and we can see the aesthetics of Lawson’s depiction of the landscape as metaphors for the aridity of the man’s psychological acuity. The images are at times melancholy, presenting to modern readers the hostility of the environment in a time when distance and technology limited human interaction
•The bushman depicted here is presented as a: ‘hatter’, ‘old man’, ‘carver’, ‘shepherd’, ‘soliloquiser’, and ‘Undertaker’. Each of the nomenclature presents images that are paradoxical and ambiguous. His self-talk dominates the narrative as does the bush which is personified in terms of its ability to shift the sanity of those left alone for long periods in its uncomfortable ‘listening silence’.
“Drifters” by Bruce Dawe
•The poem is about a family that is constantly moving from place to place.
•The poem is from the perspective of the mother. She does not want to leave, but it has happened so many times that she doesn’t even question why and where they were going
•Anaphora: to make the poem fast paced- repetition of the first word of the lines to show that these events happen over and over in her life
•Contrast: to show conflicting emotions associated with the idea of moving
•Automatic reaction from kids revealed through reporting dialogue
Connections with Henry Lawson’s short stories:
•The monotony of the towns in ‘In A Dry Season’ connects with the monotony of moving from place to place in ‘Drifters’
•‘The Drover’s Wife’ portrays a woman who has no say in where she gets to live or how she lives her life, and she is responsible for the farm when the husband is away. In ‘Drifters’ the wife is responsible for the children and has no say in anything
•In ‘Drifters’, ‘In A Dry Season’, ‘The Drover’s Wife’ and ‘The Bush Undertaker’, the protagonist is not named
•In ‘Drifters’ and ‘The Loaded Dog’, there is a sense of chaos associated with the dog in each text
‘On the Wallaby Track’ by Frederick McCubbin
•Oil painting depicting a bush family ‘on the wallaby track’- Australian idiom meaning to travel in search of work
•The painting offers a bleak representation of a family who are depicted as homeless, camping in the bush- shown through the image of the tent in the background. It is an image conveying the hardships and struggles of bush life- similar to Lawson’s concerns in ‘The Drover’s Wife’
•Isolated bush setting- colours are natural and rustic conveying a sense of realism- similar to Lawson’s narrative realism. McCubbin rejected the methods of the emerging European abstract artists, deciding to maintain the significance of the ‘subject’ in art as it better conveyed a meaningful national identity. This links with Lawson’s belief in the realist sketch story achieving a similar aim.
•Mother and child are the salient objects in the foreground of the image- slumped against the tree, her forlorn facial expression in conjunction with the use of offer gaze operates as an invitation into this world of poverty and hardship
•The mother appears exhausted, unable to bestow attention upon her infant, who is depicted as trying to crawl from her lap- she is also gazing in the opposite direction to the baby, which provides a similarity to the ‘Drover’s Wife’.
•The direction of her gaze creates an invisible vector to the bushman- her husband- in the background of the painting. He is depicted at a distance, proportionally smaller to the woman, his face obscured as he is preoccupied with boiling the billy.
•Through the use of proximity, the artist conveys the emotional detachment between husband and wife- a consequence of hardship
•Also, the responder can only connect empathetically with the woman, whose facial expression clearly conveys her weariness- similar to the empathy we are encouraged to feel with the drover’s wife.
•The ground separating husband and wife is represented as a pathway, creating a visible vector connecting the foreground to the background of the painting. This, in combination with the clearing created by the positioning of the trees in the centre of the background, conveys the impression of never-ending bushland. This heightens the feeling that the family are trapped in the vastness and monotony of the Australian landscape, amplifying their struggles.
‘The Football Game’ by Russell Drysdale
Techniques:
•Colour- desert-like, earthy, warm colours (suggest contentedness despite the environment), black closing in (impending darkness)
•Weather- looks like its changing. Pathetic fallacy- weather represents something in the text (symbolic)- going to change soon
•Shapes
—> few straight lines
—> juxtaposition- of the straight lines man has imposed on nature against the curved and uneven lines of nature
—> shape of the boy/man echoes nature, the shape of the tree
—> woman’s posture parallels shape of chimney
—> synergy: a synergy between people and nature, not quite at one with nature but accepting each other
—> bush is supporting the woman physically
•Depicts mother and child in vast, empty landscape. Although they’re isolated, they’re at one with their surroundings. Man’s arms echo dead tree shape. Solidity and strength of the woman match the harsh and alien environment.
•Resources limited. Use what you have and make the most of it
•Suggests that the woman is the strength hat’s holding the family together through the proportional size of the woman
Connection to Lawson’s stories:
•‘The Drover’s Wife’
—> Woman has the responsibility of keeping the family together and taking care of them
—> Boring lives of women
—> Main focus of living
—> Doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to the children
—> Absent father
•‘In A Dry Season’
—> Isolation connects to the monotony depicted in these texts
•‘The Loaded Dog’
—> Humour/fun/larrikins in a harsh environment
—> Contentment of relationships
•‘The Drover’s Wife’ and ‘In A Dry Season’
—> Weather harsh, punishing, but also rewarding