2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Transcription

1 2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 2.1 The Author Katharine Susannah Prichard was born in Fiji on 4 December Her father was Tom Prichard, a Melbourne journalist who at the time of Katharine's birth was editor of the Fiji Times. Katharine was a product of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish ancestry in an Australian setting. When she was three-years-old, the family left Fiji, and her father accepted a position as editor of the Daily Telegraph in Launceston. For the hardy and adventurous Katharine, the move to Tasmania was the beginning of a wild, carefree childhood as she set about exploring the hills and gullies and a bushland around Launceston. She later described her childhood in Tasmania in The Wild Oats of Han (1928). Her novels all reflect her love of nature and are characterized by a celebration of the natural beauty of Australia and a lyrical evocation of country life. The industrial turmoil of the 1890s affected her family greatly, as her father lost his position when the Daily Telegraph ceased publication and became one of the impoverished unemployed. A move to Melbourne did little to improve the family's lot. Katharine was able to attend South Melbourne College where her potential as a writer of talent was recognized and encouraged by the teacher and poet J.B. O'Hara. By the time she was twenty she had decided to become a writer. Though unable to attend university, she read widely, studying French and German as well as English literature. She continued to improve her writing style by entering literary competitions and keeping copious notes on the people, places and landscapes she encountered.

2 She accepted a position as a governess in Gippsland and later in western New South Wales. In 1907 Tom Prichard, suffering from nervous depression under the stress of financial worry and ill health, took his own life. It was a tragedy that she was never able to forget. In 1908 Katharine Prichard visited London to report the Franco-British Exhibition for the Melbourne Herald and on her return joined the staff of the Herald, in charge of women's work and interests. She paid a brief visit to the U.S.A., and in 1912 worked as a journalist Indonesia. London for three years. Through the kaleidoscope of London she was able to observe the diversity and energy of the human race. It was, she wrote, 'just the biggest, dirtiest, wickedest place I ever had room in my imagination for. I wouldn't have the poor of London on my conscience.' Her natural humanitarianism was aroused by the sight of starving men outside soup kitchens, women with their feet wrapped in newspapers sleeping on the Embankment, and inadequate shelters crammed with homeless people. H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were all the rage in intellectual circles. She was captivated by D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, and Lawrence's vivid appreciation of the beauty of the natural world and emphasis on the importance of the instinctual, as opposed to the intellectual, life find a place in her own writing. The first socialists were sitting in Parliament. There were hunger marches in Trafalgar Square, and women were endeavoring to secure the vote. Prichard was at the centre of it all. Enthusiastically Australian and feminist, she explored the programmes and ideas of such groups as the Freewoman Discussion Circle, Syndicalists and Fabians. She was intellectually curious, always eager to

3 search out new adventures and material for her writing. In Paris she came into contact with the ideas of the Russian revolutionaries. In 1916' she' entered and won the Hodder and Stoughton All-Empire 1000 pounds Novel Competition with The Pioneers, a story of cattle-stealing and romance set in Gippsland. It won for her a reputation in Australia and overseas as a writer of great promise. In 1919, after her return to Australia, she married Captain Hugo Throssell. Captain Throssell was the son of a former Western Australian premier and had received the Victoria Cross for conspicuous bravery at Gallipoli. They lived in Greenmount in the Darling Ranges outside Perth. Prichard's own knowledge of hardship and her concern for social justice were highlighted by the ferocity and carnage of the First World War and her own brother's death in it. Convinced that Marxism offered a solution to the world's problems, she joined the Australian Communist Party in 1920 and remained an active member for the rest of her life. Black Opal, a story about opal mining and the struggle of a small community to retain its way of life in the hot and waterless inland, came out in Living in Western Australia, Prichard now began a series of novels that depicted aspects of life in that State. Working Bullocks (1926) is set in the Kauri forests of the south-west and portrays the life of timber workers and the impact on their community of a Communist agitator. With Coonardoo Prichard shifted her focus to the harsh, drought-racked country of the north-west, the setting of the million-acre Wytaliba cattle station; to the challenge of the land and nature; and to the Aborigines, whose culture is so much at odds with the culture of the white man. Prichard was eager to obtain

4 authentic material for her story and arranged to visit Turee Creek Station, 450 kilometres beyond the railway terminus at Meekatharra on a tributary of the Ashburton River. She stayed on the station for some months, even taking part in a ten-day muster. In October 1926 she wrote to Vance and Nettie Palmer: It's terrifically hot and the dust storms suffocating. But she has been riding nearly every day, and am the colour of red mulga and henna-ed with dust- Sometimes one of the gins rides with me, sometimes mine host, who is really a bit of the country, and sometimes Mick, a stockman who has lived here all his life. The people she encountered and the experience of life on the station provided much of the material for Coonardoo, and for a play, Brumby Innes, as well as two short stories. Sam Geary in Coonardoo was based on the drover and stockman, Brumby Leake, a notorious character of the Kimberleys, who spent his last years at Prairie Downs Station, which adjoins Turee Creek. Coonardoo was completed in 1928 and submitted for the Bulletin 500 pounds novel competition. It won first prize. Among the public, Coonardoo aroused both praise and a storm of controversy. Some critics found the novel's characterization weak and unconvincing; others questioned the authenticity of the novel's station life and the 'romanticization' of the Aborigines; and many objected to even the mention of casual sexual relationships between white men and black women. Coonardoo was in large part an attempt to arouse the social and political conscience of the time, to draw attention to the fact that Aboriginal society and culture were being destroyed by the encroachment of white civilization. In this the novel was ahead of its time.

5 Despite the fact that Prichard had a number of novels in print, royalties were meagre and the Great Depression had swept the world. Hugo Throssell fell into financial difficulties and in 1932 took his own life. For Katharine, who was in Europe at the time, it was a supreme tragedy. She associated herself actively with the Communist Party and its causes, the anti-fascist campaigns of the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War relief effort, and trade union issues. Unfortunately, her doctrinaire political convictions ensured that her work received exaggerated praise from some quarters and unfair criticism from others. In February, 1940, Prichard was invited by the ABC to give a half-hour radio broadcast on the Art and Craft of the Short Story. It was an admirable choice, for Prichard had written many fine short stories. The Grey Horse, The Cooboo, and Happiness are among her best. In the 1940s she produced a trilogy, The Roaring Nineties, Golden Miles and Winged Seeds, which chronicled the history of the Western Australian goldfields. Her autobiography, Child of the Hurricane, _ was published in She died on 2 October Katharine Prichard helped to lay the foundations for a truly Australian literature. In her best works, Coonardoo, Working Bullocks, and Haxby's Circus, Prichard can be seen as continuing in Australia the European tradition of naturalism, though always overlaid with a note of Marxist optimism.

6 2.1 Her Works Published in The Titles 1921 Black Opal 1926 Working Bullocks 1928 The Wild Oats of Han 1928 Coonardoo 1940 The Grey Horse, The Cooboo, and Happiness 1963 The Roaring Nineties, Golden Miles and Winged Seeds 1965 Child of the Hurricane