Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy

Sydney University Press, 153 pp, ISBN: 9781743324615, p/bk, RRP AUS$40.00

Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy (2017), from Sydney University Press, is the latest addition to the Sydney Studies in Australian Literature series. Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver — well regarded for a variety of scholarly achievements as well as for their excellent anthologies of colonial fictions (Adventure, Crime, Gothic and Romance) — have produced an elegant and very informative review of character types in colonial Australian fiction. Gelder and Weaver take readers beyond established stereotypes, facilitating opportunities to engage with “a remarkable range of character types, each of which enunciated a colonial predicament that was unique in so far as it projected the values, dispositions and desires that were specific to it” (p1). Of course, the idea of the character type is not new. Gelder and Weaver recognise this, quoting Mary Gluck who observed in 2005 that: “creating types and classifying them according to social categories represented a kind of modern ethnography, whose purpose was to achieve a comprehensive picture of contemporary humanity”, but then quickly assert that Colonial Australian Fiction highlights some of the tensions around this goal for a comprehensive picture. For types can “take control of a narrative, determining its priorities and ideological direction […but] types also change, they come and go, they interrupt, they mutate” (p4). The writing is, predictably, beautiful and nuanced. Innovative interpretations blend seamlessly with well-documented clichés. The “Squatter”, the “Bushranger” and the “Colonial Detective” will be known to many readers. The controversial squatters, their efforts at reinvention and projects of personal branding, are important to the understanding of Australian history and literature. These men sought large-scale influence and power while also asserting themselves as men of letters, as Gelder and Weaver quote (from Rolf Boldrewood’s 1873 novella The Fencing of Wanderowna: A Tale of Australian Squatting Life): “Surely, few people can enjoy reading so thoroughly as we squatters do” (p.30). The ubiquitous bushranger is traced from Michael Howe: The Last and Worst of the Bushrangers of Van Diemen’s Land (1818) by Thomas Wells through to A Bush Girl’s Romance (1894) by Hume Nisbet, thus, effectively covering the evolution of the bushranger from a reviled to a romanticised character. The detective, too-often overlooked by scholars, is also explored. John Lang’s A Forger’s Wife (1855) is presented as the first detective novel in Australia (pre-dating Ellen Davitt’s Force and Fraud: A Tale of the Bush, the first Australian murder mystery, by a decade). The character of the detective is critical within the corpus of colonial fiction as this investigative type unravels puzzles within the plot while simultaneously offering clues into the Australian character. What we think about law, order, punishment and forgiveness can be seen through the characters of detectives and those who surround them. The “Bush Type” and the “Metropolitan Type”, more regularly accessed through art and poetry (indeed, William Strutt’s fantastic and very familiar 1887 painting Bushrangers graces the cover of the book), are also surveyed. Gelder’s and Weaver’s argument for reading these characters as complex and diverse, as well as how such characters have changed, is an important rebuttal to superficial assertions of the bush/metropolitan man as an either/or designation. The “Australian Girl” is another example of how complicated, and occasionally contradictory, colonial characters are. She is distinguishable by the 1860s but her lineage from the “Currency Lass” is outlined (p117) before this type is taken through to colonial maturity and the beginning a new century. In this section, Gelder and Weaver pay significant attention to Sybylla Melvyn of Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career (1901) and the struggle to identify with something greater than herself but to also be independent, to be an individual. “I am proud” she writes, “that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. […] Would that I were more worthy to be one of you” (p137). She is, explains Gelder and Weaver, an exemplification of the predicament of the national type, “normative and ‘deviant’ at the same time” (p137). This liminal space occupied by Melvyn allows us to see the difficulties faced by writers in creating (and reflecting on) the great types of colonial Australian fiction: the reinventors, the law breakers, the law enforcers, those who made their way on rugged landscapes and those who occupied built environments, the men and women who defined colonial fiction and set the foundations for Australian literature of the twentieth century. Colonial Australian Fiction is an essential volume for anyone curious about Australian literary heritage, for these types are more than just characters on a page: they are our enemies and our friends, our neighbours and our political leaders, the relatives we would prefer not to acknowledge and the people we have fallen in love with. They are why many of us read fiction. Reviewed by Dr Rachel Franks, January 2018 For a preview of the book or to purchase online, visit Sydney University Press here.