Australian Girl In A Comedy Of Spasms

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Iota , a visitor to Australia during the late nineteenth century, rendered the following description of an Australian Girl in her novel, A Comedy of Spasms (1895 Dalziell, 2003, 74) ‘Oh the difference between the ordinary upper middle-class English and Australian girl. Just look at the girl there, as unconscious and gay as a trout in a stream, and the whole crowd of men grovelling at her feet. An English girl in her position would, I’m open to bet, do one of three fatal things; queen it, smirk and blush or be detestably smart and fast. That monkey there might be a Countess in her own right! And how did she learn to dress like that – just look at the rosette at her waist – in that snake-beridden abomination of desolation of a Bush?’ From the late nineteenth century, an emerging literary character arose from the writing produced, in part, by women in colonial Australia. Fuelled by changing social, economic and political climates, the Australian Girl reflected the effects of Federation, …show more content…

The capacity to be in tune with the Australian landscape is central to the development of the Australian Girl and Giles purports that’ Praed depicts an emotional relationship between her heroines and the bush, which may nevertheless be by turns threatening and withholding, but which will always play an important role in their formation and fate as heroic figures.’ (1998, 141) The character of Swifte has been shaped by the Australian bush; overcoming droughts, floods, and agrarian recession. She identifies with the bush though she is progressive and highly educated. The character of the Australian Girl, in Swifte, has the potential to juxtapose sentimentality with pragmatism and this gives rise to both possibilities and limitations inherent in the literary

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