Writing Woman, Writing Place
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Contemporary women writers in these two societies are still writing about similar issues as did earlier generations of women, such as exclusions from discourses of nation, a problematic relationship to place and belonging, relations with indigenous people and the way in which women's subjectivity has been constructed through national stereotypes and representations. This book describes and analyses some contemporary responses to 'writing woman, writing place' through close readings of particular texts that explore these issues.Three main strands run through the readings offered in Writing Woman, Writing Place - the theme of violence and the violence of representational practice itself, the revisioning of history, and the writers' consciousness of their own paradoxical subject-position within the nation as both privileged and excluded. Texts by established writers from both Australia and South Africa are examined in this context, including international prize-winning novelists Kate Grenville and Thea Astley from Australia and Nadine Gordimer from South Africa, as well as those by newly-emerging and younger writers.This book will be of essential interest to students and academics within the fields of Postcolonial Literature and Women's Writing.
AcknowledgementsIntroduction: place, space and gender1Pt. 1Contemporary Australian fiction17Introduction: post-bicentennial perspectives191The violence of representation: rewriting 'The Drover's Wife'242'Gone bush': refiguring women and the bush: Kate Grenville's The Idea of Perfection and Eva Sallis' Hiam433Another country: the 'terrible darkness' of country towns: Thea Astley's Drylands and Gillian Mears' Fineflour and The Mint Lawn564Learning to belong: nation and reconciliation Jo Dutton's On the Edge of Red and Heather Grace's Heart of Light73Pt. 2Contemporary South African fiction95Introduction: new subjectivities975'A white woman's words': the politics of representation and commitment1036Rewriting the farm novel: Anne Landsman's The Devil's Chimney1207Revisioning history: Elleke Boehmer's Bloodlines and Anne Harries' Manly Pursuits1358A state of violence: the politics of truth and reconciliation: Gillian Slovo's Red Dust and Nadine Gordimer's The House Gun150Pt. 3Beyond the national1639Exile and belonging: Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup and Eva Sallis' The City of Sealions165Notes178Bibliography183Index197
