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The Secret River Summary
Kate Grenville'sThe Secret Riveris a sweeping tale of the founding of Australia and the moral choices that created a nation. The Secret River tells the story ofWilliam Thornhill, a poor waterman from London who is deported, along with this family, to New South Wales in 1806. The novel opens on William's first night in the convict settlement in Sydney. As William sits outside the mud hut, an Aborigine materializes out of the darkness. Scared for his family, William yells at the man, Be off! The man doesn't move. Instead, he angrily repeats William's words, Be off! In this scene, Grenville sets the stage for the conflict at the centre of the novel: the battle for control of the land between the white settlers and the Aborigines. Neither people want anything to do with other. They each wish the other would go away. However, the white settlers are trapped by their status as convicts and cannot leave, and the Aborigines feel a spiritual connection to the land and will not voluntarily abandon it.
The novel then jumps back in time to William's childhood in London. Born into poverty in Southwark, William works as an apprentice toMr. Middleton, a waterman on the Thames. Williams spends seven years rowing up and down the river, transporting the gentry from one side to the other. He develops a hatred of the gentry and their superior ways. He keenly feels the unjustness of his inferior social position and strains against the limitations of his class. He works himself into the ground in an effort to gain the security that Mr. Middleton and his house on Swan Lane represent.
William falls in love with Mr. Middleton's daughter, Sal. They get married the day that William becomes a free man. William continues to work as a waterman, building a life for his family. As master of his own boat, a wedding present from Mr. Middleton, William feels that he has left the dire poverty of his childhood behind. However, tragedy soon strikes. A month long cold snap freezes the Thames. William cannot work, and the couple quickly go through their savings.Mrs. Middletonfalls ill, and Mr. Middleton spends all of their money trying to cure her. Mr. Middleton then succumbs to a fever, and Mrs. Middleton dies soon after. William and Sal are left destitute. The bailiffs confiscate the house on Swan Lane and the boats.
William must go to work as a waterman for another master. He does not earn enough to support his family and is forced to steal. Without the goods that William skims off the top, his family would starve. William is caught trying to steal a consignment of Brazil wood and sentenced to death. Thanks to Sal's efforts, his sentence is commuted to deportation to the convict settlement in New South Wales. As second child, Dick, is born on the voyage to Australia, joining older brother Willie.
Despite their initial shock at the run-down settlement, the Thornhill's adapt to life in the colony. William works as a waterman in the Sydney harbour and uses his old tricks to skim off rum from the barrels and barrels that pass through the harbour. Sal opens a little bar in one side of their hut, called The Pickled Herring. William receives his ticket of leave after twelve months in the colony. When his employer,Mr. King, hires a new clerk who pays close attention to the goods, William decides to quit before he gets caught stealing. He goes to work forThomas Blackwood, an acquaintance from London, who owns a boat and plies the trade between Sydney and the settlements along the Hawkesbury river.
On his first voyage up the Hawkesbury, William falls in love with a piece of land that he names Thornhill's Point. He is determined to one day claim the land and build a stable and secure life for himself and his family. Also on this first voyage, William encountersSmasher Sullivan, a mean-mouthed settler who deals violently with any Aborigines who step foot on his land. Blackwood intensely dislikes Smasher and disagrees with his racial hatred of the Aborigines. Blackwood has learned to respect the Aborigines and advocates living in peaceful co-existence based on his philosophy of give a little/take a little.
Blackwood decides to retire to his piece of land up the Hawkesbury, and William borrows money from Mr. King to buy his boat. William and his son Willie take up the trade and earn a good living for the family. With their situation improving, William tells Sal about his dream to claim Thornhill's Point. At first Sal resists. She does not want to live in the wilderness, she just wants to earn enough money so that they can someday return home in style. Eventually, she agrees to give William five years, and the family moves to Thornhill's Point.
William begins having problems with the Aborigines from the first day of the arrival. A clan of Aborigines lives in the area, and they do not recognize William's ownership of the land. The Thornhill's and the Aborigines live in an uneasy peace until the Aborigines strip William's original patch of corn. William physically fights with the Aborigines at the corn patch, hurting several of the women and firing a shot at Long Jack. The Aborigines retaliate by torching the corn patch. Sal insists on leaving Thornhill's Point. She does not want her children in danger, and she knows that the Aborigines will not willingly relinquish their claim to the land. William is desperate. He cannot conceive of abandoning his dream.
In the middle of their argument about whether to stay on Thornhill's Point, William notices smoke from another settlement down the river. He takes the boat to help Saggity, whose land is being attacked by the Aborigines, while Sal packs their belongings. Saggity has been speared by the Aborigines, and William is forced to take him to Windsor, a township on the Hawkesbury. Saggity dies soon after they arrive, and his death becomes a war cry for the settlers. Led by Smasher Sullivan, they agree to put an end to the native problem once and for all. William is not a violent man, and he does have an understanding of the Aborigines' humanity. However, the only way that Sal will agree to stay on Thornhill's Point is if the Aborigines are dispersed. He agrees to take part in the attack.
The settlers sail up to the Aborigine camp near Thomas Blackwood's place. The battle is bloody and merciless, with children clubbed to death and their throats slit.Whisker Harry, the elder of the Aborigine clan, spears Smasher Sullivan. William, who has yet to fire his gun, turn and shoots Whisker Harry. The Aborigines disappear into the trees and no longer bother the settlers along the Hawkesbury.
William becomes a prosperous land owner and trader. He builds a grand stone house on Thornhill's Point, and the new settlers consider him a member of Australia's new gentry. William acquires all the trappings of wealth, but his success does not come without a price. After the bloody dispersal of the Aborigines, his young son Dick leaves him to live with Thomas Blackwood. Dick cannot accept his father's participation in the slaughter, and he never speaks to William again. Long Jack is the only Aborigine left on the land. Permanently disabled by a gunshot wound, he sits on Thornhill's Point challenging William's ownership of the land. Grenville ends the novel with the image of William scanning the horizon for a glimpse of a shape of man, symbolizing the haunting spectre of the Aborigines that hangs over white Australia.
Chapterwise Summary:
Strangers [Summary]
The novel opens onWilliam Thornhill's first night in the penal colony of New South Wales in 1806. William sits outside the mud hut assigned to him and his family - his wife Sal and two small children, Willie and Dickie. The hut has a flimsy door made out of bark that offers little protection from the elements or human trespassers. While his wife and children lay sleeping inside the hut, William stares out into the darkness, feeling the vast forest surrounding him. He cannot sleep, plagued with worry about the life ahead of them.
On the nine-month voyage to New South Wales, William clings to his former life, reliving the familiar bends in the Thames that he rowed along each day. As he listens to the foreign sounds of the forest, William realizes that the world he left behind in London is gone forever. Sitting in jail in London with a death sentence hanging over his head, all William could think about was escaping the noose. But now, trapped on the edge of a merciless continent by ten thousand miles of water, he wonders if perhaps death was preferable to this prison without walls. He feels acutely the pain of exile, of being severed from everything he ever knew and loved.
Suddenly, the darkness shifts, and a man appears in front of him. The man's skin is as black as the night, covered with ornamental scars, and he holds a spear. Afraid for his family asleep in the hut, William yells at the man to go away. After the first rush of fear, William finds himself filled with anger at the man's refusal to leave. He raises his arm as if to hit the man and yells at him again to go away.
The man stands firm, unaffected by William's anger. Then, the man begins to speak, and William hears his own phrase repeated back to him - Be off! The man waves angrily at the ocean and says again, Be off! Stunned, William says nothing, but he does not give way. For better or for worse, he is alive. All he has left is the mud hut and his family sleeping inside. William decides that he will not surrender his last chance at life to a naked man, even one with a spear. After a tense silence, the man disappears into the night, and William is left with the memory of that jagged spear and a sense of vulnerability in the face of an entire continent filled with men armed with spears.
[Analysis]
In the title of the prologue to [The Secret River], Grenville introduces one of the main themes of the novel - the clash of civilizations between the Aborigines and the colonists. Each people finds the other 'strange' in practically every aspect of life, from the colour of their skin to the structure of their society. The novel chronicles the moral dilemmas and conflicts that arise from the meeting of these two 'strangers.'
William's first encounter with an Aborigine sets out the issue at the heart of this historic meeting - the claim to the land. The Aborigines consider the land their birthright and resent, and eventually resist, the invasion of an alien people. The settlers, however, are caught in a bind. As convicts deported to New South Wales from England, they cannot leave. The land itself is their prison. The colonists can either succumb to drink or carve out a place for themselves on the forbidding continent.
William refuses to back down to the Aborigine's demand that he leave because he can not give up the only things he has left - his family and chance a to create a future for them. Both the Aborigine and William demand that the other 'be off.' In order for the Aborigines to preserve their culture, the white man must leave. In order for William and the other colonists to build a life in Australia, the Aborigines must be 'tamed' and dispersed. Grenville discusses this theme throughout the novel, exploring the possibility of the two cultures living side by side and telling the story of that possibility's demise.
In the encounter between William and the Aborigine, Grenville also examines the feeling of power that comes into play in the interaction between the Aborigines and the colonists. The racial prejudice that the colonists bring with them to Australia sets the stage for the callous and often violent treatment of the Aborigines in the novel. Denied their freedom and placed in a humiliating and degrading position, the convict settlers enjoy the feeling of no longer being on the bottom rung of society. Even they can claim superiority over the 'blacks.' William experiences his first feeling of strength and manliness since his arrest when he stands up to the "naked black man." p.6
Grenville also uses the prologue to introduce the theme of exile. William longs for the sights and smell of the Thames as he lays on his bunk in the cramped ship. The misery that he feels as sits in front of the mud hut in the settlement unnerved by the foreign smells and sounds represents the sense of displacement experienced by the exile. Grenville explores this theme throughout the novel in the character of Sal, whose memories and imagination remain firmly rooted in the land of her birth.
London[Summary]
In Part One of the novel, Grenville takes the reader back in time to William's life in London before his deportation to New South Wales. The section opens with a description of William's impoverished childhood in the slums of Southwark. One of eight children, William grows up in cramped rooms filled with damp air and the noxious smell of tanneries and glue factories. His mother works as a seamstress, and his father flits from factory to factory but is most often unemployed. The Thormhills suffer from constant hunger and freeze in the winter as the wind whips through the broken glass in the windows.
William begins working at five years old, following his father through the streets of Southwark collecting dog feces that they then sell to one of the factories. The whole family engages in petty thievery to put a loaf of bread on the table. William, along with his brothers Rob and James, belong to a local gang of boys who spend their days on the street looking for any opportunity to steal something to eat or sell.Dan Oldfield, who is indentured to William in New South Wales, is a member of this pack of boys.
Although William runs wild through the streets of Southwark, stealing and fighting, he has a soft spot for Sal (Sarah) Middleton, the daughter of relatively successful waterman. Sal lives in a home on Swan Lane with glass windows and plenty of bread in the cupboard. William idolizes both Sal and her comfortable and loving home. Sal and William escape down to the marshes at Rotherhithe where they made a hideout in the bushes. Away from the dirty, narrow streets and smelly factories, William and Sal find peace and a place to call their own. William feels that he can be himself with Sal, a young boy who wants to goof around, and not the tough street urchin his life demands. Sal is the one good thing in William's life, and the thought of her kind brown eyes keeps him warm in the frozen night.
William's mother and father die soon after each other from illnesses fostered by dampness and poverty. His older brothers leave home - Matty for the sea and James to a life a crime on the other side of the river. William becomes the breadwinner for his siblings. He works in the factories and the tanneries, taking any job available. He leaves Mr. Pott's textile factory after he sees a child crushed under one of the machines. He then finds work down at the wharf, loading and unloading goods. The workers at the wharf earn barely enough to survive and often result to skimming a little off the abundant goods that pass through the wharf. One day, William encounters a group of men prying the lid off one of the caskets in the warehouse. The men quickly fill their bags with sugar, but William is overcome by the sight of so much sugar and begins to eat it by the handful. The men disappear, and William hears the supervisor approaching. He fills his hat with sugar and tries to stuff more into his pockets. He is hemmed in by the caskets and packages, so he tries to hide in the corner. The supervisor does not believe William's story that he found the casket sitting open. The supervisor drags William out onto the quay, strips off his shirt and trousers, and whips him in front of the other workers.
William continues to work on the docks, and his friendCollarboneshows him how to siphon off brandy from a casket by moving one the metal hoops, drilling little holes in the wood, and then putting the metal hoop back into place over the holes. William is fourteen when the Thames freezes over for two weeks. The docks shut down, and the family begins to starve. Sal's father,Mr. Middleton, comes to the family's rescue. Mr. Middleton is a waterman, as was his father and grandfather before him. He owns his own boats and supports his family in relative comfort. After his wife's last miscarriage, Mr. Middleton resigned himself to never having a son to carry on the family business. He offers William the chance to be his apprentice and learn the trade. After seven years as an apprentice, William would qualify as a freeman on the Thames. Mr. Middleton also finds sewing work for William's sisters, Mary and Lizzie.