Comparing My Brilliant Career And The Drover's Wife

Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career (1901) and Henry Lawson’s famous short story The Drover’s Wife (1892) are distinctly embedded in the history of Australian literature. Within this essay, I will examine how these writers have contributed to the proliferation of nationalism and how their works are indicative of Australian rural life. To do this, I will firstly analyse Lawson’s interpretation of bush life and its significance in The Drover’s Wife; then, I will focus on the feminist aspect and how the ‘wife figure’ is centred in the context of the novel; and finally, I will illustrate how Lawson’s effectual narrative strategy and language draws a emblematic picture of Australia as a nation and assigns gender roles respectively within both sexes.
She was expected to stand strong in the face of danger with the absence of her husband. Henry Lawson’s characterisation of the drover’s wife oscillates between masculine exhaustion and cultural femininity which she inherits from the British refined civilisation. The drover’s wife demonstrates feminine traits with her emotional and affectionate concern towards her children’s appearance and etiquette and also her own respectful and obedient manner in the bush. Furthermore, she symbolizes hope and construes an effective relationship with the volatile landscape which is represented as evil and alien with the snake’s terrorising presence. According to Australian historian, Manning Clark, ‘the drover’s wife presents to Australians an awareness of both a surface heroism and a metaphysical terror’ (Magarey, Rowley, & Sheridan, 1993). The position of the woman is paradoxically set against the dangers of the bush life, signifying the discordance of femininity in a heroic masculine environment. The wife’s plight against the bush is a feminist struggle against the superiority of the dominant male in a time of national pride for independence and masculine