engleski

The Australian Girl as an Innocuous Companion of the New Woman

The women’s movement in Australia which began in the late 19th century formulated the New Woman as one wanting individual, economic and political independence. While the New woman was viewed ambivalently, the then emerging social identity, the girl, played an important role in the construction of national identity. A product of the bush, as opposed to the New Woman which was an urban phenomenon, the girl was formulated as a symbolic signifier of national difference, a biological reproducer of the nation, and a transmitter of national culture. As such, even though she transgressed the gender role in the similar ways the New Woman did, the girl did not threaten gender relations because she ultimately settled for bourgeois domesticity. Hence, she was formulated as the New Woman’s innocuous companion. Women writers contributed to this creation as will be shown in the novels of Mary Grant Bruce, Catherine Martin, Rosa Campbell Praed and Miles Franklin.

Australian Girl, New Woman, The Dawn, Bruce, Martin, Praed, Franklin

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