Rainbow's End: Aboriginal Identity in Post-Colonial Victoria
This paper offers a critical analysis of Jane Harrison's play Rainbow's End, which follows three generations of Aboriginal Koori women living on the Goulburn River flats in 1950s regional Victoria. The critique examines how the play portrays post-colonial Aboriginal culture, the roles of its female characters in asserting indigenous identity within a white-dominated society, and the anti-hegemonic techniques Harrison employs to destabilize settler-colonial norms. The paper also analyzes theatrical semiotics — including staging, setting, music, and absent characters — as instruments of cultural resistance, arguing that the play uses its domestic drama to illuminate enduring racial prejudice and the resilience of indigenous family life.
- Overview of Rainbow's End: Characters, themes, and family portrait introduced
- Post-Colonial Culture on the Goulburn River Flats: Colonial legacy and Aboriginal marginalization in Victoria
- Aboriginal Women's Roles and Indigenous Identity: Women's matriarchal power and self-determination
- Anti-Hegemonic Techniques in a Settler-Colonial Society: Dramatizing The Other and destabilizing Western norms
- Theatre Semiotics and Resistance: Staging, absence, and symbolic props as resistance
- Conclusion: Stoic optimism amid enduring colonial constraints
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper integrates textual evidence from the play — including direct quotations from the script — with theoretical frameworks such as semiotics and the concept of The Other, grounding its claims in both primary and secondary sources.
- It moves methodically through distinct analytical lenses (post-colonial context, gender roles, anti-hegemonic technique, semiotics), giving the critique a clear organizational logic that builds toward an overall interpretation.
- The use of specific dramatic details — the absent Papa Dear, the Encyclopedia Britannica purchase, and the opening song "Que Sera, Sera" — demonstrates close reading skills and connects theatrical choices to broader thematic arguments.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates semiotic analysis applied to dramatic texts. By reading staging choices, absent characters, and symbolic props as signifiers within a post-colonial framework, the writer shows how theatrical semiotics can reveal ideological tensions that spoken dialogue alone does not convey. This technique — drawn from Chandler's semiotics framework — is used consistently across multiple sections.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a narrative overview of the play and its characters, then advances through four thematically organized analytical sections: post-colonial context, gender and identity, anti-hegemonic dramatic technique, and theatrical semiotics. Each section poses an implicit question and answers it through close reading of the play. A brief conclusion is implied through the final reflective passages on staging and setting. The structure suits a play critique at the undergraduate level.
Overview of Rainbow's End
The story told in Rainbow's End is shared by three generations of Aboriginal women living in a ramshackle shanty on the Goulburn River flats in regional Victoria in the 1950s. Nan Dear is the reserved elder, Gladys is the easy-going mother, and Dolly is the daughter of this self-contained family of women. The family portrait is rich with issues that remain relevant today: individual independence and familial duty; the foundational sense of belonging and home; and the enduring power of love and patience.
The women in the family undergo personal transformation and are elevated in the process. Gladys' struggle with illiteracy is matched by her struggle against the invisibility of being an indigenous Aboriginal woman. She grows increasingly weary of being the last person to be served at the butcher shop, of seeing white people cross to the other side of the street when she passes, and of enduring inappropriate treatment when applying for work. Dolly moves past physical violence and comes to grips with what it means to love a man from a different culture. Nan Dear overcomes her own prejudice and replaces her cynicism about the family's social position with hope.
Jane Harrison's Rainbow's End is a play that dramatizes the cultural clash between Aboriginal and white Australian society, exploring how Aboriginal culture manifests as a post-colonial one in 1950s Victoria.
Post-Colonial Culture on the Goulburn River Flats
The three generations of Aboriginal Koori women are left behind on the Goulburn River flats to do what women in marginal cultures have always done — hold the family together. The men of the family are away doing menial work or, as in Papa Dear's case, carrying out itinerant pastoral services. The paternalism of the colonial period had the dual impact of emasculating the men while empowering the women to ensure that culture and traditions endured, to strive to enrich family life, and to help put food on the table. While it may seem a cliché to observe that this small family of women lacked access to the material comforts of the larger society, the key theme in the story is precisely their ability to support one another and remain warmly connected as family. Nan Dear's husband, Papa Dear, is never seen on stage, but he serves as a kind of anchor for the family — they refer to him often, and his presence is felt even if not physical. An outside masculine influence enters this self-contained household when Errol, the encyclopedia salesman, arrives on the river flats. Errol falls for Dolly, and their relationship becomes a journey in which each must find a new place within the transformed family.
As with most post-colonial societies, regional Victoria was stripped of its raw materials, and educational and occupational opportunities were directed exclusively to the upper strata. The Aboriginal people living in the humpies along the river had become essentially invisible to those who had benefited from the colonial era. Support that might have been available through a welfare structure was notably absent. In the 1950s, the Aboriginal people of the Goulburn River were largely left to fend for themselves under greatly constrained conditions. Yet for decades, they had not truly been left alone. When groups of marginalized Aboriginal people moved to the river flats in search of employment, services, and better lives, the government responded with the creation of a housing development called Rumbalara — a sort of halfway housing intended for temporary use as Aboriginal people were rehoused in larger communities.
There were also the infamous and draconian Northern Territory interventions that stemmed from false reports of sexual abuse of Aboriginal children, initiated by a branch manager under Mal Brough. An actual army was sent into the territory, ostensibly to protect the children and right the alleged wrongs. Notably, no prosecutions for sexual abuse were achieved during the seven years of investigation and intervention — nor were any apologies forthcoming to the falsely accused Aboriginal families.
The tension between the indigenous Aborigines and white Australians underscores that racial and ethnic prejudice remained a factor in post-colonial Victoria — just as it does today. Then as now, the family stood as a buffer against prejudice, discrimination, and violence.
Conclusion
Though the lyrics of "Que Sera, Sera" seem fatalistic, the behavior of the characters is stoic and resigned — but only resigned to the resistance of a straight back and an optimistic mindset. This is captured vividly in one of the play's stage directions: "It's late spring, late afternoon, and gloomy outside. Inside their humpy, Nan Dear and Gladys are rebuilding after a flood has devastated their home. Everything below three feet is sodden and mud-splattered. Gladys mops, wrings out, and removes things that are destroyed. Nan finishes hanging a piece of hessian to replace a ruined piece that had lined the interior walls. Now she covers the hessian with pages from a magazine." In this image — quiet, determined, and creative in the face of destruction — the play distills its deepest argument: that the endurance of Aboriginal women's family life is itself an act of resistance against colonial erasure.
References
Chandler, Daniel. (1994). Semiotics for Beginners: Paradigmatic Analysis. 3 July 2014. http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/sem05.html
McAlister, Jodi. Review of Rainbow's End, by Jane Harrison. 25 August 2011. Australian Stage. http://www.australianstage.com.au/201108254682/reviews/sydney/rainbow-s-end.html
Rainbow's End. Script. Australian Plays.
Podcast. http://notinprint.podbean.com/e/interview-jane-harrison-rainbows-end-australian-plays-theatre/
Rainbow's End Teachers' Notes. (2009). Riverside Parramatta.
Leyon, Toby. Interview with Jane Harrison. Currency Press. "Rainbow's End: What's the definition of a hero? Thought-provoking Australian theatre." 20 November 2013.
Thompson, Helen. Review of Rainbow's End. 22 February 2005. http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Rainbows-End/2005/02/21/1108834720880.html
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