Casey, Patrick White, and Eleanor

¶ … Casey, Patrick White, and Eleanor Dark

One of the ways that novelists reveal things, not only about themselves, but also about their surrounding society, is in how they portray genders and gender roles. This essay will examine how three prominent Australian authors, Patrick White, Gavin Casey, and Eleanor

Dark treat women in their literary works. All three of the authors approach their female characters in different ways. White seems respectful of his female characters, but he also approaches them as a mystery. This may be due, in part, to his literary style, which switches perspective without warning or indication, and can make it difficult to identify with any of his characters, regardless of gender. Gavin Casey is also respectful of his female characters, but he seems very aware of gender divides and rules. He seems to believe that there is an unbridgeable communication divide between males and females and this divide is highlighted in his works. Eleanor Dark's treatment of her female characters seems to be the least reliant upon stereotypes, perhaps because she was a woman. Her female characters have different characteristics and they cope with life's challenges in different ways.

Despite the differences in the ways that these various authors approach their female characters, all of them are clearly making some type of commentary, whether intentional or unintentional, about the role of women in Australian society. It is critical to understand that, throughout at least the early part of the 20th century, women played a marginalized role in much of Australian society. World War II helped change the role of women in Australia, as it did in other parts of the world, but the ruggedness of much of the country and the fact that so many of the profit opportunities of that time period required intense physical labor contributed to an environment in which women were relegated to supporting status. Women who defied those trends, particularly intellectual women, were seen as somewhat abnormal, a trait that is reflected in some of the works that will be discussed. Therefore, it becomes difficult to discern whether an author's characterization of women is an honest portrayal of the times in which he or she was writing or reveals the author's own personal feelings about women. This is particularly true for an author like Gavin Casey, who openly acknowledged the fact that life was more difficult for women than men in the man's world that was Australia during the time of Casey's writing. However, even Dark's works about urban Australians and the struggles of nonconformist women in that society reveal a man's world attitude.

Gavin Casey

Gavin Casey's treatment of women is, perhaps, the most interesting, because so much of his writing focuses on males and male-centered environments. Much of Casey's fiction was focused on the practice of mining, which was a very male-dominated profession, and his writing seemed to celebrate both the real-life practice of mining and the male-centered environment it created. There is no doubt that women were marginalized in real-life mining scenarios, so that any woman in the mining towns and camps was almost certainly there in some type of service to a man. Even today, only 15% to 20% of miners are women, and there were virtually no women miners when Casey was writing. That does not mean that there were not women in the camps, but the first women in the camps worked in demeaning service-type jobs such as laundress, cook, or seamstress. Of course, women also worked as prostitutes. Some mining camps had families, so that women could be wives and some women might come to work to teach the children of those families, but there was still a very limited amount of opportunity available for women in these situations. This was the reality of what it was to be a woman in those situations, and Casey certainly captured that reality in his writing. "As the original title of his first book, it's Harder for Girls, suggests, Gavin Casey was aware of the disparities in male and female relationships and yet…he marginalizes women and celebrates the concept of mateship and male camaraderie" (Clancy, 2004). In other words, Casey realized that women faced tremendous difficulties in these scenarios, but his fiction, like the scenarios he described, was so largely focused on males that he did not discuss the implications of what that meant for women.

It is important to understand that Casey's own personal struggles helped shape his writing and probably his approach to women. His first marriage ended in divorce, probably largely due to his drinking (Ferguson, 1993). Therefore, rather than focusing simply on the difference in how he approaches his male and female characters and the implications of that differing treatment for the role of women in his literature, it is also important to look at the contrast between women and alcohol in his work. "His fiction is so pervaded with drinking that in his novel the Wits are Out (1948), about a party, the most frequently discussed character is a keg of beer" (Clancy, 2004). As a result, at many times his writing seems to suggest that alcohol is an indispensable part of the adult male life, but the companionship of women is not. While it would be simple to dismiss that approach as the misogynistic stylings of a rambling alcoholic, the reality is that it reflected real life conditions for many Australian men during his time period.

Patrick White

Patrick White's treatment of women in his works is interesting because it is difficult to separate White's personal feelings about women from the women in his characters. In other words, the fact that White was a homosexual is relevant to his writing because it certainly colored his portrayal of women in his fiction. For example, he appears to treat women either as naive and childlike, or as very intimidating. At times, he seems to dismiss the idea of women as intellectually powerful. For example, when discussing his own writing, White makes a telling statement about women: "what intellectual roost there is, in which beautiful youths and girls stare at life through blind blue eyes" (White, 1957). This suggests that women, particularly young women, lack the insight or ability to truly see life. This appears dismissive of the contribution of women to his life, but that is only one side of his portrayal of women. He also frequently portrayed women as conniving, ambitious and intimidating. These portrayals seemed to draw upon White's opinion of his mother; their relationship was rocky throughout White's life and colored his perception of women.

However, while White may sometimes characterize women in stereotypical ways, he also seemed to have an understanding of female thought and emotion, which he attributed somewhat to his homosexuality. For example, in Down at the Dump, he makes an interesting stylistic choice: his narrative style is fluid in the story. At times, the characters appear to be narrating their own stories, while, at other times, the language is clearly that of a non-character narrator. More interestingly, these transitions are fluid, so that the language may transition from the character to the narrator and back again without any type of indication that there is a shift. However, the language he employs indicates the shift, because it shows differences in how the character would approach the event and how the narrator would describe the same event. His portray of women in the novel demonstrate the female's ever-present awareness of males; even in scenarios that are not sexual, the female characters are aware of the inflection, tone, and even the scent of the males in their lives, and use these differences to help inform them about events and surroundings. In this way, White portrays women as being very intuitive.

In particular, White's portrayal of Daise Morrow bears some consideration. Morrow is dead, which might make it seem as if she would be portrayed only by how the other characters in the story discussed her. That most dead characters are approached in literature, with the reader only getting to know them by reputation. However, White seems unwilling to allow Morrow to be defined in that way. "While it is true that 'Daise Morrow's character is created almost exclusively by a jigsaw of memories and interior monologue flashbacks of other characters', she is also allowed to speak in her own right, or seem to do so, from the grave- and this is presented in a way that makes it authoritative, gives it a privileged status" (Wilson, 1976). Therefore, White provides more insight into Morrow, a dead female character, than Casey did to many of his living characters.

It is important to realize that White was writing against the backdrop of a politically changing Australia. He did not consider himself to be a social activist, and actually considered himself a political conservative for much of his life. However, one can see the hints of social activism in his work, even before he broached the topics of homosexuality in general and his own homosexuality in later works. "White's canonization is part of a larger cultural shift, which saw the development of many kinds of institutions and critiques aimed at making Australia culturally richer and more autonomous" (During, 1996). Therefore, the changing way that he portrayed women in his work may have signaled an awareness of the fact that women's roles were changing in Australian society as whole. Therefore, in the Tree of Man, White's approach to Thelma, which, but because he is showing disgust for what Thelma symbolizes. Interestingly enough, this symbolization goes far beyond her gender. "Thelma is the character who most embodies the values of Australians in the fifties as White described them: she is conventional, insipid, dishonest, and single-minded in pursuit of material security" (McKeman, 1989). Therefore, when examining White's treatment of women in his work, it is always critical to recall the historical context.

Eleanor Dark

Perhaps it should not be surprising that Eleanor Dark's treatment of women is at least superficially more respectful than that of the other authors, given that she is a woman. She describes Marty, one of her characters, who happens to be a female author, as having a "quick and volatile" brain and "tirelessly scribbling fingers" (Dark, 1985). This clearly indicates a belief that women are smart and capable of art and creativity, a suggestion that is lacking in Casey's portfolio of work. However, it would be wrong to suggest that Dark's female characters are all positive or even that they are all the same in any way. She does not ever go so far as to suggest that her female characters are inherently superior to the males in her works or even, necessarily, to promote a particular type of female. Furthermore, she does not seem to suggest that the man's world vision of Australia that is explored in Casey's work, and assumed, to a lesser degree, as a backdrop in White's work, has been transformed into a feminist environment. Instead, she portrays women, and their struggles, in an honest manner that allows the reader to respond to the entire character, not simply a gendered rendition of that character.